[Jim]

Have stuck win 7 on my little netbook but its just too slow so before I go back to win xp was thinking about trying some other OS's.
What's out there and how do I install it?
main uses are web browsing (with flash), email, streaming media etc...

Ta

[lagerstarfish]

I don't think there are any other OSs apart from Windows and whatever Apple use


 




 

[slackline]

Linux Mint is easy and straight-forward, and generally supports most hardware. As its a netbook, you'll either need to get a USB disc drive or install it from USB (getting the disc image on the USB depends on what your using on your desk top).  You have a choice of desktop environments, the netbook will likely struggle with the two big ones KDE and GNOME, but should be fine with Xfce, or LXDE.  Should get a choice of browsers (default likely Firefox), Thunderbird will be available too, as will flash players.  Most popular distributions are based on Debian/Ubuntu based so knowing your way round Synaptic Package manager is useful (just organises software into categories, but you can add different repositories of software if a program isn't available in the main repository, although this is probably unlikely).

You might be able to find a tailored Linux distro for the model of netbook.  What is it?  There have been quite a few for Asus Eeeeees.

Almost all distribution sites have documentation on how to install, but simply have two partitions, one for /root and one for /home as everything for user accounts is stored under the later whilst system files and programs go in the former.  You can optionally set up a swap partition which works similar to page file under Win.

[Jaspersharpe]

Odd that it can't cope with 7 as my (now relatively ancient) Toshiba netbook runs it fine. 

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Win7 Pro runs ok on my Atom. I downloaded Chrome OS but couldn't find a version that worked with this netbook.

Ages ago I dabbled with Jolicloud, seemed ok. Depends on what you want to do with it.

http://www.jolicloud.com/jolios

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Can't remember when I last logged into Jolicloud, must have been a while ago as it has shortcut to Google Wave 

[Paul B]

I seem to have misplaced my post...

I thought jolicloud was poor, like a dumbed down, cut down OS.

I've got Linux Mint on a bootable live-stick which I intend to update to cinamon (although the latter probably isn't best for a netbook). Its good, and if I didn't WANT to run Lightroom and Photoshop (instead of the alternatives) I'd be happy to run my main machine on it. If I get a research position, my work machine will be running some flavour of linux.

I'm a bit shocked you're having trouble running Win7, its on my Acer D150 and that is ancient now. Maybe try Tiny7 and see if its any better? If anything it has seemed better since I updated it from XP (which now feels clunky when I'm forced to use it).

[Jim]

netbook is asus 1000HE 1.6 atom cpu with upgraded ram to 2gig running win 7 ultimate fully tweaked for performance.
seems slow starting up and sometimes during use, xp seemed quicker. I might consider upgrading to an SSD if an OS change doesn't seem to do much.
Anything else worth upgrading/changing to speed things up?

[Jim]

Linux Mint is easy and straight-forward

knowing your way round Synaptic Package manager is useful (just organises software into categories, but you can add different repositories of software if a program isn't available in the main repository, although this is probably unlikely).

[Paul B]

Think of it as Linux Marketplace, click to download and install. Piss.

[Jim]

what did all the other stuff mean tho? which version to download?

[Paul B]

Have you got a pen drive kicking around? If so download this:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

and use it to further download a few different distributions. Use the software to put one onto the drive (it just mounts the image), boot into it, if you like it great, install it. If you don't try another.

I don't know what he was on about with repositories. What he was on about above is the fact that within each distro you can pick which "desktop type" to have. One of them (Gnome 3) is a bit different to how it used to be and people don't like it. Cinnamon is an alternative to it and so are the others slackers listed, the last few are lighter so should tax your netbook less.

[slackline]

Linux Mint is easy and straight-forward

knowing your way round Synaptic Package manager is useful (just organises software into categories, but you can add different repositories of software if a program isn't available in the main repository, although this is probably unlikely).

Synaptic Homepage (it will be pre-installed).

Synaptic HowTo

I don't know what he was on about with repositories.

