Help! Need Lightweight Netbook Distro - opinions?

[TBSN]

My girlfriend's netbook, a Toshiba NB305, has gotten itself some horrible trojans/viri. It's solvable, but I convinced her that it might be easier to just go with linux, especially on a less-powerful computer. She tuned the geek stuff out of course but relented.

I was going to go with Ubuntu because I absolutely love the new version, but I think I might be better off with a lighter distro. I looked at the Ubuntu Netbook edition, but isn't it just ubuntu with a couple of aesthetic tweaks? Here's what I am looking at--

-Ubuntu netbook ed.
-Xubuntu
-Crunchbang

I want something that's similar to Ubuntu, in that easy to use, relatively attractive out of the box (although most are now) and it's sorta install and you're good to go. I don't want to spend a week tweaking it. Any advice?

By the way, this toshiba NB305 is a total P.O.S. Avoid.

 

[lxskllr]

I use regular Ubuntu on my machine, and I'm happy with the performance. Ubuntu has a nice feature set, and it far outweighs the minor performance hit of running the full Gnome desktop. Puppy is a nice lightweight distro, but try Ubuntu first, you may be pleasantly surprised. Installing Opera or Chrome might be better for a web browser. I still use Firefox, but it's noticeable slower than the other 2.

 

[Lithium381]

my wife did the same thing.....i'm still trying to explain that she doens't need "free screen savers"or "free ring tones" ...... ended up booting from a Fedora live-CD, copying off all her data/pictures and stuff, then installing from the CD..... going fine so far, she's running a 1ghz w/ 512 RAM and its fast enough for the internet and even HULU

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Puppy Linux and Macpup are designed for Netbooks. Compared to Ubuntu Netbook Edition, they are all great, so it's a matter of personal preference. Give them all a try and see which you (she) likes best.

 

[Satyrist]

What about Peppermint?

Sure, it's *buntu based. It appears to have been designed with netbooks in mind, however...And sounds faster, from what I have heard.

 

[Bateluer]

Easy Peasy?

Sticking with a 'big' distro might be safer, wider selection of applications and stuff working out of the box. Less you'll have to do for support.

 

[electroju]

You will be spending a few months tweaking it. Linux is not design well for notebooks. It is still not design well for desktops. It is a server only operating system. Flash in Linux uses only the CPU. Sure the graphics might use OpenGL, but the processor have to convert vector graphics into OpenGL. Connecting to WiFi networks is not going to be easy for your girl friend because there will be times that she have to use the command line utilities to force the WiFi card to connect to a network and get an IP address. Another problem is stand-by will not work well in Linux.

Any distribution will work. Use the distribution you are the most familiar, but do not expect everything to work after it is installed. You will have to go through the endless process of tweaking.

You could suggest Archos 101 or Samsung Galaxy Tad. These uses Android which is basically a heavily patched of Linux for mobile devices. These two are not pieces of crap compared to netbooks. The Blackberry PlayBook is good too but it uses QNX as its operating system.

 

[TBSN]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I use regular Ubuntu on my machine, and I'm happy with the performance. Ubuntu has a nice feature set, and it far outweighs the minor performance hit of running the full Gnome desktop. Puppy is a nice lightweight distro, but try Ubuntu first, you may be pleasantly surprised. Installing Opera or Chrome might be better for a web browser. I still use Firefox, but it's noticeable slower than the other 2.

I think I may just go this route. Ubuntu just impressed me so much on my laptop, and Win7 runs well enough on the netbook.

You will be spending a few months tweaking it. Linux is not design well for notebooks. It is still not design well for desktops. It is a server only operating system. Flash in Linux uses only the CPU. Sure the graphics might use OpenGL, but the processor have to convert vector graphics into OpenGL. Connecting to WiFi networks is not going to be easy for your girl friend because there will be times that she have to use the command line utilities to force the WiFi card to connect to a network and get an IP address. Another problem is stand-by will not work well in Linux.

Any distribution will work. Use the distribution you are the most familiar, but do not expect everything to work after it is installed. You will have to go through the endless process of tweaking.

You could suggest Archos 101 or Samsung Galaxy Tad. These uses Android which is basically a heavily patched of Linux for mobile devices. These two are not pieces of crap compared to netbooks. The Blackberry PlayBook is good too but it uses QNX as its operating system.

It may take a little more work, but from my recent experience Linux has been easy as pie. The reason I suggested Linux on her netbook was because how easy it's been for me on my laptop. I installed, then I was done. Flash worked. Wifi worked. System function keys worked. Suspend and hibernate worked, as did their system keys. The webcam worked. The trackpad worked as did the thinkpad nub-pointer-thingy (whatever you call that... I've always just called it the clit ) I'm not an expert and I know there are a lot of problems with some hardware, but for me, it's just blown me away.

