Hiya,

I've been a Linux user for many years. My first attempt was with Red Hat back in 1996. More recently (since about 2005ish) I've been a Ubuntu convert.

I bought an Acer Aspire One about 18 months ago, and although I purchased the Linux version, much to my own disgust, I hate using it. I did quite a few modifications to make it pretty, but its fundamentally crippled and drives me nuts. Its time for a total make-over, I'm afraid.

What has brought me here is the desire to find the perfect little Linux distro for me that lets me use my AAO the way I want to use it. What I want is to use it as a netbook mostly - IMing; Facebook; catching up with web comics; and generally messing about on the net - using software I actually like and that just works. I also hope to move a lot of my MUD coding over to the netbook too - purely because I'm lazy; my MUD works perfectly on Linux; and potentially I can always have the AAO with me. I'd have no excuse not to do it!

I have one major bug-bear though. Default IM clients that don't do ICQ. Not being able to easily get Pidgin installed due to libpurple issues? Insanity. This issue really ticked me off with the default AAO distro to the point that I don't want to look at any further band-aid solutions - I stopped even trying about a 12 months ago. A netbook with crap IM software as a default? Really?? What's the point?

I could utilise my AAO, but I just can't bring myself to get past any more irritating issues with ugly hacks. I want a real, workable Linux distro that doesn't kill the SSD. I've done a bit of research on my own with live USB's on the AAO and have ruled out lots of stuff that looked good on the surface. There are so many distros though - and yes, I've seen the thread of the distros here. I'm not interested in a list of distros that are supposed to work. What I'm hoping for now is a non-denominational opinion on what Linux distros work best for an AAO based on experience, and can they be customised, they use a standard repository, etc. I'm leaning towards ZenWalk at the moment, but am open to persuasion.

Anyhow, that's what I'm looking for from this forum and that's why I registered. For reference, I spend a lot more time lurking than posting. I really do appreciate any help given and do post when I have something helpful to contribute.

Welcome to LQ.