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I'm interested in some feedback for the most user friendly but also speediest (speed matters more over user friendly) flavours of Unix that work best with netbooks, namely an Acer one.

I need one that doesn't require recompilation to get wifi working (ubuntu), and flash works too.

I'm using Windows 7 and Chrome at present, but it can sometimes freeze up for 5+ seconds.

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You might want to change the title to Linux - unless you really mean Unix. Or maybe to Unix-like? – Telemachus Jul 15 '09 at 14:02
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"User-friendly" and Linux?? – arathorn Aug 18 '09 at 20:50
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5 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is an Ubuntu variant customized specifically for netbooks. On some netbooks, bug 349314 makes the launcher slow, but that bug report has links to kernel versions which do not have the problem. Other than that, it works great.

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This is absolutely a great release: very uptodate and works flawlessly with my Acer Aspire One A150. Use ext4 filesystem for speedy boot-up – Roalt Jul 17 '09 at 20:32
Does it need a recompile for wifi to work? That was my main problem with ubuntu when I tried it on a netbook. – Chris S Jul 21 '09 at 10:23
On my 701, wifi worked out of the box (no need to install any non-free drivers). The only problem is that rfkill does not work correctly due to bug bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/354878 – CesarB Jul 21 '09 at 11:39
Installed UNR on an Aspire One the other day. It's working very well. I'm using it to combine and stream webcam footage with webcamstudio. Flash works. Wifi worked out of the box. SD card reader worked out of the box and was hot swappable. Three different webcams I tried worked out of the box, including the built in one. – GloryFish Jul 22 '09 at 21:01
There are some problem with certain wifi configurations on certain netbooks. My Asus Eee 1000h works fine most of the time, but when you have wifi using WPA2 with both TKIP and AES encryption on, it doesn't work out of the box (and I haven't been able to get it going at all -- though others have). – Tomas Sedovic Aug 18 '09 at 22:01
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up vote 1 down vote

You might want to check out ubuntu - I find it the most user friendly Distro around.

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up vote 1 down vote

http://www.xubuntu.org/ is a lighter-weight version of Ubuntu. However, I don't know that switching to a unix based operating system will make your experience better. You could alternatively downgrade to Windows XP.

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up vote 1 down vote

I'll answer my own question, though it's sort of been answered:

Ubuntu netbook edition

I tried this and works very well, plus has a good list of netbooks it works with. My only issue is Flash didn't work from the .img file I got, nor did any of the updates. Wifi was fine and it's speedy with a decent interface (slightly loaded up with crap though).

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up vote 1 down vote

Moblin looks like its got potential, although it's got issues with some netbooks (like wifi not working OOTB on my Dell Mini 9).

I'll 2nd Ubuntu Netbook edition too (and make sure you get the LPIA builds). Wifi works just great there, incl. VPN.

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