Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu based on the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment , as its default GUI. The goal is to provide a very lightweight distribution, with all the advantages of the Ubuntu world (repositories, support, etc.). Lubuntu is targeted at "normal" PC and laptop users running on low-spec hardware. Such users may not know how to use command line tools, and in most cases they just don't have enough resources for all the bells and whistles of the "full-featured" mainstream distributions.

With many LXDE components, Lubuntu also uses well-known applications, such as Firefox, Openbox, Pidgin, to name a few. The Lubuntu project wiki contains more information on the project and the applications used available.