best current distro for netbooks
 

hi guys,

been using zorin 8 and although im impressed with its look etc...after installing software its gotten a bit slow...and some system settings shortcuts and other shortcuts dont work....what in your opinion is the best distro to use on a netbook? i want it to be zippy yet have good functionality...a fine balance..any info on your experience appreciated

Hi there,

there is no "best", or rather: what's best always depends on what you expect.

With "netbook" (I hate the term) you're probably referring to a small notebook that usually comes without DVD drive and often with a limited display resolution. Actually, I'm using such a device when I'm out, and I came to the conclusion that it's best to use some standard distro with it. I'm happy with Linux Mint 13 "Maya" using the MATE desktop on my little one. The display resolution of only 1024x600 is okay most of the time, and when I'm using the unit at home, I have a 1280x1024 monitor attached as a secondary display.

Despite their size and lack of certain hardware components, these small units are still full-flegded PCs, so there's no need to use some crippled system with them. I remember that I briefly tried the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but purged it after some days of trying in favor of a regular, grown-up distro.

[X] Doc CPU

Hello sninja,
My experience is the same as Doc CPUs. I have an Acer Aspire that I have run standard Mint 13 on the machine and am currently using the standard Fedora distribution on it. Both have worked flawlessly. The one thing I did opt to do was max out the RAM on the netbook. That may be something to consider. I would venture to guess that most distributions will work fine though you may try the live usb versions prior to installing.

Regards

Any established general-purpose distro should be just fine.

The most important variable is the desktop environment/window manager. Using the lightest one you can is the best way to get maximum performance. I lean towards Fluxbox, which is a window manager. LXDE is also excellent for lightweight resource use.

I'm using an EEE PC 1000 to type this. Applications are a little slow to open but other than that it's working well. My distribution of choice at present (and for a while) is Debian using XFCE as the desktop environment. I've used Mint on this before, again with XFCE, and it was fine but I prefer plain Debian as I feel I have a little more control.
In my experience the desktop environment or window manager tends to be the main thing that effects the speed of the install.

I am currently using Bodhi 2.2 (or 2.4?) on a Toshiba NB200 netbook and it runs circles around the Windows 7 that was originally installed on it.
It is not as well known/supported as Mint (Xfce) or Ubuntu, but I like that it did not install a ton of unnecessary stuff.
For this computer sleep, hibernate, and battery monitoring work.
There is still some minor quirks but I can live with them.

What is your h/w specs (make, model, ram, cpu, etc)?

Hi roy its an atom 1.6...i upgraded the ram to 2gb and the hard drive from 160gb to 500gb...thanks for all the replies.

Installed and running Debian wheezy...running like a dream...very happy