 

[thedarkwolf]

Try several and see what works best. Its not like it takes a long time to reinstall them.

I'd run xubuntu just for the lighter weight destop if I was going with ubuntu. I went with Mint for my current install.

 

[electroju]

It may take a little more work, but from my recent experience Linux has been easy as pie. The reason I suggested Linux on her netbook was because how easy it's been for me on my laptop. I installed, then I was done. Flash worked. Wifi worked. System function keys worked. Suspend and hibernate worked, as did their system keys. The webcam worked. The trackpad worked as did the thinkpad nub-pointer-thingy (whatever you call that... I've always just called it the clit ) I'm not an expert and I know there are a lot of problems with some hardware, but for me, it's just blown me away.

May work for your notebook computer, but on others it will not work well. My notebook computer only work once for suspend. The second I put it in sleep mode, it does not wake up.

 

[Iron Woode]

here is a light weight distro:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=188

its designed for netbooks and old PC's.

 

[v-600]

If you've not already installed Ubuntu, you could do worse than to look into Meego (or Moblin). Depending on what you want to use the netbook for they may be perfect. Meego booted on my AA1 in 16 seconds to wifi connected. It has the chrome browser and banshee media player. You can also use various chat protocols. Moblin is similar but is more tightly integrated with browser and media player, at the expense of some stability and features (it too booted in under 20 seconds).

My AA1 has also had PCLOS (MiniMe, regular gnome, and enlightenment), EasyPeasy, Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 (both desktop and UNR/UNE versions), OpenSUSE 11.3 with KDE (netbook workspace), DSL, Puppy Linux, Linux mint 9 and currently LMDE.

At one point it even had Linpus Lite on it

I even experimented with creating my own ChromeOS using a minimal Ubuntu Server installation and using Chrome for everything from word processing to media playing.

From experience I would say that if you want to use your netbook as a replacement laptop then Linux Mint with a regular desktop is probably the best. If however the main use for the netbook is web browsing, Meego is an excellent distro.

 

[TBSN]

Well the experiment was a total failure. My girlfriend isn't exactly willing to learn new things concerning technology. I installed Xubuntu which seemed to be perfect. She tried out AbiWord then got really pissed when it lost her notes somehow. Of course I can't quite get her to tell me how it happened. I tried to tell her how to install open office but she just got angry that "it's too complicated" and she wants windows that "just works." She also can't seem to find her files even though I explained how to find them and save them in the easily understood Home directory.

Honestly, I don't blame her. She's in lawschool and the last thing she wants to do is learn a new operating system (even if all she would need to learn is extremely basic stuff). I also didn't do a good enough job making sure she understood how to do things on her own. If I could only install Windows 7 that doesn't have a totally f*&ked OEM install.

 

[lxskllr]

That's too bad. I guess everyone isn't like us. I was enthralled the first time I loaded Linux. "It's Windows, but it isn't Windows!" :^D I couldn't use it for a long time due to dialup support, but now there isn't much standing in my way. Last night I was looking for a manual online, and a link I clicked tried loading some malware. A shame none of that stuff runs in Linux, eh? :^)

 

[v-600]

I am not too sure about windows licences (it's never been something I've needed to research) but if you have the licence key on the machine, can you use a retail copy of Win7 and install that with a USB DVD drive?

 

[jae]

Linux Mint Fluxbox? I have it on my old Celeron desktop. How is going to the Software Manager, finding OpenOffice and clicking install complicated??? Replace the folders with symlinks to the My Documents on the Windows partition.

 

[TBSN]

That's too bad. I guess everyone isn't like us. I was enthralled the first time I loaded Linux. "It's Windows, but it isn't Windows!" :^D I couldn't use it for a long time due to dialup support, but now there isn't much standing in my way. Last night I was looking for a manual online, and a link I clicked tried loading some malware. A shame none of that stuff runs in Linux, eh? :^)

Yeah it's hard for me to wrap my head around... Someone who's not totally excited to see a new and in some ways better OS

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Puppy Linux and Macpup are designed for Netbooks. Compared to Ubuntu Netbook Edition, they are all great, so it's a matter of personal preference. Give them all a try and see which you (she) likes best.

Puppy is awesome, can't say much for macpup but i dislike it because it has a stupid name.

I have very little love for Ubuntu so i won't tell you my opinion of that, but another choice could be Arch Linux, you'll get the base system and on top of that, it's easy to install whatever you like via Pacman, you can design it down to every single package (which sounds interesting but will bore the living daylights out of you if you try it) or you can install meta packages and some or other apps on top of that.

