
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.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix

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.
Cruncheee

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

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
Debian

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
Mandriva

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.