Fast Linux distro?

[z7nz]

I have a EEE pc. Specs: Intel Atom dual 1.66Ghz , 2 GB RAM, 5400RPM Hard drive.
I use this netbook for browsing, typing, movies, and some programming.

I used to have it run Ubuntu. After I upgraded to Ubutun 11.10, it's so slow that I have too switch to another distro. I'm currently using Lubuntu (use LXDE GUI) right now, but I my netbook is still slower than my friend's worse EEE with Win7 Starter.
I tried Puppy Linux and not really liking it. I also tried Redhat, openSUSE (but not on this slow netbook).

Any suggestions on what distro I should use for faster performance? I'd prefer a distro with better flash support since a lot of my homework involve with flash apps.

[MASONTX]

Try crunchbang, it is pretty fast on limited resource computers. Abetter solution might be to go to distrowatch.com and do a search for netbooks or older computers to see what they recommend. You could also go back to Ubuntu 10.04LTS.

[elija]

Cruchbang with openbox is really good and very very light. It's slightly less beginner friendly than Ubuntu as for example, when installing new software you have to manually add it to the menu. I believe you can add an extra layer of menu to automatically update but that felt untidy to me

Anyway it idles at about 55MB ram and really made an old Pentium 4 laptop fly so yours should hit warp speed.

[Charles4809]

You could try Bodhi Linux, it's bloody fast on all my computers, including an older EEEPc 901.

Charles.

[Rubberman]

Ubuntu, like many operating systems, keeps adding cruft as the update. 11.x has been especially egregious in this respect, resulting in slower running systems because of services and tools (Unity) that you REALLY don't need. In any case, you can pare down the footprint of most any Linux distribution and tune it to your needs. It's just that some are already designed to be that way (DSL, Crunchbang, Gentoo, etc). Myself, I like a good, mainstream distribution that I can easily tune, and for ARM or Atom systems, Debian is a good choice. It is very much up-to-date, and provides the ability to easily tune the system footprint to your needs. Example: on a 64MB PC-104 ARM board I use for embedded system development, I run Debian Etch and after loading the OS, services, and mounting an external NFS file system, I still have over 50MB of RAM left for applications. So, the basic system footprint is less than 14MB. It also runs very fast, even though the CPU speed is 256MHz or less. My workstation (Intel x86_64) runs at 3GHz and for most simple stuff (no measured comparisons - only eyeball timing), not a lot faster...

[nixblog]

I have a EEE pc. Specs: Intel Atom dual 1.66Ghz , 2 GB RAM, 5400RPM Hard drive.
I use this netbook for browsing, typing, movies, and some programming.

I used to have it run Ubuntu. After I upgraded to Ubutun 11.10, it's so slow that I have too switch to another distro. I'm currently using Lubuntu (use LXDE GUI) right now, but I my netbook is still slower than my friend's worse EEE with Win7 Starter.
I tried Puppy Linux and not really liking it. I also tried Redhat, openSUSE (but not on this slow netbook).

Any suggestions on what distro I should use for faster performance? I'd prefer a distro with better flash support since a lot of my homework involve with flash apps.

You could try Linux Mint LXDE - lightweight plus all multimedia stuff installed and ready to go.

[jayd512]

antiX or MEPIS sound like they should work well for your needs.

[Dapper Dan]

Mint 11 LXDE would be a good choice, only drop down to a lighter WM like IceWM or straight OpenBox. For really, really lean and super fast, CRUX should be considered but it's a more time consuming choice as you essentially build it from the ground up with your selected applications. I've installed CRUX on two EEEs and both run really well with it

[jayd512]

The time-consuming issue was what kept me from mentioning CRUX.
But on a similar note, Slackware would work really well. If you don't mind tracking down a few dependencies, that is!

[nixblog]

Mint 11 LXDE would be a good choice, only drop down to a lighter WM like IceWM or straight OpenBox. For really, really lean and super fast, CRUX should be considered but it's a more time consuming choice as you essentially build it from the ground up with your selected applications. I've installed CRUX on two EEEs and both run really well with it

Yeah, LXDE is good as it gives you Openbox so it's two for the price of one. IceWM would be good too - got that on a Debian box, boots using about 34MB RAM

Have been meaning to try CRUX for a while, also Alpine Linux and LFS too!