10 Solid Linux Distributions for Your Netbook
I’ve tried most of these in various incarnations and on other hardware than a netbook.
Excuse me while I take a second to bash this guy as a geek writer.
One word of caution: You can put any distribution on your netbook, but it’s not advised. Why? Because of the nature of the netbook, you need to avoid too many writes to the RAM drive and you don’t need a swap partition.
First off, that is just WRONG!!! A RAM drive is a drive that exists in RAM, you boob! If you are afraid of writing to RAM, I suggest you give me all your hardware and I will show you how to build fire, as that is about as technologically adapted as you are gonna get. Second, what he meant to say is “solid state drive”, which is basically flash memory like you have in your digital camera. This kind of thinking that flash drives can’t handle too many writes is pure bunk at this point. A SSD, even with a limited number of rewrites, will outlive a standard “moving parts” hard drive by 5 years…at least.
But, what this article does give me, even though it is older, is some additional OSs to test out.
I used eeebuntu and liked it. The maintainer, however, has fallen out with Ubuntu and is sick of fixing the stuff that they release broken out-of-the-box.
Fewt has expressed his exasperation that bugs exist in Ubuntu which hinder Eee users and although he has published work-around code and steps these continue to be perpetuated in each release.
The reason, he said, is because “Ubuntu sucks.”
“Instead of moving forward with every release, they have the uncanny ability to take Linux back in time by piling code that doesn’t work on top of more code that doesn’t work until they have turned their OS into a garbage salad.” He said.
“Maybe I should buy a copy of Windows 7,” he concludes.
Thems is some tough words! I just took a look at the eeebuntu website and, well, eeebuntu 3.0 is still the version available for download. That is based on Ubuntu 9.04, my friends. Long live eeebuntu! eeebuntu is dead.
OpenGeeeU looks interesting and might be worth some further investigation. But other than the Compiz bling, is there anything of substance under the hood? One can trick out a Fiat to look like a sports car, but it will never be a Lamborghini!
CrunchBang looks too “hobbiest” to me. And this disclaimer, while honest, does not instill confidence.
CrunchBang Linux is not recommended for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. CrunchBang Linux could possibly make your computer go CRUNCH! BANG! Therefore CrunchBang Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
How does an instable system work on the road, which is where a netbook is really to be used? Not well, my friends, not well.
I’ve tried using PuppyLinux in the past on old Wintel boxen to try and make them usable for more than door stops, but it is TOO striped down. Even the default (un)compression software is non-standard, which makes compiling drivers a nightmare. Hard to compile when when you can’t freaking uncompress the files needed! I love the idea of PuppyLinux more than I actually like its execution. That said, I would like to see A TON of work done to make smaller netbook distros made available on PuppyLinux. Small machine, small storage, small distro. What is there not to like? A lot.
Most of the rest of the list is for full-blown Linux distributions slightly modified for netbooks. Hey! What is #10? Fedora!!!!
Seriously, Fedora 12 has proven to be the best install on my eeePC 901 that I have run across yet. Sure, sure, I had to modify the partitions to put /usr out on the larger SSD (this actually crushed my eeebuntu install…/usr filled up so much that I ran out of room on the 4GB drive and nothing would work anymore!), but I do not really need 8GB for /home on a netbook. 😉 It is snappy, works with minimal fuss and does everything that I would expect a netbook to do (and a lot more). This brings me back to my praise of ChromeOS. Of all the installs I have tested so far, Google “gets” it. I want nothing stored locally. I do not expect my freaking 8″ netbook screen to be a whiz-bang of a graphics design platform. The whole point of a netbook is right there in the name: NET!!! Get me on the Internet ASAP. I’ll take care of everything else myself.