Top 5 Netbook Linux Distributions
Hi there! Have you already jumped onto the netbook bandwagon? I currently own a MEDION PC, a MacBook and a Nokia E71, but my inner-geek still craves for a cool little Linux netbook. Sub-notebooks are great stuff: they are, like Linus Torvalds said in a recent interview, “laptops done right”. You can carry them around, they are light, small and cheap so you do not have to worry as much if you lose, or break them. At the same time though, you can do some serious work with thee mini laptops.
Linux is for now, alongside Mac OS X (a warning though, installing the latter is supposed to be illegal) one of the best operating system choices for a netbook. Windows 7 does have a smaller memory print in comparison to Vista, but many sub-notebooks are still too weak to run anything more by Microsoft than XP, which you will probably have to settle for if you are not thinking of installing Linux.
Some of the advantages of running Linux on a sub-notebook are a smaller memory footprint, better security and tons of free applications right out of the box. If you decide to install it by yourself, you may encounter some compatibility problems here and there, therefore it is wiser to buy one of the more widely-sold netbooks such as the Eee PC or the Acer Aspire One.
Although, with a little tweaking, you should have better chances at installing Linux than Windows. So here are some Linux distributions I recommend you try out, because they are modified to work well with small screens and modest hardware.
Disclaimer: I have not tested all of these Linux distributions and I am not guaranteeing they will work, let alone install – these are simply my suggestions based on people’s reports and opinions and my own messing around with the Eee PC and, briefly, the MSI Wind. I am not going to talk a lot about the software included, if you’re interested in knowing more about the recommended distros, please visit their respective sites.
Sporting a very interesting windowing interface, Ubuntu Netbook Remix is Canonical’s bold foray into the netbook business. They have done a great job at tailoring their flagship distribution for mini laptops. I’m only worried that GNOME and Ubuntu as a whole may not be light enough for every sub-notebook. Nevertheless, all the stuff you’d expect in Ubuntu is there, so if you find it to work well with your system, this is probably the fastest way to get you up and running with a stable and feature-rich operating system.
Ubuntu’s elegant little brother, a spin-off of the Crunchbang distro, does away with GNOME. There is only a window manager, namely Openbox and a sleek black background with a neat Conky setup. A lot of fat has also been trimmed in the application department, if you want Openoffice you will have to download it yourself. By default you get Firefox, VLC, Skype, Flash and a lot of other useful programs for your everyday computing needs. I understand the decision of not including Openoffice, it is a big app and I myself use only the most basic functions of a word processor, the only problem are compatibility issues with documents you get from other people. Always a big pain. Give Cruncheee a try. It is much lighter than UNR.
Slax, a KDE3-based distribution built on top of Slackware Linux, is primarily meant for use as a Live distribution. It seems to have become fairly popular among netbook owners, and I was pleasantly surprised because I like SLAX very much. You can customize your ISO image from the website for your needs, to get a simple, fast, stable and user-friendly distribution, perfect for running off a thumb-drive or Flash memory, which is always a big plus for netbooks since they normally have less storage space than normal PC’s. By the way, version 6.0.9 is supposed to have fixed some previous netbook issues, so one more point for SLAX there 
If you read my blog often, you will know I am a strong supporter of Debian. And I have good reasons: the sheer number of packages, users and documentation is overwhelming. Debian is extremely compatible and easy to install, works on many different architectures and is mostly rock-solid. Sometimes Debian will simply work where most distros fail. That is why you may want to install Debian on your netbook:
- you can find all the necessary documentation
- more than 20,000 packages waiting for you in the repositories
- tested for stability and reliability
As much as I am paranoid about distros that use the RPM format or an enhancement of it, I’ll admit RPM has evolved a lot and is now very mature so no need to worry about dependency hell any more than on DEB-based distros. Even though Mandriva has prepared a special, currently unavailable netbook respin, the standard free version of Mandriva should now have full support for the most popular netbooks, such as the Eee. We’ve been discussing Mandriva in July on the Linux Void podcast and my co-host Peter was pleasantly surprised. As you may know already, Mandriva is a uRPMi-based French distribution that competes with Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSuse and other desktop and new-user-oriented Linux distros. Mandriva prefers the KDE4 desktop, but it also features other desktop environments (GNOME and Xfce).
Runners-up:
Arch Linux – I love Arch. Many Arch users on the Arch BBS use their favorite distros on their netbooks, too. Takes some time to setup, though.
Puppy and Pupeee – Puppeee and Puppy are extremely light. My problem with Puppy is that it gives you root permissions all the time so I do not really recommend it that often, even if it is a great little distribution. This one also tends to work on some exotic hardware.
What about you? What do you run on your netbook?
