Screenshot - 05222012 - 06:35:50 PM

I saw this interesting article on #LSF-DA-Group about Voyager XFCE: [link]
I decided to try it out.

This is Voyager XFCE running in Live Preview from my 2GB USB stick.
This is one of the coolest XFCE distros I've tested, and certainly the only one that comes with so many eyecandy programs as default.
Shown in the screenshot is what the distro looks like when live booted. I have not added any programs, although I have tweaked a few.

It comes with AWN (Avant Window Navigator). AWN has the standard 5 themes it normally comes with, plus 4 extra themes specific for Voyager XFCE.
Conky Control is accessed by right-click-menu on the desktop. That is a cool program! There are 21 preset Conky configs loaded and you can customize your desktop by clicking which Conky you want loaded. Currently displayed is Conky-Ubuntu. I would love to know what package Conky Control is included from, and if it works with other desktops as well (like GNOME Shell or Unity), but I haven't been successful in finding the package.
Check out the upper-right side of the screen! See the icon that looks like a radio antenna (it's blue)? It's Radio-Tray, a web-radio app! Click on it and it gives you dozens of Shoutcast stations that you can play. This is included in the live preview by default!
Firefox also comes pre-loaded and pumped up on steroids in this distro. When I opened Firefox, I saw that it has Starpages loaded with it (with 9 new tab pages loaded). Firefox also comes preloaded with a nifty little app called Ghostery. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity, and gives you the options to block them.
Also included in this distro is the program GThumb, which is just about the best image viewer in the repository, imho. It also happens to be the only viewer I've found that can read the NEF and RAW image format 100% reliably and let you view the image at full-size.
Voyager XFCE comes with the GIMP for image editing. Sadly though, this is not a bleeding-edge version of GIMP with single-window mode. It's GIMP 2.6
Another neat utility is Synapse, which is semantic launcher that you can use to start applications as well as find and access relevant documents and files. It functions very similar to the Unity Dash bar (type in a program name or filename, and it finds it and launches it). Very handy to have! You can invoke it by clicking the S in the upper task bar.
Other neat programs included with this distro include Screenlets (lots of widgets you can put on your desktop) and Tilda (a transparent Terminal emulator - it looks like you're typing directly into a HUD on the desktop).

So... my opinions? I think Voyager XFCE is very neat indeed! It definitely raises the bar for X-window distros. I also feel it raises the bar in terms of software included by default.
I think that Ubuntu could take a lesson from Voyager. Ubuntu never seems to showcase any more programs than the absolute necessity to run the distro. Voyager included plenty of programs to increase the overall attractiveness of the distro and to show what the distro was capable of, which I believe enhanced my experience notably.
I would give Voyager XFCE a ranking of 8/10 all in all.