Best netbook os

Geffen · 15 Oct 2011 at 09:06

I would like to try Linux on my netbook (Toshiba Nb200) and would like some suggestions of best distrio. I have used Unbutu before but bassically new to Linix

inSilica · 15 Oct 2011 at 09:52

If you can't be bothered for digging out drivers etc... go for one of the flavors that will come with most of the drivers. off the top of my head that includes ubuntu, suse and fedora.

N.B. not sure about that particular laptop but do expect some tinkering until you get most if not all functionality going.

fishfishfish · 22 Oct 2011 at 18:26

I recently installed JoliOS on mine. It's not bad at all. It's based on Ubuntu, but uses Google Chrome for the desktop and is HTML5 based. I'm using it on a Poulsbo HP netbook and it's remarkably good, certainly more usable out-of-the-box than Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora and all of the drivers just worked.

manic111 · 22 Oct 2011 at 19:04

I'd suggest starting simple with Ubuntu or Joli. If you're up for a little bit more of a challenge, look at Crunchbang.

Geffen · 22 Oct 2011 at 19:30

I'm trying out Mint at the momment which seem quite good except for the usual Linux poor flash performance. May try out jolios based on the suggestions

adamau5 · 22 Oct 2011 at 20:47

ubuntu 11.1, unity for all its haters, works well on a laptop / netbook

Cromulent · 23 Oct 2011 at 15:45

Geffen said:
I would like to try Linux on my netbook (Toshiba Nb200) and would like some suggestions of best distrio. I have used Unbutu before but bassically new to Linix

I'd use Xubuntu 11.10 if I were you (in fact I do use it on my netbook). The primary reason for that is because it offers a nice easy installation and is lighter than running the Gnome desktop.

Personally although I use Arch Linux on my desktop and servers keeping things simple on the netbook was more important to me.

Radiation · 23 Oct 2011 at 15:49

What about Lubuntu instead of Xubuntu?

tonyt3rry · 24 Oct 2011 at 16:13

ive used a few in the past id say joli for simplicity, ubuntu has been good too, id recomend win 7 but its not good on small harddrives when you are updating windows a lot

masterluke · 25 Oct 2011 at 10:28

I'm liking lubuntu at the moment

Radiation · 25 Oct 2011 at 11:55

masterluke said:
I'm liking lubuntu at the moment

It's definitely a lot quicker, i find 720p videos play much better now im using mplayer, browsing and flash video is also better but flash is still weak on netbooks.

There's a few little things that need improving though, various basic features are missing like drag and drop in file manger, lock screen shortcut and little things like that, i have added some of what i want back, im unsure if i can switch to the gnome file manager easily or not?

masterluke · 25 Oct 2011 at 12:12

I would imagine you can use nautilus in lubuntu but I've never tried.

This page seems to tell you how..

http://concertina-dan.blogspot.com/2011/08/costumize-lubuntu-part-1-my-personal.html

I presume you need to do a "sudo apt-get install nautilus" first

Radiation · 25 Oct 2011 at 12:48

I might have to give it a go then, the current one feels a bit limiting, they can go too far sometimes at the expense of usability.

richthomuk · 25 Oct 2011 at 16:06

adamau5 said:
ubuntu 11.1, unity for all its haters, works well on a laptop / netbook

im not a unity hater but it kinda depends on the spec, i had 11.10 on a samsung nc10 and it was very slugish with unity. Its an older Atom than the Toshiba Nb200 but im willing to bet ubuntu will still be slugish on it. I tried gnome3 which was slightly faster but not great on a 1.66GHz 1gb RAM netbook.