Disclaimer: I haven’t tested all of these Linux distribution and I am not guaranteeing they will work, let alone install – these are simply my suggestions based on people’s reports and opinions and my own messing around with the Eee PC and, briefly, the MSI Wind.
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I’m surprised that E17 hasn’t made more of an impact on netbooks. Surely it’s an ideal fit for them? It’s lightweight, fast, and looks great. There’s a version of OpenGEU designed for the Eee, and that’s it.
Of course, there is the issue of how long E17 is taking to reach a stable release. If I was in charge of creating a distro for a new netbook, I’d give serious thought to hiring one or two of the E17 developers full time to get it into a state where it’s ready for everyday use so I could incorporate into the stock distro.
I’ve Debian running in mi EeePC
P.S. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC
Greetings!
I ‘ve tried the Ubuntu NBR Version and I found it very well organized and easy to use. However though I would not recommend it for netbooks that have < 1GB RAM.
I would also suggest you the EEEbuntu Base Version. It’s a clean version of ubuntu which has almost nothing preinstalled, so you have to setup whatever you like alone!
Keep up the good work
Test the new G:Noblin-3.0.beta01. It’s the GoblinX with a GNOME Netbook interface.
I’ve just installed Kubuntu Jaunty Alpha 4 on my netbook, which is an ASUS EEEPC 1000H. Kubuntu Jaunty Aplha 4 is just an alpha pre-release of what will become Kubuntu 9.04 in April, but everything works.
The KDE 4.2 desktop of Kubuntu Jaunty is fantastic for netbooks. The only tweak required was to set the fonts smaller by one or two sizes, and to set the screen DPI to 120. Having done that it works very well on a netbook.
As far as I can see Kubuntu Jaunty and Mandriva 2009.1 are the only two soon-to-be-released distributions that will offer the power, beauty and performance of the KDE 4.2 desktop in a distribution that will work out-of-the-box on netbooks. Kubuntu perhaps has the slight edge over Mandriva because of its Ubuntu base, hence use of the apt/deb package management system and larger application repositories.
I had an eeepc running the eeebuntu netbook remix (NBR).
I’ve just replaced it with an Acer Aspire running the new eeebuntu NBR and like it’s predecessor, the eeebuntu NBR runs brilliantly. Everything ‘just works’ (eg. FN buttons, suspend)
I really like the interface – it uses the available desktop space very well and gives you large icons to aim at when using the desktop.
Good work all round.
My Acer Aspire One, 1Gb Ram, 120 Gb HD came with Win XP (Linux version was not available at any local retailers). I replaced it with Mint 6 and everthing works with only a few tweaks necessary. Performance is good and it is nice to have a full distro and any application I want installed. A 6 cell battery will complete the package.
I’m running Sidux (debian Sid based) on an MSI Wind U100, I tweaked it to look like crunchbang, in order to still have a Debian system, despite liking very much crunchbang idea, look and apps.
I’m really pleased with my system now.
Good stuff guys.. my nc10 is on its way … thnx a lot for useful ideas
Regarding Mandriva Linux, starting with Mandriva Linux 2009.0, when using Free (or Powerpack) installer, if a netbook configuration is detected, GNOME is installed by default, instead of KDE4, because we found it more adapted to netbook hardware.
Wow, Frederic thanks for the info I bet lots of people will find this useful
Pleasantly surprised that Ubuntu didnt invent user friendly?
Is that even possible?
Suse and Mandriva were doing easy desktops when flyboy was going to the moon. Only difference is those two companies are living in the real world and are run to make money.
But hey, if you have a podcast and you just discovered some distros, good for you.
Now, if we can just get you to call Ubuntu a british distro and Suse or Red Hat an american one, then the rest of the grade 7 comp will be over.
Miguel de I. saying suse is a company? I’ll really start deleting comments one of these days. At least try to express more clearly what bothers you.
I would love to see the drivers for all these netbooks folded into the normal distributions, and then every distribution having a netbook option during install that would install less apps and install a window manager and options that make the distribution work well on a netbook.
Have had tremendous success w/ Kubuntu 8.1 & KDE 4.1.4 on old Dell Latitude P4m2.0, 512mb. Working well with infamous Netgear WG511v2 wireless card on home network. No sharing probs, and has replaced windoze laptop.
I have to admit, I will take a hard look at loading Debian Lenny once I get the time. Big fan of Debian, but not nearly as easy a distro to test- at least not for me yet.
Mark, thanks for your report on Kubuntu Jaunty on EEE, quite interesting.
I got EEE 901. Did Debian install first, but eeebuntu after that, and the latter is just SO much easier to set up… I may have lost a bit of performance but I don’t care.
