Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Released Today!!

Yeah it shouldn't be a major problem for you to switch over, once you've found the DE that clicks for you I'd advise moving onto a slightly more in depth distribution like arch, it's very rewarding (and you can set your performance bar pretty much where you want it to be).

I may well do that. Given that I'm dual booting this netbook with Windows 7, is removing Ubuntu and installing something else easy and clean? I'd like to try a few different versions, but not if it's going to be a nightmare to do each time because I'm dual booting...
 
I may well do that. Given that I'm dual booting this netbook with Windows 7, is removing Ubuntu and installing something else easy and clean? I'd like to try a few different versions, but not if it's going to be a nightmare to do each time because I'm dual booting...

It's about as simple as you could hope for. A common problem newbies to linux come across is nuking their linux partitions and then just trying to boot windows normally, only to be presented with a grub error, not realising the bootloader windows has chucked on was overwritten.

Grub is pretty much the de-facto bootloader for gnu/linux and it normally stores its configuration files in either a boot partition of its own or under the root fs @ /boot/grub. What happens is your mobo POSTs, hands control to grub, grub looks for its configuration files and because the linux partition has been nuked, can't find them and spits out an error that scares newbies.

Installing another linux distro is completely down to the distribution, but I would advise overwriting a distro with another distro while you're learning linux to avoid the aforementioned problem. Arch Linux has a very thorough wiki with a very good beginners guide that will hold your hand through each step of getting your distribution set up, it'll probably take a few hours the first time you install it but you'll come out at the end feeling like you just learned a whole lot.

Oh, and if you ever do nuke your partitions and can't boot due to grub 17, 'fixing' it is as simple as booting your win7 install media, going into repair mode, clicking command prompt and then typing:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
 
Arch rather than Mint? What's easy to use and quick atm, and not too daunting for a newbie?
 
Arch rather than Mint? What's easy to use and quick atm, and not too daunting for a newbie?

I wouldn't really call mint a step up in difficulty from ubuntu but if it's just some distro hopping you want to do, feel free to play with mint:D
 
Personally If your dabbling in Linux and want to keep disto hopping, do what I did.

Windows Hard drive
Linux Hard drive

When you install your OS, disconnect your Windows HDD so its not even recognised. Then install away and faff to your hearts content. When your done, plug the windows one back in.

You can then choose beetween the 2 using "Boot from.." (F2 for example). That way your Windows drive never is affected.
 
Personally If your dabbling in Linux and want to keep disto hopping, do what I did.

Windows Hard drive
Linux Hard drive

When you install your OS, disconnect your Windows HDD so its not even recognised. Then install away and faff to your hearts content. When your done, plug the windows one back in.

You can then choose beetween the 2 using "Boot from.." (F2 for example). That way your Windows drive never is affected.

Love to... but it's a netbook - single HD!
 
I don't like unity, it feels sluggish and limiting, nothing is where you want it or behaves the way you want, classic style desktops are that way for a reason, they need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel.


What's the quickest and nicest desktop out of this lot?

GNOME: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
KDE: sudo apt-get install? kubuntu-desktop
XFCE: sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
LXDE: sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop
UNITY: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook

Trying out a few myself at the moment. Not really happy with Unity desktop. If you want to retain that 11.10 feel switch to Gnome and install Gnome-tweaks as well and it gives you that extra level of desktop customisation. Also like the XFCE desktop... clean and simple :)

Arch rather than Mint? What's easy to use and quick atm, and not too daunting for a newbie?


A little more info on Netbook choices here. Even the latest netbooks are a little lacking in resources :)

http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/best-linux-distros-for-netbooks-936020
 
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