Which Linux distro for the Eee PC?
Last night I met briefly with a friend who happened to have a copy of the latest release of Linux Mint on a USB drive, so I borrowed the drive for a few minutes to see if I could boot from it and run Linux on my Eee PC. I wasn’t really expecting much, but to my surprise it booted up flawlessly, thereby confirming my earlier ideas about using Linux on this machine. Mint, as I saw last night, works well. I’ve also noticed that the recent release of Fedora (the distribution I have used most over the years) comes with support for persistent Live USB key installations, which would be ideal. And, of course, there is also the ever-popular Ubuntu to try out as well. Choices, choices!
(Incidentally, the fact that this entry is being written while I am standing on a relatively crowded commuter train on my way to work is yet another reason why I think this PC was a really good fit for my needs.)
xandros comes natively on linux version of the eee pc
i have a 901 and after about two min of playing with it i was frustrated and the os reminded me of a childs laptop that you would buy at a flea market with very few options and more pretty looks than applications.
if i wanted that i would have bought a mac. :-p
for user friendly, go with eeebuntu, or easy peasy as its now called, i personally dont like the feel of it or the no desktop option. its a big step up from xandros, but still too similar for me. i enjoy my wallpapers :D
I like mint, but I have found that linux mint doesnt have pre installed drivers for the eee’s wireless card, and i didnt want to mess with installing drivers or messing with any of it.
crunchbang has a specific distro for the eee and its very minimalistic, im trying that out right now and i like it so far
im also trying fluxflux eee, its a big break from the traditional menus in windows and mac, you click on the desktop to get your program menu along with settings and all that fun stuff.
and if you are always tired of not having wireless cause everyone has WEP encrypted wireless, get backtrack. fits on a usb, and it comes with all sorts of utilities for cracking passwords and there are tutorials online… err ... i mean, educational demonstrations to show that using WPA is much safer than WEP.. (its a net-book, its meant to have internet imo.)
there are many others i haven’t covered, but the best one to use is your own personal preference. any linux can be installed, but not having to mess with drivers is a big plus. if it were my parents computer, i would have Xandros on it. as for me, i would like mint, but i like plug and playability, so im sticking with crunchbang and easypeasy installed, and backtrack on a flashdrive
figure out what distros you like the best, and find the eee version of them, they arent too much different, though they tend to be lighter and come with all the drivers and freeware needed to fully take advantage of your netbook
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