For you Eee owners, Lenny is supposed to have great support for it
[...] Read about them here… Share and Enjoy: [...]
I have an EeePC 900. It came with Xandros and the EeePC interface. I got rid of it within an hour of purchase. I installed Debian and was reasonably happy. I had this notion of installing a 16gb SD card and connecting the EeePC to my car’s sound system for long trips. It all worked fairly easily at first, then I noticed sound stuttering at random times. I did the rounds of Eee distros and they all did the same. Ubunbtu NBR worked OK at first and then after some update it too lost it. It is all to do with Gnome, Pulseaudio and the EeePC sound chipset.
For the benefit of those who also have this isuue I have settled, for the moment, on Ubuntu Intrepid and KDE 4.2 from the PPA repositories and the array.org kernel. The sound now works flawlessly and all the function keys work. I think that Kubuntu jaunty will work by default, but I will wait until it is a bit closer to release. I also have a Gigabyte U7000 USB TV dongle and that works well with Kaffeine and a 2.6.27 kernel.
I await a netbook based on a VIA Nano with a VT1708B sound chip, I feel that will not just play music, but play it at a much higher quality. For now the EeePC is finally working as a music player, but it was a long hard process.
I run Linpus Lite on my acer aspire one (120GB disk) but I’ll start with Ubuntu Netbook Remix soon (need fast internet connection). Linpus Lite is not so bad but Ubuntu users like Ubuntu or Debian, you know it. RPMs and fedora based systems are not my favorite.
[...] Top 5 Netbook Linux Distributions Hi there! Have you already jumped onto the netbook bandwagon? I currently own a MEDION PC, a MacBook and a Nokia E71, but my inner-geek still craves for a cool little Linux netbook. Sub-notebooks are great stuff: they are, like Linus Torvalds said in a recent interview, “laptops done rightâ€. You can carry them around, they are light, small and cheap so you do not have to worry as much if you lose, or break them. At the same time though, you can do some serious work with thee mini laptops. [...]
Moblin http://moblin.org/
OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) http://www.laptop.org/
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images
i owned a 701, installed xubuntu, after that sidux (kde3), the latter one i think twice as fast with booting, and way more snappy. so i installed on my acer aspire one, and later on my samsung nc10. run smooth – some, not sidux-related, issues though (acer: sd card recongition) (nc10: fn probs)
I could not get either Easy Peasy or EeeXubuntu to find the wifi on my Eee SSD 701 or figure out how to install drivers to get it going. Serendipity came to my rescue.
Down under here in OZ we are lucky to have a print magazine called Australian PC User with an ongoing interest in producing their own versions of Ubuntu.
The March 09 issue DVD includes User OS Netbook, a PC User tweaked Xubuntu version and a Windows (yuk) tool called Linux USB Installer that lets one install this OS or any Debian based Live CD version onto a USB key.
Since netbooks don’t have a CD/DVD drive, booting a USB key is how I try out this OS on my netbook.
Apart from the partition formatter not having ext2 or better yet ext4 for SSD drives, (SSDs in my opinion are mandatory for real Netbooks), and not having the camera drivers for the Eee 701, everything else works as it should including the wifi and a Ubuntu compiled Huawei modem driver and tool.
On mini laptops, i.e. anything with a netbook form factor but with a conventional hard drive, the User OS version is going to work. In the mag there are 9 pages of printed help and on the DVD there is also a video user guide.
PC User state that this is a beta version, so I hope they can add some patches for my camera and include ext4 as the default partition format, but that said, if you want Ubuntu on your netbook, this one is definitely worth a try.
I run eeebuntu on my Asus EeePC 1000H. Not all buttons work, by I don’t care. I am only unhappy, that the ting is only sold with Windows XP Home Edition. Apparently, Asus wants a lot of angry Linux proponents on their back. Oh well, dual boot works fine.
Mandriva 2009.0 on this Acer Aspire One as I write this. It took zero tweaking on the hardware. Wireless (WPA) perfect, etc. The only thing you really want to do is enable backports so you can install Amarok 1.4. No MP3 player support (that works, looks like the hooks are there) in the current Amarok 2.0 that comes with it or when I updated.
External monitor works, although want to find out how to bump up KandR external monitor resolution. Brightness and Volume Fn keys work. All in all, one the most amazingly boring installs I have ever done. KWin is active, totally responsive, etc.
2 problems, neither mattered to me. Webcam doesn’t work with Kopete (and don’t care, haven’t troubleshot it) and the SD card slots don’t work due to a known kernel problem. (Maybe fixed in just released 2009.1? No idea, completely happy with it the way it is)
One thing I like, as part of the install, it asked me if I wanted to remove all the uneeded packages. Not sure how much room it saved, but nice perk.