Puppy for install - go, Arch for tinkering once and then updating until it's time to scrap the netbook.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

That's too bad. I guess everyone isn't like us. I was enthralled the first time I loaded Linux. "It's Windows, but it isn't Windows!" :^D I couldn't use it for a long time due to dialup support, but now there isn't much standing in my way. Last night I was looking for a manual online, and a link I clicked tried loading some malware. A shame none of that stuff runs in Linux, eh? :^)

Heh, first time i saw Linux i thought, "It's Unix, but it isn't Unix"...

That was back in the mid 90's and i was real exceited since Unix cost a great deal of money to buy and i could just run Linux instead.

 

[donallen]

Puppy is awesome, can't say much for macpup but i dislike it because it has a stupid name.

I have very little love for Ubuntu so i won't tell you my opinion of that, but another choice could be Arch Linux, you'll get the base system and on top of that, it's easy to install whatever you like via Pacman, you can design it down to every single package (which sounds interesting but will bore the living daylights out of you if you try it) or you can install meta packages and some or other apps on top of that.

Puppy for install - go, Arch for tinkering once and then updating until it's time to scrap the netbook.

Arch is nicely done, but in my opinion, it has a fatal flaw -- the rolling release idea. Every day, new stuff gets released, which means it's impossible to test each new configuration of the whole system, the way Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, OpenBSD, etc. get tested prior to release. The result is that every now and then, an update will blow up your system, at which point you either learn how to use the rescue CD, chroot, and hopefully figure out what did you in, or you restore from backups if you have them, or you reinstall. Or you move on to a different distro, which I did (Slackware; marvelous if you are a computer jock, not an option otherwise).

 

[TBSN]

I played with Arch a while ago. Too difficult for me. It's great for some people but not for the layman. It took me hours just to install it because I couldn't get it to connect to the internet (for a netinstall)

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

I played with Arch a while ago. Too difficult for me. It's great for some people but not for the layman. It took me hours just to install it because I couldn't get it to connect to the internet (for a netinstall)

Unless you have wierd hardware that should work automatically, after that you just install metas to get the work done, a printout of the wiki section would help immensly if you don't have a second computer to read it while you are installing.

I'm not kidding when i say that it's the best wiki out there, it's even better than the FreeBSD handbook and that says A LOT.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Arch is nicely done, but in my opinion, it has a fatal flaw -- the rolling release idea. Every day, new stuff gets released, which means it's impossible to test each new configuration of the whole system, the way Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, OpenBSD, etc. get tested prior to release. The result is that every now and then, an update will blow up your system, at which point you either learn how to use the rescue CD, chroot, and hopefully figure out what did you in, or you restore from backups if you have them, or you reinstall. Or you move on to a different distro, which I did (Slackware; marvelous if you are a computer jock, not an option otherwise).

And yet after several years, updating about once a week and reading the homepage for eventual problems with my hardware i have had no problems with it while Ubuntu craps out after every single version upgrade, so bad that it requires a complete reinstall.

Debian can be run as a rolling release too, i believe Nothingman does that and he's probably looking at the updates before he updates too, only a fool would not do that, even in windows.

The only thing in Arch that has done ANYTHING to any system is the xorg updates that have made users of older hardware having to use the VESA driver, there is not ONE update that have actually blown up a system.

If you look at their homepage and they tell you that this version of xorg isn't compatible with any older Nvidia drivers then naturally you hold that update. Testing is another story, it's generally what unstable used to be.

 

[SickBeast]

Peppermint Ice is the fastest "lite" distro that I have used. It boots up in under 10 seconds and consumes less than 100mb of ram.

Lubuntu 10.10 is also very nice. I prefer its visual theme to that of Peppermint, but it's not as fast and it doesn't have cloud apps bundled.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Peppermint Ice is the fastest "lite" distro that I have used. It boots up in under 10 seconds and consumes less than 100mb of ram.

Lubuntu 10.10 is also very nice. I prefer its visual theme to that of Peppermint, but it's not as fast and it doesn't have cloud apps bundled.

Puppy is way better than either alternative and not as restricted, you should try it SickBeast, i think you might like it.

However, arch is still my favourite on this and everything else, i run it almost always with KDE but that's just me, you can run it with LXDE via a meta installation "pacman -S LXDE" and it will be tiny, there is a lot of text on every WM though and if you have the space on your HDD, by all means install Fluxbox and Openbox too, after that, install whatever you can fit on your machine and use it accordingly.