My point about repositories is that not every single program that is available for GNU/Linux is in the main repository that Synaptics is configured to use by default.  Thus you may come across a program you want to use but its not in the default repository, but it may be available elsewhere.  Its explained in greater detail in the article linked from the above HowTo.... Repositories.  In all likelihood you won't need them as by the sounds of it you don't want to do anything fancy, but I thought it worth mentioning because its a fairly fundamental part of using such OS's.

E.g. I recall setting up a friends Asus Eeee several years ago that the Wifi drivers were not in the main repository but were available in a third-party one (not an issue now as in subsequent updates the driver had been added to the main repository).

what did all the other stuff mean tho? which version to download?

This.  Or in light of the model you have, perhaps a dedicated distro for Asus (Eeebuntu 3.0 perhaps).

I wouldn't bother with Gentoo on Asus Eee PC 1000HE or ArchLinux on Asus Eee PC 1000HE, probably too involved.  http://www.google.co.uk/linux might be useful, as will some forums, e.g. http://www.linuxquestions.org/ is pretty n00b friendly, but also look for forums for whichever distribution you choose to install.  Most people are very helpful, but will ask for details (often output from terminal) when something "isn't working".

Good luck.

[tomtom]

Tried w8? I've the beta running on an old laptop and it's pretty snappy... It's still free to dl.

[slackline]

Another option is OSX for your netbook (under the hood its based on the *NIX distribution BSD, but with bells & whistles on the desktop, although I'd imagine there aren't that many of them given the limited processing power of netbooks).  The Asus Eee PC 1000 series appear to be fully supported.

[Johnny Brown]

I can't believe Jim has missed the Windows 8 trick. Gotta be worth a try before the penguin. Does its beak represent the command prompt?

[Jim]

to be honest, I don't really care what I go to as long as its useable and fast. I'll give w8 a try just out of curiosity but I can't see it being any quicker than 7.

[Johnny Brown]

Its designed to run well on tablets innit? Can't be much faster than a netbook.

[Paul B]

The Asus Eee PC 1000 series appear to be fully supported.

So too is my Aspire one D150 although the guides are lacking. A youtube video showing it working isn't really helpful to anybody!

[Jim]

Out of interest does any body have or know of any stats comparing OS speeds?

[slackline]

Out of interest does any body have or know of any stats comparing OS speeds?

Depends what you want to benchmark (boot times, I/O, floating point computations, graphics benchmarks in FPS).  Things like I/O will depend heavily on the file system and there's a wealth of options under Linux (ext2/3/4,  JFS, reiserfs and then specifying the block size too etc. etc.).

A quick  threw up Eee user OS Benchmarks but its very sparsely populated (i.e. worthless), but there may be other things out there but I don't know of it off the top of my head.  This is another but its not netbook specific (and is from a Linux site, a M$ site might return different results).

If you're angling on comparing different Linux distros I'd start by seeing if distributions are derived from one another (e.g. Ubuntu is based on Debian, whilst Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu).  This matters because if they've used the same kernel then you won't see masses of difference, but if there is a netbook specific version with a percompiled kernel specific to the model of the netbook you are installing in then thats likely to see improvements.

[Paul B]

Which did you settle for Jim?

My netbook is on its last legs and I thought taking Win7 off it and putting a clean linux distro might help prolong the remainder of its life; it's definitely slower running Ubuntu (with the cinnamon desktop but that didn't make a difference) than Win7. The install was a breeze in comparison with doing the same a few years ago.

I've since searched and found an article "Top 10 Linux Distros", Jollicloud is recommended for netbook and looks to have come on leaps and bounds since my last install.

[Jim]

I haven't got round to it yet tbh.
Be interested to hear how you got on

[Paul B]

I haven't got round to it yet tbh.
Be interested to hear how you got on

well, I faffed around with various desktops and found Gnome classic to not only be my favourite but also the fastest BUT Ubuntu in general is just falling short of the mark.

One of the biggest issues I've got is that if you shut the laptop screen you'll need to restart it on resume as the screen just flashes on and off. I've googled this, its a problem but there are currently no working solutions. I REALLY want to like it, maybe if I revisit it in another 5 years it'll have come on as far as in the last five.

I had to ditch Firefox too as FB was very slow, Chromium has however impressed me.