2 hours 15 minutes (give or take)+ on 3 cell battery, and that is with constant use.
TripleII
I bought an Acer Aspire One with XP (and 1 GB RAM and 120 GB HDD) in December, as a long-time Linux user one of the first things I did was the Mandriva One XFCE edition (from Mandriva Community, not an official Mandriva release) because I’d seen everyone concerned that KDE or Gnome was too much for a netbook … I needn’t have worried. I’ve since installed KDE 4 from the repositories, and am writing this from my netbook.
Stomfi and Malte if you use this kernel you should have no problems. There are instructions on how to add the repo and install on the site. This is custom crafted for Ubuntu and the Eee and should drive your camera, sound, wifi and function buttons. Skype works fine.
http://www.array.org/ubuntu/
>one of the first things I did was the Mandriva One XFCE edition (from Mandriva Community, not an official Mandriva release) because I’d seen everyone concerned that KDE or Gnome was too much for a netbook … I needn’t have worried. I’ve since installed KDE 4 from the repositories, and am writing this from my netbook.
Yes, exactly my experience. The Intel graphics card that is often used with netbooks is a bit under-powered, but with KDE 4.2 it seems to be OK. It is certainly a lot more powerful desktop system, and it isn’t all that less responsive (even with underpowered graphics card) compared to a deliberately lightweight system like Cruncheee. It performs about the same as XFCE, but without the compromises.
According the KDE project, they have tweaked the desktop deliberately with netbooks in mind.
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.2/desktop.php
“KDE 4.2 supports your mobile life. Owners of netbooks and other small devices will appreciate the work on making applications usable on small screens. Many configuration screens like those in Konqueror and Kontact have been redesigned to fit. Another benefit for mobile users is that power usage has been reduced all throughout the KDE software. The frequent wakeups from the core applications like Plasma and KWin have been eliminated, making sure you get the most from your battery.
Besides these improvements, PowerDevil introduces a new way of managing power. Instead of being a separate tool, PowerDevil is an integral part of KDE. You don’t have to run a specific application to have access to its functionality. It is configurable within System Settings (under the Advanced tab), and can be controlled with a Plasma widget on the panel or desktop if you want.”
I’m consequently very surprised to hear of a distribution installing GNOME over KDE 4.2 in preference, because of the tweaking done by KDE 4.2, and also because many of GNOME’s dialog boxes don’t fit on a netbook screen, and the GNOME file selection dialog is exceedingly awkward to use with a mousepad.
Luckily, I trialled Mandriva One not Free or Powerpack then.
I settled on debian-eeepc and enlightenment e17 for my eeepc 900. I use wicd, abiword, gnumeric, mplayer, epiphany and firefox. The system is very responsive and E17 is a beautiful environment. All of my panels are small and hide automatically giving me the most real estate possible on this 8.9″ screen.
Cheers,
Alex C.
[...] Read on… [...]
Personally I just use the regular version of Ubuntu on my Eee PC, albeit with the Array.org kernel. UNR was nice, but just didn’t fit my workflow as well, so I went back.
Overall I’ll stick to the Ubuntu/Debian family for everything regardless of interfaces, since the underlying architecture is just so nice. (I’m also very happy with my new Nokia N810, which runs Maemo, which is also based on Debian.)
In response to the first comment about the lack of popularity of E17: The simple answer is because E17 hasn’t been released yet. You can get it from the svn repositories (and there are scripts available to download and compile for you) and some distributions include ‘beta’ packages (notably Mandriva), but until the Enlightenment developers finish tying up the last few loose ends and come out with an official ‘stable’ release, we won’t see E17 featured much except by enthusiasts.
I do look forward to the first release of E17, because I see it as a big contender against/with KDE4 in the upcoming years.
Note: I use both KDE 4.2 and E17, and find them quite comparable.
Great post, thanks for the info
[...] Top 5 Netbook Linux Distributions [...]
[...] Top 5 Netbook Linux Distributions (internetling.com) [...]
I have an ACER One, 120 GB HD, 1.5 G Ram and have gone with Mint 6 (Gnome), but think will try with xfce. Mint worked pretty much out of the box, I love how it deals with proprietary drivers and codecs. Just minor tweaking required for the wireless card. But after that it was solid!
[...] those of you with netbooks, check out this review of several custom spins of various Linux distributions optimized for netbooks. We have yet to see a [...]
Acer Aspire One 10.1 (AOD150-1165), 1gb, 160GB HD. Dual booting XP with Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 UNR (daily build date 4/5/09). Wifi and power management working straight out of the box! Beautiful desktop and fonts! Better performance than XP. Boots Jaunty in about 20 seconds after selecting it in boot loader. Very similar performance to my 4 year old AMD Semptron desktop dual-booting WinXP/Kubuntu Gutsy 7.10. Just set up last night, so no other things evaluated yet – but looks great so far.
