I've been trying to get a Linux netbook. I've had to settle for a windoze job, as ever.

Rather than get involved in the Starter nonsense that is on the machine, can I do the sensible thing, and simply make a change to Linux, please, Wise People?
Many thanks
paul

I don't know any about "Starter" thingy so I can't comment on the nonsense associated with it. I tend to get laptops from Samsung which are (a) cheap (b) come only with Freedos installed and (c) have good specs. Assuming you already have your netbook just burn a linux CD and install the thing. You can try a few liveCD's if you like and pick one that suits you. Go to Distrowatch and choose your poison and then have fun. If your netbook came with any OS already installed, you can get rid of it when you install the linux distro of your choice.
jdk

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Make Windows recovery disks/USB/DVD FIRST.

Then you should be able to boot and install your chosen flavour of linux. Probably ubuntu would be a start point as ubuntu generally has better driver support for the newest hardware. If your netbook is brand new then you may have problems and have to hunt for specific drivers for linux.

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Many thanks, JDK. Allow me to tell you about the Starter 'deal'. I've had Windows since it began, so I have seen the numbing price jumps since, and now we are at the stage that the 'licence' is only available for one machine. So if you use a PC, and laptop, and a netbook (to work while travelling thanks to the reduced space on airlines), then buying an overpriced product becomes enormous. Recently along came the 'starter' idea. You buy a new machine but it doesn't have the full OS. And until you buy the full version you get, Word, for example, only on a reduced width of the screen. And you get adverts. Well, the ads are tolerable, but a restricted width on a netbook is simply impossible.

Replacing a netbook has become very expensive as buying the machine is now only part of the cost.

And anyway, the spirit of Linux resembled the original spirit of the internet. It was to help us all, world wide, not to rip off the world. And Linux is excellent.

Sorry, JDK, to go on, but now you know about the 'Windows 7 Starter' trick. I've been wanting to move over to Linux for years and years. Now I am determined to do it.

Thanks very much for the advice. Will follow that through. I notice that Ubuntu wins a lot of praise - though there are people who have found it difficult. I wonder if there is a distribution that wins top honours?

Thanks very much, TenTenths, for your good advice. I made the mistake of not backing-up when I 'upgraded' my PC to windows 8. It simply killed the PC. Eventually I had to replace it - but not with 8, I hasten to say. So, yes, will do that backup. And thanks, too, for your thoughts on ubuntu.

The netbook is an Asus 1025, last summer's model. (It has the 'starter' OS trick.)

Have a look at www.distrowatch.com for a list of distros.
You might want to check eg Mint as an alternative.

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Thanks very much, Chris. Will do.

I bought the Windows 7 Home & Student upgrade for a relatively acceptable price, it allows you to upgrade 3 machines (I think it was) to Windows 7 Home, was fine for upgrading my wife's aging Compaq laptop and an older tower we had sitting around. Same goes for Office, unless you NEED cutting edge then the 2007 Home/Student license deal was fine.

[Flameproof Suit]
Personally I think Windows 7 does an excellent job of being an "end-user" operating system (let's not talk about Windows 8!) I've tried using ubuntu as an O/S on a laptop and while the hardware support was there I just didn't get on with it due to having to mess around with various compatibility tools for documents as the majority of people I was communicating with were on Win/Office.
[/Flameproof Suit]

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Thanks, TenTenths, and all noted. Yes, no complaints about 7. Of course, it could be said that after Vista, anything had to be good. XP became an excellent OS after a while. Did you ever try Windows 95? What an experience that became for the very many of us who 'upgraded' on the day it was released. 8 introduced one-machine-one-licence, but it's the way with dreamweaver cs6 and photoshop now, too.

Thanks for the warning about ubuntu on a laptop.

I've used every version of Windows from 2 upwards
I even have DOS 6.22 / Windows For Workgroups (3.11) running as a VM on my work PC.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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It can sometimes be difficult for Windows users to "cut the cord" and move on to Linux. Especially if they set up a dual-boot system. I recommend installing Linux as the only OS on a computer so you are somewhat forced to learn how to use it rather than trivially revert back to Windows. After only a short time, where you figure out the differences between Linux and Windows, I'll bet you won't want to go back to Windows. But a dual-boot system makes it too easy to backslide IMHO. Since you have multiple computers, you're in a good place to pick one of them as "Linux only". People with only one computer are more in need of a dual-boot system to start out. You don't want a lack of experience with Linux (which evaporates very quickly as you learn) to cause you to revert back to Windows, just to remain productive. You want a fallback plan, but not a plan that is so easy that you'll end up using it so frequently that you never learn Linux.

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All noted, haertig, and thanks very much for the advice. Well, that's my aim, I have to admit. I would like to get quite proficient with Linux, and perhaps keep windows on just one machine. It's the OS that people seek advice about, so it would be good to remain familiar with it.

So, presumably, if I download Linux, I'll have the choice (after some familiarising) of making it the only system on the machine. I haven't found any information that spells it out, but presumably the usual Linux downloads come with some GUI programs like or similar to OpenOffice.

Chrism01, from Brisbane, recommends Mint. Presumably this is Linux plus some programs. For someone standing outside knocking on the door, geting in isn't too obvious. I should be brave, perhaps, and download and see what happens. Only, I don't want to find that its an action that involves hours of sorting out and correcting.

Thanks, haertig, for the advice.

That's terrific, TenTenths, to have stayed with Windows since the very beginning! I think my initiation came with 3.1. A friend at the time used to go on about the new Windows idea. I doubted that most of what he said could possibly be true. I had an oriental copy of an IBM and wonders like VisiWord and VisiCalc. Then a local university offered a short course in it, and those two or three sessions convinced me, and I've used it ever since. The latest job, 8, brought down my PC, as mentioned earlier, but it worked on my laptop. However, it was just crazy that I had to buy the DVD twice to use it on two machines.

The job of trying to recover files on a pricy cloud backup that I'd used for a few years - which certainly didn't match by a mile its advertising - and of course buying the new machine, was evidence enough that it's time to turn to Linux.

Just looked at the thumbnails, TenTenths. That certainly takes one back! Thank you.