Thoughts on Ubuntu Netbook Remix
Posted by Kevin Hanson | Posted in Linux | Posted on 16-05-2009-05-2008
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This past Mothers Day, we all pitched in and got Mom a netbook, specifically the Asus Eee PC 1000HE. I chose this model because it used the slightly faster Atom 280 processor and had a great battery, which they claim can last up to 9.5 hours. If it can get 2/3 of that, I’ll be satisfied. It came with Windows XP preinstalled, but my mom’s a mac user – she wouldn’t dare play with something as dirty as Windows XP. So I decided to give Ubuntu Netbook Remix a go! Read below for my thoughts.
Ubuntu 9.04 came out just a couple weeks ago so I was excited to test out a fresh build of the Netbook remix. Installation was pretty painless. The only tricky part is that if you’re used to installing an OS from a DVD or CD (which I am), you’ll have to change your approach slightly. Since most netbooks don’t have optical drives, you need to burn the ISO file to a flash drive – you need to use some special tools to make it properly bootable.
I wanted to keep XP on the system, in case my mother found Netbook Remix too geeky to interact with. So I set up the system to shrink the XP partition and install Ubuntu on the rest of the drive. I decided to go with EXT4 as a file system, though, as it offers performance improvements over EXT3.
Upon initial bootup, I was VERY pleasantly surprised. Everything seemed to be working right. The UI impressed me immediately, and the usage of screen real estate is quite brilliant. The icons on the main menus are large and easy to click. And the great part is that behind the pretty, watered down UI, there’s Ubuntu at the core. You can still use apt-get or synaptic to add / remove whatever packages you like.
Apps take a second or two to boot up, but once booted, they seem to work just fine. I installed Prism so she would have one-click access to her gmail account.
Unfortunately, I don’t live in the same city as my parents so I can’t play around with the netbook right now. I’m still using a Macbook Pro as my only computer. I’d love to buy a netbook to play with, but I really can’t justify the cost. Comment if you have questions about my experience with UNR!
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