There are some E17 based distros out there now though. There’s a particularly attractive one called MoonOS that is based on Ubuntu.
I de-installed it because i seem to be too attached to Linux Mint 6 (been my wing-man all the way through distro hopping) and recently Debian (which is lightning fast and far away the most solid distro i have tried).
I haven’t been able to get that bloody wireless working though, even with the informative
DebianAspireOne wiki. Be prepared for that journey with debian, but i think it will be worth it for a powerful distro like that.
I’m simply running the new Kubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on my eeepc 900 with the stock 1G DRAM.
Works right out of the box… just remember that when you try to open wireless and KDE Wallet appears, give it the password it asks for. And turn off desktop effects unless you like short battery life.
Looks great.
After trying out lots of distros on my Eee PC 901, including the 9.04 versions of (k)ubuntu / NBR and a few other NBR distros, my oppinion is that Mandriva 2009.1 is the best choice. The Live CD with installer works out of the box, and the Free edition (more customizable installer) is no rocket-science either. A friend of mine with the same netbook also ‘saw the light’ when he installed it on his Eee 901, but for some reason he had to post-install the synaptics driver manually as the live installer didn’t find this hardware.
The result is, anyway, a fast and beautiful KDE4.2 setup, all hardware supported, Fn+Fx keys and the special ‘eee keys’ working, easy on the battery and overall good for the small screen. 2GB of Ram makes things even better.
And to those not liking rpm: you probably still use out-dated arguments, or you just don’t know how to do stuff…
8.9″ Acer Aspire One With 160G hd, currently I am running a dual boot with Win XPhome and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix. All aspects have seemed to work without a hitch and I am to the point now where I feel I will be unloading windows from the unit all-together. I am currently downloading Moblin netbook ux beta to do a test run before making any concrete decisions, but out of all that I have tried in earnest…Jaunty 9.04 netbook remix still has my solid vote. It is very interesting to see the paths others are taking with the netbooks…Thanks.
I have just installed Kubuntu 9.04 in a CoolBox of 10″ screen size with 1G of RAM and an Intel Atom 1.6. It works fine. The only problem I have had is the network-manager, it does not work properly. The solution was installing wicd, and now all works fine.
I have tried with virtualbox installing winxp, but it runs slowly; memory it is not enough.
Mandriva 2009.1 wasn’t a good experience on my eee PC 1000HA. The wireless at first would re-connect after a re-boot but the more I used it the more frequently it would not reconnect automatically. Then the laptop started freezing up when I tried to manually connect. Also the touchpad was erratic, which I later found was a known bug. I’m using the Ubuntu 9.04 netbook remix now, and I like the layout, but auto-maximizing everything is a bit control-freakish in my opinion, and I prefer KDE. The wireless Fn key doesn’t work in Ubuntu 9.04, but that’s not a big deal for me. Mepis 8 was impressive with function keys working, but the wireless performance was unreliable. I’m still looking for a Linux distribution for the eee PC 1000HA that I REALLY like.
Having run UNR on an Acer Aspire One for a month or so, I find I really like it.
Lots of these reviews focus on ‘light’ distros, but that seems misguided to me – netbooks are not particularly underpowered and a typical 160 G disk was considered enormous not long ago. (A solid state drive might be a different story).
What is important is screen use and space management, and that is where Netbook Remix excels. It isn’t perfect (example: inconvenient placement of ‘shutdown’) and not all things work (wireless indicator light; backports have attempted to fix, but not quite there yet). However, it is perfectly usable. It does the job well.
I have the Acer Aspire One, 1.5G RAM, 160G HD. I installed the eeebuntu Standard 2.0. It runs very smooth and usable. Hopefully someone can give it a try and report back to here.
[...] Finally, despite everything I have written I am very excited to see what Google will do with Chrome OS. They probably do not want to ruin the surprise, hence the all-words-and-no-facts announcement. As a Linux geek, I am glad to see such a big company working with hardware manufacturers to bring Linux to the masses, because it will broaden the availability of Linux-supported hardware, so if I don’t like Chrome OS, I will be able to simply slap on any other netbook Linux distro. [...]
I’m surprised no one has mentioned goodOS. It uses mozilla prism to run lots of google apps. Of course, it’s probably not worth it unless you’re already using google apps like gmail and calendars. It’s also based on the old ubuntu 8.04, but might still be worth a try.
I was one of those silly buggers that bought a Linux netbook (Aspire one zg5) as soon as they hit the shops. Only to find that a month later they were cheaper and more powerful versions of the same netbook available.
