I am a teacher and our school has some old netbooks. Currently they are running windows XP and because of the small disk space (2.2 GB) and many users on the network, the login times for students is unreal (>10 min). Other than this, they are fine.

All I need the computers for is word processing and internet access (with working USB ports), however I also need a login system to ensure students are accountable for their actions on the internet. They will be designing code using codebender, uploading to Arduino through USB, and typing reports.

I don't know much about Linux, but I seem to recall there being some incredibly small installations. I was thinking if we could get one going that still had the functionality mentioned above, the situation would be more bearable (no more class wasting login times). I just need a small installation that allows there to be an admin with ~30 users.

I just want to be able to open the netbook, have the student login and start working as fast as possible. Any thoughts? Thanks.

I would consider something like Debian with LXDE, or Lubuntu.

What's the brand, model number, and hardware specs (CPU, RAM, video chipset) of the netbooks in question, so we can recommend a compatible distro?

I'd be surprised to get Debian into 2.2GB. Might be do-able, but my initial Debian+XFCE install on this netbook was around 4GB -- I'm on 5.9GB now and I've not got an office suite installed.

ASUS eeepc 700 series. I will have to get the exact model tomorrow at school

Yeah, that occurred to me after I posted it. I don't really know Windows XP, but I'd be kinda shocked if it fit into 2.2GB!

Here is an entire forum dedicated to the eee 700 series: http://forum.eeeuser.com/index.php?/...al-discussion/

Lots of good information over there.

Disk space is very tight there.
How about this instead http://www.ltsp.org/.
This will give you ultimate control over the users as well.

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You may find following distros suitable for your purpose since they are really small sized:
http://www.slax.org/ (about 300mb only)
http://porteus.org/ (about 300mb only)
http://www.slitaz.org/en/ (gui is about 30mb only!)
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/ (core is only about 10mb)

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If you've got the 2GB SDD version, then the SDD drive is soldered in and very slow. Also the RAM is probably soldered in too, and the processor will be a Pentium M.

One solution may be
http://www.geteasypeasy.com/
It was designed for the eeepc, but I'm not sure that will fit on a 2GB drive.

AntiX will install in 1.2GB, run in 128MB, and works with a P2. It has been used with the eeepc:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Howto_articles

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@mishima: It will be good to know the progress.

I recommend Peppermint Linux. It will basically give you a Chromebook, but it's a Debian/Ubuntu derivative so it's easy to add a word processor other than the Google Docs one. For many of the small distros, you could even run from a CD or USB stick, with no need to actually install it on the machine, which is something to keep in mind.

PuppyLinux can be very useful to you. It can run directly from pendrive and you will not feel any glitch due to its light nature.If you need any help in installation then you can post here. Meanwhile you can check yourself at http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%...%20Started.htm.

Thanks for the ideas, I haven't been playing with the laptops much since they are so inconvenient. During the summer though I will definitely get an experiment going with one.

I like the pen-drive idea, but I was thinking that couldn't work due to the lack of logon. If the students do something crazy on the internet there needs to be a way to hold them accountable. I haven't messed with live distros in a while, but I don't remember them having such functions. Is it possible these days to create them in that way? Thanks again.

Mishima, what you need, and has already been pointed out to you, is to run the laptops as thin clients. There are a few distributions that will do this and some are even specifically setup to do this making the entire process much easier.

Edubuntu, a well known and usuable ditro with plenty of educational software.
SkoleLinux (also called DebianEdu), not so well know as Edubuntu but with basically the same software.

Basically you load the OS onto a server and the client machines, in your case the laptops, get everything they need from the server. "1 server to rule them all."