Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Linux and Netbooks

One of the neatest developments to come along to personal computing has been the netbook.  Netbooks are small, ultra portable laptops (weighing in at about two pounds) that give you basic computing with long battery life (five to seven hours!).  You can surf the web, send email, type a document, watch youtube videos, etc.  And the price tag is pretty neat, too.  Netbooks cost anywhere from $250.00 to about $400.00 depending on the amount of memory, size and type of hard drive, and the size of the display.


Netbooks come with Windows XP installed.  But the really attractive option is that many netbooks come with Linux pre-installed.  While these Linux operating systems are quite good (and they boot incredibly fast!), many Linux power users want to "get under the hood" and really open up Linux.  They want to unleash its full power and customization qualities on a netbook.

To that end, many in the Linux community have stepped up and offered their own Linux operating system for netbooks. One such Linux OS is Eeebuntu. Based on Ubuntu, Eeebuntu is a full featured and powerful Linux operating system. It's fully optimized for Asus Eee PC netbooks and runs fully configured, ready to run "right out of the box."  It's pretty amazing to see it run on a netbook that has a screen measuring no more than eight to ten inches in size.  You can see a great video demo of Eeebuntu running on a netbook here.

Once again, Linux and its community of users demonstrate how powerful and adaptable this operating system is.

So, if you're considering buying an Asus Eee PC netbook (or bought one with Windows XP and want to try something really amazing) then get Eeebuntu.

Get Linux.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I have installed eeeBuntu and it was quite good, but I prefer to run Intrepid on my eeePC 901. I have been able to get everything to work and I have the real thing, instead of something based on Ubuntu.

I have one that came with Xandros pre-installed and I used the help provided at eeeuser.com to customise it. I have Ubuntu on a SD card and several other OSes on different cards.

The eeePC is so much fun. I use it a document reader, podcast streamer, music player, recipe collector, and more. Everyone should have a netbook for those times when you want to leave the confines of the desktop and portability is your biggest concern.

Enjoyed your article, even though it was a shameless promotion for eeeBuntu. ;) There are many great distros and most work out of the box on the eeePC.

MSzorady said...

Roy,

I certainly want to delve deeper into other Linux OS's for netbooks. These netbooks are amazing and Linux really brings them to life!

Anonymous said...

I have my Eee PC 901 running Debian.

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC

MSzorady said...

Debianista,

Excellent! Thanks for this!