Storage is a major problem on some of these netbooks. I opted to rip off a usb port and solder in a usb to sata connection (From inside a Lacie External HDD) and finally bought and squeezed in a 500gb 2.5″ hdd (Noticeable bulge in the keyboard now.)
Due to the way Windows handles usb devices during boot. It is very difficult to run them correctly of usb hdd’s, but hey I am a Loyal Debian user anyway.
After some basic Tweaks and a compile of madwifi-hal. I found that The old AAO runs Debian like an absolute Treat.
AAAAUGH!
All the ubuntu-based-ness! It kills mah brain!
I plan to use my desktop computer as a gentoo binpkg server for my netbook. Either that, or I’ll just do the compiling on my netbook. Sure, compiling will take forever, but gentoo is one of the few distros that I’ve found that doesn’t seem to favor certain packages over others. KDE runs -much- better on gentoo-based distros than on many others (looking at you, kubuntu), as does e17, as do all kinds of other applications. I don’t think I’m willing to give up that freedom for the sake of compile times.
I mean, I’ll try some binary distros built for eeePCs, but none of them will have anything to do with ubuntu, and my guess is that I’ll end up falling back to gentoo, anyway.
ok i’m going to say it…..dont hate me though
i hate it, linux just does not work with me. yup. before you throw stones at my face let me tell you why
my network card = not recognized ( 4 days spent desperatly trying to get it to work, i tried everything, learned alot about the terminal) but anyways
sound recording = some how impossible (such a small thing, yet vital for lectures)
programs = ******you must download software ”compatable with linux”****** programs essential, you probablly wont find. someone help me get back to windows
i really need to get back to windows,
my situation….
i’m running ubuntu ( flashy, but no content ) what are you going to do with an os that cant install BLOODY PROGRAMS
******LINUX READ THIS*********
WHAT GIVES?
WHY DO YOU MAKE IT SO BLOODY COMPLICATED TO INSTALL PROGRAMS?
WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND SOFTWARE THAT IS COMPATIBLE WITH LINUX?
BECAUSE YOUR USELESS!
*********************** END ******************************
anyways….i’m on a cute little netbook, no cd drive mind you…regrefully downloaded UBUNTU and DELETED windows. why? becuase…
LINUX IS A SNAKE!
anyways, i’m on ubuntu, and i need XP any ideas? i googled it and ended up empty handed…. why?
i bet linux made it hard to download programs, so you cant download xp and make your flash disk bootable. quite frankly put
i’ve been fu. cked up the ass buy that stupid cute penguin
fu. ck that penguin
You could just try installing Wine from the ubuntu repository. See if you can run your windows apps with that.
Also if you have an atheros wlan card, compile + install Madwifi (quite easy to do)
Any other wlan card you can use NdisWrapper to Operate it with the original Windows XP driver.
In failing all of the above get a flash drive, WinXP disk and a second computer… to create a bootable xp setup on the flash drive
http://www.msfn.org/board/install-xp-usb-t111406.html
frustrated—- Wow man your new to linux… This takes time to learn…
1.WHY IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND SOFTWARE THAT IS COMPATIBLE WITH LINUX?
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html#5
Link above is to table of equivalents in Linux….
Also…
Emulator PlayonLinux works great for running windows programs…
i’m running ubuntu ( flashy, but no content ) what are you going to do with an os that cant install BLOODY PROGRAMS
either apt-get packagename or Go to System>Package Manager
What netbook is this??????
Anyways this is a list of netbooks running Ubuntu Netbook Remix
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks
Final Thought—
If you want help next time go to LinuxQuestions.org the experience level of users of Linux averages around 10+ years… Most users in this forum are like me Computer Science Majors or have a Nac for computers..
later…
Mintman
later
Well,
What I really came here for was to see what Netbook OS I could install on my
Acer Aspire One Intel Atom Z520 with 225 gig hard drive 2 gig ram came with Vista
I was surprised to see I can run so many Linux Distro’s… I was figuring with the limited power of Netbooks it required a special version of Linux…????
I should have realised after installing Red Hat 5.1 on a 486 that I should be able to install a full version of Linux Distro!!!!!
Haven’t had a cpu this slow in 12 years….
I also don’t plan on running windows ever again… If I try windows 7 it will not be for 2 years…
Mintman….
LG 110
Thanks for the updates on netbook development. Remember everything is hardware based. Most Atom-based seems to be easier then M$ to install. But 3G seems to be the hardest hardware to run.
I’m running Ubuntu 9.04 classic on my LG 110. Works perfect. Everything including 3G out-of-the-box!
