Which OS for a netbook?

[abhiroopb]

After a long hiatus I have decided to once again start posting on UbuntuForums!

I have been happily using Windows 7 for the last 2 months on my custom built desktop. Prior to that I was a long time Ubuntu user. However, I had more recently become disillusioned by some of the choices that Canonical was forcing down my throat (looking at you Pulse Audio). Anyway I decided to at least give Windows 7 a try and it worked so well for my needs that I decided to stick with it.

Since I bought a desktop I recently (Friday) decided that I needed a (very) cheap netbook for travel purposes. Hence I decided to sell my old HP Laptop and purchase a shiny Axioo Pico DJV netbook. This is an OEM of MSI Wind, so it is similar to the MSI Wind netbook, although I am unsure which one it is most similar to.

This netbook came pre-installed with Windows 7 Starter and for the most part using it over the weekend has been an absolute pleasure. I found a handy Microsoft app called “synctoy” that makes syncing my netbook and desktop really easy.

The reason I am posting is because I want to know what other (perhaps better) OS options there are for my netbook.

Firstly, Windows 7 recently won a lifehacker “Hive Five” contest for best OS for a netbook. This is what has kept me using the default OS and not immediately installing something else.

Essentially, what I am looking for is speed during boot and using applications, however I DO NOT want to use Ubuntu simply because it caused too many headaches right before I switched. The main problem was 100% CPU usage while using Skype which I was unable to solve even with the newer Skype. It may be a hardware issue (i.e. my old laptop having a problem), but I did have other issues and I’d rather not use the stock Ubuntu.

The best options right now appear to be Jolicloud and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The reason I say UNR is because while I did say I don’t want to try Ubuntu, UNR may be light enough that the other problems may be negated by the speed boost.

Anyway, I’d like your thoughts on which OS is best for speed, general compatibility with my netbook, good range of applications, good battery life and quite importantly the ability to sync about 150GB of data between my desktop and the netbook (NB: because the amount of data is so big using Dropbox is out of the question, something similar to Microsoft Synctoy would be ideal).

[NightwishFan]

Give Ubuntu or Debian Testing a go. Ubuntu Netbook Remix I have not known to be lighter, just optimized for small screens and efficiency. Something like Puppy couldn't hurt, though it has less software available for it.

[P1umb3r]

On my Asus eee 1001p I'm using Ubuntu 9.10. I tried UNR at first but didn't like the netbook interface. After that I tried crunchbang, which I would have kept for the speed except the screen brightness was screwed up. I have had no problems with Ubuntu on my netbook except that I had to resort to ndiswrapper to get my wireless working.

[abhiroopb]

Give Ubuntu or Debian Testing a go. Ubuntu Netbook Remix I have not known to be lighter, just optimized for small screens and efficiency. Something like Puppy couldn't hurt, though it has less software available for it.

Debian Testing? I tried Puppy a while back on my original laptop and besides the UI not being very pleasant it was a headache to find apps for. My "can't-live-without" apps include skype which means a debian or fedora based OS is the best option.

On my Asus eee 1001p I'm using Ubuntu 9.10. I tried UNR at first but didn't like the netbook interface. After that I tried crunchbang, which I would have kept for the speed except the screen brightness was screwed up. I have had no problems with Ubuntu on my netbook except that I had to resort to ndiswrapper to get my wireless working.

Generally speaking I don't want to go through the use XYZ to make ABC work. I used ubuntu for about 4 years prior to switching to Windows 7 and generally speaking I was happy enough getting things to work and looking for fixes, but on a netbook which should be "slick" I don't really want to hunt around for patches. That is why I was looking at Jolicloud which seems to have a huge set of netbooks that are compatible (out of the box) with it.

In any case I think I'll wait for 10.04 at least before making up my mind.

[the yawner]

Perhaps Lubuntu once 10.04's out?

[dragos240]

I would say any distro. Netbook remixes are not necessary if you have a decent size screen.

[pmlxuser]

if your netbook has that dreaded intel GMA 500 graphic, life suck in linux, i can't enjoy ubuntu 10.04 as of now coz a hack for the driver not yet avaailable. else if not then ubuntu rocks.

[abhiroopb]

Perhaps Lubuntu once 10.04's out?

Looks interesting but how is LXDE or whatever it is called? I don't think I really need something "lightweight" as ubuntu is already a relatively "light OS". What I am looking for is more ease of use as a netbook. Obviously booting speed and application startup speeds are other important factors.

I would say any distro. Netbook remixes are not necessary if you have a decent size screen.

It's 1024x600 (pretty standard for a netbook) and screen is 10.1. But, you are right it isn't as though I have to scroll a lot. I've just put some of my most frequently used items as icons on my desktop (something which i hate doing, but it seems to be the easiest thing to do on a netbook) and start them that way. I don't need a built in twitter application as there are so many available ones!

if your netbook has that dreaded intel GMA 500 graphic, life suck in linux, i can't enjoy ubuntu 10.04 as of now coz a hack for the driver not yet avaailable. else if not then ubuntu rocks.

Intel GMA 950 Integrated fortunately!

On a slightly unrelated note...I use Tweetdeck on my desktop but noted it takes up almost 100mb of RAM. This is fine on my 6GB RAM desktop but not on my 1GB RAM netbook. The reason I like Tweetdeck is the ability to show columns side by side. The only other one that seems to do this is Seesmic but that has an unnecessary column on the left which takes up about a third of my screen. I am looking for something like TweetDeck with a lower memory footprint.

[the yawner]

Looks interesting but how is LXDE or whatever it is called? I don't think I really need something "lightweight" as ubuntu is already a relatively "light OS". What I am looking for is more ease of use as a netbook. Obviously booting speed and application startup speeds are other important factors.

I haven't tested it myself, but reportedly it is far more lightweight that Xubuntu, so that says something. Me, I actually have Moblin 2.1 as my secondary OS on my netbook. But I now use it sparingly.

I guess I'll be awaiting for Meego.

[rottentree]

I think I would wait for Eeebuntu 4.0 to go final (which will get a name change one day because it's debian based now) at least that's what I'm doing.

Oh and I always wanted to ask this: besides 'it works' why do people like win7 on a netbook so much?