help needed picking a OS for a Netbook

[buzz86]

i recently perchased a samsung n130 netbook that came with windows vista but i would prefer to run a linux distro on it. ive tryed ubuntu netbook remix and jolicloud but im not a fan of the layout.

im now running ubuntu 10.4 but it seems slow. ive used linux befor but only on bigger rigs. vista was running fast so i dont understand why ubuntu is slow

does anyone have any idea about why its slow and how i could speed it up???

i dont have any visual affects on.

also can anyone recormend a better linux distro for netbooks with a standard layout?

thanks very much

[nujinini]

Hi and Welcome!

can anyone recormend a better linux distro for netbooks with a standard layout?

There are plenty out there. All equally nice. So, I can't really recommend a particular flavor for you but I guess since you seem to be enjoying Ubuntu, you might want to start by trying Mint 7. It's also an Ubuntu derivative and quite lite to the touch. At least from my own experience.

But then again, I suggest you try as many distros as you may want to try and perhaps trim your choice to the top 3 or so.

Happy hunting!

[Rubberman]

A lot of the speed issues with netbooks is due to the video hardware as well as the resources that a GUI such as KDE or Gnome requires. You might want to switch to a lightweight desktop such XFCE and see how that helps. Also, monitor your memory usage. You might want to shut down some unnecessary services to release memory to running applications. If you are hitting the swapper (not unlikely on a 1GB machine), then performance will suffer.

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!

Have you given any thought to Moblin?

[Koshie]

Hi,

Maybe you should install a lightweight GNU/Linux distribution like ArchLinux. After installation you just have the necessary to configure completely your OS. You run on a TTY and you must create your own user (you just have a root account), install X.org server, your desktop environment with the window manager of your choice, your display manager (I recommend slim, it's light and it can be very beautiful with the good theme), your favourite software... And choose what daemon must start in a file, rc.conf, just for example it's my daemon section :

DAEMONS=(hal @slim network wicd syslog-ng netfs crond)

Light, isn't ?

It requires a little work but after you have a simply and lightweight operating system for your laptop.

There is a good website with a wiki, a forum and you have an IRC channel : #archlinux on irc.freenode.org with a lot of people eager to help you (if your not a stupid noob naturally, don't ask how to install a software, read the wiki before !).

Or Debian, but not the stable, is too old, prefer Squeeze (testing) or if you're a not scared Sid (Still In Development), the unstable.

Koshiarlly

[bigtomrodney]

When it comes to netbooks I like to use distros that are tailored for the available screen space and the particular hardware it has. I personally love Meego (formerly Moblin). It is appliance-like in many ways but it boots extremely quickly and has a beautiful interface built on Clutter which means it is hardware accelerated and very smooth. The downside is it has poor codec support and you end up doing it all yourself.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix has come on in leaps and bounds. It used to feel a bit rough but the 10.04 release is very polished and well tailored to the screen. It also has the benefit of having the entire Ubuntu repository behind it for installing pretty much any app you want. Once you install ubuntu-restricted-extras you'll be good to go with pretty much everything.