Tried my desktop favourite Mandriva 9.1 but it had no working module for the 3G-in-built-modem. Sad but true.
Also tried Moblin 2.0. Very unmature. Could not connect to any network with wifi. Interesting GUI but without no network connection and since it’s based on the moblin-site you cant use it. Besides it lacks OpenOffice!
Next netbook will be a “no-name” called Hillman. The first one I found with no OS. Wonderful but which distro will work best on Hillman? Right answer will be rewarded…
ps dont buy the LG if you want a battery based netbook. Excellent with a 3G but useless if you want a box running longer then 1,5h without a wall-plug.
hy, nice post.
I have an aspire one running on linux mint and its doing great( i had to do a lots of tweaking but its running fine), performance is good if you tweak the logs so the Os doesnt write them, its just like ubuntu, but has a series of “mint” apps that realy work.
Tell me what you think of it, if U try it.
My acer aspire one a0751 came with Windows XP Home Edition. Naturally, now I’m trying to install linux as second system, and having a big troubles with gma500. That chip support shaders, but it’s producers do not opening source codes of it’s drivers.
That big corporations.. Acer, Intel and Imagination Technologies thrown a big pinky pig for me (and for some other linuxoids-owners of a751). I’m probed Gentoo, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook-Remix, Puppy, Moblin and XPud. Gentoo, Arch and my lovely Debian had problems with starting Xorg even in VESA-mode. In logs all is OK, normal flyig, but screen is black. May be, i will return for this later to find decision. Ubuntu and Netbook-remix worked normally in VESA-mode and looked fine, but worked so slowly… Especially Netbook-Remix. Moblin-interface in VESA-mode eated whole 100% of CPU!! Then i’m tryed Puppy Linux and was really amused of them. So fast little system! Software set is ideal. And hardware support! Even scrolling on touchpad and special keys. Geany in which i’m programming is default X text editor! System of settings controlling so simply and logically organized. Gnome and KDE4 (and Windows) nervously smoking at corner. But.. as you wrote, that root single-user mode may be good for working on flash-drive, but not good for working on hard disk partition. What a thrills to run internet browser under root.. 8\ Then i’m probed XPud. That system really started about five seconds, but it’s functionality hardly will approach to rich-featuring netbook. It’s more likely for booths and for absolutely small devices.
And now i’m testing BackTrack. It’s working fast (even with KDE) and based on Debian (So good). And equipped of all that hacker’s toolkits. Interesting..
Mine is a Targa 1016 -1.6 Mhz Atom/1GB Ram/160 Gb HD-..came with Win XP Home..and I ended up enabling dual boot O.S in this case was gOS 3.1 based on Ubuntu 8.04 desktop enviroment is Enlightenment ..and everything worked out of the box except the well known case of Atheros wifi card, not even worked with wicd..so when I was nearly about to give up I downloaded the latest drivers compat-wireless-ath9k-20080916.sh then executed it and right after 5 mins I ve got a deb package customized to my distro..just to point out every time there is a kernel update I need to recompile and reinstall the driver…and usb thumbsticks have to be mounted manually..external usb hard drives they self mount themselves though….
I just installed UNR. I had eeebuntu and for some odd
reason it wouldn’t connect to my router or most networks
expect a few open ones. Even the public library was a problem.
I’ve been a ubuntu, Mac OS and Windows user and I love
Linux. I had Windows on this machine at first and even with
2gb of ram it was SLOWWWWWW.
EEE PC 701SD Asus
I like the interface better then eeebuntu. The splash screen is
cooler.
Well I use Jolicloud think it is Great give it a go
there is too Moblin 2.1 a real distro for netbooks with ATOM arch
hi. a cruncheee user here. everything run smoothly on my eeepc 701 (except the ubuntu sound bug, which can be fixed by 5 minute googling). really loved it. well, i do use crunchbang for my laptop anyway
My current setup is Macpup Opera , a lovely e17 based variant of Puppy 4.2 with Opera browser. Fast, stable, and everything works, including easy setup of atheros wifi for WPA. Frugal install with unetbootin on WinXP leaves that OS intact in case you must use it, otherwise simply choose linux from XP’s boot selector screen. Could not be more pleased with it.
ArchOne http://arcierisinasce.wordpress.com/archone/
it’s ArchLinux based
setup your own favorite distro with light fast minimal desktop
http://wiki.dennyhalim.com/linux-minimal-desktop
Despite MANY negative writings about Ubuntu Netbook Remix for Karmic (9.10), I decided to change my wifes netbook from Linpus to UNR. Note: I said my WIFEs netbook – didn’t want to possibly bork mine into oblivion.
