Xubuntu is a Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu Linux and related projects. Canonical is registered in London and employs staff around the world...

 recognized, community maintained derivative of the Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

, using the Xfce

Xfce

Xfce is a free software desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms, such as Linux, Solaris, and BSD – though recent compatibility issues have arisen with regard to BSD Unix platforms...

 desktop environment

Desktop environment

In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...

.

The name Xubuntu is a portmanteau of Xfce and Ubuntu. Xfce originally was an abbreviation for XForms Common Environment, while Ubuntu means "humanity towards others" in the Zulu

Zulu language

Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...

 and Xhosa

Xhosa language

Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...

 languages.
Xubuntu's goals are to:
The Xfce desktop environment is intended to use fewer system resources than the default Ubuntu Unity desktop.