Best OS for Netbook?

elrasho

elrasho

elrasho

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Im looking for OS that works well on Netbooks. I plan to get a Netbook purley for Word Proccessing, Internet (youtube, facebook, forums), 720P MKV HD videos, Webcam chat and maybe some very light gaming (Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 arena).

As it stands Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 looks like an obvious choise because of its name but can anyone suggest any others?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Thanks Rainmake, wasn;t expecting a reply so quick lol Cool I'l have a look at some youtube vids, does it have good power management? Also can you recommend a decent netbook for around £200 that will cover all my needs
 
Just about any netbook would do you to be honest.. i got mine for 189 incl VAT but the samsung N130 here at ocuk would do just fine. Most of the netbooks at this price range are pretty much identical spec-wise at this price range.
 
Yeah netbooks seem much of a muchness overall. My stepdaughter has a Samsung NC10 and that works great. I've also tried the MSI Wind, and again that's decent. About the only netbook I hated was an Acer One. Urgh.

Just have a play around and see what you like. There are tons of ways to get Linux (or other OSs) onto a netbook. Don't rush, playing around is half the fun lol

BTW, yes power management is decent on Jolicloud. I actually found the battery lasts longer under Joli than it does on Windows 7. Normally for Linux/Windows it's the opposite way around with portables. Definitely give Jolicloud a try. If you know what you're doing, Arch, Debian and so on can be fun to hack at, but Jolicloud is already set up with knowledge of your netbook's hotkeys and so on, so it's a much nicer experience and doesn't feel like you're making sacrifices to run Linux. JMHO. :)
 
The ASUS 1001HA can be had for £199 now, and that's a total bargain in my opinion (I know as I have one and it's much nicer to use than others I tried). The battery life is very good too, and hardware support for linux is good also.

As for your original question, I firmly believe there is no clear winner. Jolicloud is very simple, and too web-orientated for me, though a very nice OS. I don't think power management will be as good as XP however, I've yet to find another OS that can perform as well as XP in that respect, at least on my Eee PC. XP also has great compatibility and is pretty fast on netbooks. The only downside is it's not particularly smooth or flashy (if you want that?) and the security isn't great. Since the ASUS comes with XP, I've actually just stuck to it, no version of linux has been able to tempt me away (despite me trying many and wanting to like them!).
 
I've had two Acer Aspire One's and two Asus EeePCs. One Asus was a nightmare, and one of the Acer's had a battery failure and charger failure within a month of each other. The Acer i'm using now is a dream, though, and I wouldnt change it.

As people have said, they're basically all the same. They all use the Intel Atom 1.6ghz CPU which is power hungry and lacks in processing power. The reports at the time were that the 900mhz Asus models were running faster than the 1.6ghz Atoms.. although recently this has probably been addressed. The only other thing to keep in mind is an upgrade path. The Aspire One has 512mb Ram soldered to the mobo, so you cant remove it. This limits your upgrade options to 1.5gb total as the BIOS only recognises 2gb max, and you can't remove that initial 512mb.

Elsewise almost all require you to pull it apart to stick more ram in. The Acer was pretty simple, and the Asus was simpler still. This would be my main concern if buying a netbook now, how easy it is to add Ram.

As for OS.. well Rainmaker is pretty set on Joli. It seems to have a cracking list of netbook support. Personally i'm using Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 which is absolutely fine. Not had a single issue with drivers in relation to this netbook and everything works immediately with no messing about. Ubuntu itself suffers from a few bugs here and there but the forum is ram packed with people to assist.

So.. it's up to you :) Joli does look nice and i'm going to give it a go once I have a PC rig to use as my daily PC instead of this Netbook!
 
my old eeepc 900 has been running ubuntu NBR for as long as it's existed and I've never had a problem. Fantastic combo.
 
I'm currently using ubuntu netbook remix 10.04 on my eee900, crunchbang is also really good. I'm going to have a go of installing Jolicloud now on the 4gb memory card I've got pugged into it :)
 
Running Meego on my EeePC 1000h at the moment. It's different, certainly interesting but still feels fairly beta-ish although it is supposed to be version 1.0. I quite like it though so I'm keeping it on there for the time being, I only really use it for browsing the net. It's worth a go for a bit of a play around but for your requirements I think Ubuntu NR is the way to go.
 
I tried Jolicloud for a while but found it almost too web-orientated to the extent that sometimes I just wanted an off-line app because the online solutions were like putting a square peg in a round hole.

Ubuntu 10.04 for the last few months though, it's awesome - runs absolutely flawlessly on my MSI Wind. Spend a bit of time setting up CairoDock properly, install Chrome and hide the panels and it's dead sexeh and so much more versatile than Jolicloud IMO.

Also, I got bored waiting for the 'wow' HTML5 interface on JC, it was demo-ed in March and barely a peep since.
 
@Rich L (or indeed anyone else running debain-based linux)

Are you using a power management application to control your netbook's battery life? The Atom in my netbook uses a lot of power if left on max, and the battery suffers by about 1.5hrs from what was a 7hr normal stint (so about 5.5hrs or less with wifi etc). There is an application called Jupiter that comes with eeebuntu (or Aurora as it's known now- new version soon looks very nice btw) that manages the processor frequency, can this be used on normal ubuntu anyone?

Not much linux experience with installing and customising, sorry. That CairoDock looks sweet though.
 
Just the default, I haven't really noticed as I either use it for short stints on the move so just open/shut the case or for prolonged periods it's normally plugged in - plus I bought the 9-cell battery (that sticks out the bottom lol) so get around 7hrs use from it - but as an example I always have brightness on 100%, bluetooth/wi-fi on etc as I don't really pay much attention to battery life. Sorry I can't be more helpful on that front!

Definitely recommend spending a bit of time with CairoDock though, I have things like office and internet apps opening up to a sub-dock and then the main Gnome menu at the bottom, it's a nifty app :)
 
Yeah, I will install the dock the next time I venture to linux, which depends if I can sort out the power management. I really liked Ubuntu NBR 10.04 when I used it.
 
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