Everything went off without any hitch other than I had to use unetbootin to create a bootable thumb-drive / flash-disk. The first time around, I didn’t use the unetbootin and although the netbook booted from the flash drive, it still went looking for a CD-ROM drive during the installation.
The only thing that doesn’t work is the WLAN, but we never use it anyway, so it doesn’t matter. It seems that I need to get drivers for it before it will work.
Total installation time: somewhere between 30 and 40 miutes – slightly more than my desktop installation Ubuntu 9.10 of 29 minutes. A further 25 odd minutes for the updates.
Boot time is the same as what Linpus gave me and the battery life, after disabling a number of startup apps & resident, is now the same as what Linpus gave.
Netbook specs: Acer Aspire One ZG5 (or something like that), 8GiB SSD drive, 512MiB RAM.
All in all, a very satisfactory installation without any hitches.
Had a 1gb usb stick hanging around and wanted to squeeze a netbook distro on it. This was way harder than it sounds and i had to try quite a number of distros. Ended up with WattOS. Brilliant!
[...] the kind of thing that makes a free operating system sound like a good [...]
http://moblin.org
[...] will enable us to use more advanced features. There are a few distributions you might remember from last year’s article. However, even the ones that stayed in the top 5 have gone through some heavy face-lifting. [...]
After 2 OS changes I finally stuck with Debian, I love the stability and speed
I am going to try Debian, Ubuntu remix or Mandriver (depending on how I plan to set it up) — trashing windows 7 on a new netbook just doesnt seem worth it, however Debian can tap the resources of a netbook I can feel it.
tktim: Thanks for the link to OLPC ( http://www.laptop.org ).
This is really great stuff!
I’m now planning on supporting them, as soon as i’ll have some money to spare ^^
[...] Hoje quando acordei deparei-me mais uma vez com o mesmo problema, o Windows Vista tinha reiniciado a maquina. Felizmente a semana passada tinha comprado um leitor de dvds externo e agora já não estava refém da Microsoft. É verdade que era possivel actualizar para o Windows Seven, pagando uns 10 euros, mas não acho que isso fosse a solução para o meu problema. Por isso andei a pesquisar por sistemas operativos alternativos ao da Microsoft, até que encontrei este site. [...]
I have an Acer Aspire One it came with Win XP. I ran a dual boot with Ubuntu Netbook Remix for some time, and over the course of a year began to see the many benefits of running Ubuntu over Windows. I have to admit that Ubuntu (and I did try others) seemed to fit the little netbook perfectly, and runs much smoother and quicker than Windows XP had ever thought of. I would personally recommend Ubuntu NBR to anyone wanting to set the little netbooks free. As far as others that have posted raving about not being able to find software… they need to slow down and honestly look at what they expect the little netbooks to do… I mean, they are not a desktop, don’t expect them to perform like one. Once you realize that Linux allows you to do exactly what the netbook was designed for, (and for the most part much quicker), installing Ubuntu (Linux) is a no brainer. All the apps you need for these little guys are in the Ubuntu & Debian Repositories and can make them even more useful than Windows Bloat-ware. Another Key Reason for the change is dropping the need for congesting third-party anti-virus software… that alone reduces system loads tremendously. Ubuntu NBR 10.04 and lovin’ it!
i have installed a netbook linux edition downloaded from monomaxos.gr on a compaq netbook 1000 series.. The most incredible thing i noticed was that every device on my netbook was working fine without anything to be installed from me. The camera and touchpad was working fine too.. Speed and smoothiness was the most amazing thing i noticed.. Also the option to install it in a flash drive 4gb and test without install it was incredible… I suggested to every who want speed and dont have a lot of time to spend for installing devices and things like codecs,internet browsers, sounds etc…everything is preconfigured!!
I am also dissapointed.Windows 7 is not very good but a little bit better.Mac is slow and not userfriendly.Linux have too many distros and they have too much bugs.Linux is slow,complicated and boring.Moblin is interesting and I would like to try Debian.I made a mistake buying a D-link modem that hardly supports any Operative Systems so I have a very limited choice.The future I think is going back to assembler since all these c-languages creates bugs,take a lot of space,and works very slowly.All those popular languages are too boring to learn.I think it is possible to write an OS in HLA,Euphoria,Newlisp,Delphi and a few other languages.Ruby might be a good language.I hate Firefox,Explorer,andSafari and like Opera and Chrome.If you download with Chrome you can not burn CD:s with Brasero.I hate the stupid mentality of Linux-communities,it is better not having things to work than using proprietory software.This makes me angry.With a better attitude they would get much more help from hardware manifactorers.
[...] will enable us to use more advanced features. There are a few distributions you might remember from last year’s article. However, even the ones that stayed in the top 5 have gone through some heavy face-lifting. [...]