Tuxedo, a German computer company selling a range of Linux laptops, has announced it is launching it own Ubuntu-based spin.

“We have been working on this project for several months,” they say in their announcement. “We have been thinking about the usability of the desktop, have included user feedback in our considerations and made some surveys on desktop usage.”

As a result of this feedback the computer outfit plan to ship an in-house Xubuntu spin prinstalled on its devices. That spin is called (somewhat confusingly) “Tuxedo Xubuntu 16.04 LTS“.

‘The spin is said to deliver much lower memory usage and improved battery life’

This sorta-distribution takes the standard Xubuntu 16.04 LTS that you, I and anyone else can go out and download, but throws in a bunch of modifications and tweaks. The Xfce desktop gets a thick paint brush of branding slathered over it, and more recent versions of the Linux kernel, various hardware firmware, and (where applicable) proprietary graphics drivers are bundled in.

“What we have done is [deliver a] desktop that is strongly adapted to the needs of our users. With [our] own theme, own icons, own boot logo and […] the latest firmware, the latest NVIDIA drivers (if necessary) and Linux kernel 4.11 preinstalled! Not to mention our configuration adjustments on the GRUB and optimizations to other system-relevant files,” Google Translate reports Tuxedo as saying in their announcement.

This modified image is said to deliver much lower memory usage (lower than even Ubuntu MATE) and improved battery life.

As proof, the company claims — wry look down the camera — to have tested its InfinityBook Pro 13 with Linux Mint 18.1, which gave a battery life of 6 hours, and its Xubuntu fork, which saw the ultrabook last almost twice as long, clocking up nearly 12 hours.

That’s a pretty incredible claim, and one I suspect has more than a few caveats to it. Tuxedo already ship their own, to put it politely “takes” on Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE on their devices, and those reseller respins have attracted criticism and derision from some customers.

But back to the news at hand and Tuxedo say they do still intend to offer Ubuntu and Ubuntu spins as install options on their devices, but only at request.

And, naturally, their new semi-distro should also be available to download and install on non-Tuxedo computers by non-Tuxedo customers through its obscenely complicated “webfai” tool.

It’s been a good week for fans of Linux distros, as System76 also announced their own Linux distribution based on Ubuntu GNOME, called Pop OS.

You can see a video demo of the new Xubuntu-based Tuxedo spin in this video:

Tuxedo via Martin Wimpress