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Since I ran #! on the netbook, I chose it for my desktop as well! I partitioned for 2 others, so I'm looking at openSuse and CentOS to play around in. My first tri-boot!

So I had to move on to Lubuntu with LXDE. It is lightning fast and very small now, but even there you have to be careful not to pull in to many Gnome dependencies. Unfortunately I need Nautilus, because I really like it, and it is the only file manager that Dropbox will cooperate with.

Have you tried Crunchbang? It's a small Debian based distro that uses many of the components in LXDE. They use Dropbox with Thunar and have a quick howto at:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/howto_setup_dropbox

You could try their live disc or use the howto to get a lighter filemanager to work with Dropbox.

I was excited after reading a review the other day. I downloaded it, and went to load it in a VM, expecting speed from my quad core. It wasn't much faster than the full blown Ubuntu. I loaded it on an old laptop. Was faster than Windows XP, but not as much as I had hoped. It's a good idea, perhaps the next version will do better.

The same problem afflicts Xubuntu which, although using the lightweight xfce, is not noticeably faster than the stock Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes with a lot of fluff attached.

If you want something fast/lightweight for your old laptop can I suggest #!, especially the current development releases based on Debian squeeze. You can choose between xfce/openbox and both performed so well on my old laptop I've replaced my desktop with it too.

I was excited after reading a review the other day. I downloaded it, and went to load it in a VM, expecting speed from my quad core. It wasn't much faster than the full blown Ubuntu. I loaded it on an old laptop. Was faster than Windows XP, but not as much as I had hoped. It's a good idea, perhaps the next version will do better.

The same problem afflicts Xubuntu which, although using the lightweight xfce, is not noticeably faster than the stock Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes with a lot of fluff attached.

If you want something fast/lightweight for your old laptop can I suggest #!, especially the current development releases based on Debian squeeze. You can choose between xfce/openbox and both performed so well on my old laptop I've replaced my desktop with it too.

Xubuntu installs more RAM-consuming daemons than some other XFCE-based distro installs such as Debian's - see http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504#feature for a guide on how to slim down Xubuntu, resulting in about half the memory usage before starting applications. Distrowatch also did a similar guide on how to slim down the main Ubuntu distro here: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215#feature

You could also try Crunchbang, an Ubuntu derivative that uses OpenBox: http://crunchbanglinux.org/ - or U-Lite which is even lighter, or see this thread for discussion of Linux distros for 192 MB RAM: http://www.linux.com/archive/forums/topic/4908

Full-blown apps are relatively easy to remove, but some of the "desktop environment" stuff - applets, the various managers (volumes, power), libraries - sit at the centre of a web of dependencies and aren't easy to get rid of. Even things that are only "Recommends:"-ed seem to pop back sometimes when I'm not looking :/

Having said that, disk is insanely cheap these days, so that even I, who's pretty obsessive about avoiding 'bloat', have learnt to live with leaving the packages around. Memory's pretty cheap too, and anyway actually stopping unnecessary components from running is a bit easier.

And, of course, no one distro / desktop environment "fits all." Xubuntu is lighter and more "loosely coupled", and there are other Ubuntu variants that are even more hardcore (I keep meaning to give #! a spin ..) That's really where free software trumps commercial: each subculture that feels the need can roll its own.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned CrunchEee

It is based off ubuntu but with OpenBox as the Window Manager.

It's light, fast, stable, has drivers, looks amazing, etc.

you can download it from here

the installation guide is here

and some screenshots can be found here

I'm surprised no one has mentioned CrunchEee

It is based off ubuntu but with OpenBox as the Window Manager.

It's light, fast, stable, has drivers, looks amazing, etc.

you can download it from here

the installation guide is here

and some screenshots can be found here

Well, I DO have an Eee PC 701 (was an early adopter) and am running Cruncheee on it. Here's a handy and helpful link: http://www.crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/downloads#cruncheee_eee_pc_edition

It should be noticed that I've experienced a small graphics glitch or two. Though, this seems to be an isolated problem. Worst case scenario, you wasted some bandwidth. It's pretty quick, though. I'd give it a shot.

Also, why did you go with an Eee Ubuntu and not Xubuntu ... which I guess would be more widely supported?

Actually I did on my 901. That went perfect. I followed the very simple instructions at http://www.array.org/ubuntu/ It took the installation of one .deb, a reboot and wireless, sound, bluetooth and wifi were all working. Afterwards just added the array.orgs repository, installed the extra scripts through that repository and even the Fn keys and special keys in the laptop worked perfectly.

This weekend I however installed the eeepc version of http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/release-notes/8.10.02#cruncheee_eee_pc_edition To me that's even better. Everything works out of the box and you can use the Ubuntu repositories for nearly everything you may want to install later. It responds really well. I even watch divx in the train, with the eeepc on powersave mode. They do use openbox which I have quite some experience in and really like. But if you like Vista you probably don't like openbox.
Only downside to me is the interface, which in my view is a little to dark.

I'm using Crunchbang Linux on my EEE 901.

The user interface is "house key"+key press rather than fat icon oriented. It's slim (not lots of cruft), based on Ubuntu Intrepid so you can pull in anything you need, uses array.org kernel, has eee configuration applet. Works for me.

I've been using the eee version of Crunchbang. http://crunchbanglinux.org/blog/2009/01/18/crunchbang-linux-81002-released/ Works flawlessly with full driver support, is very fast, and isn't brown.

I am running #! Cruncheee on my 901 since quite some time now after trying a multitude of distributions. It has for my taste the right apps, the right theme, concentrates on getting things done, is rock stable, supports all eee hardware out of the box and does all of that at lightning speed. Another nice thing is that it is an ubuntu based distro, so you get the benefit of excellent packages, etc. The live CD, which also installs once booted, can be had at http://crunchbanglinux.org/ in the download section, and even from the live CD (ok, more likely the live-USB-stick) it already runs very fast!

I have crunchee on my 1000ha and like it alot. Most things worked out of the box with only a bit of fiddling (wireless). It is a really light weight distro but is not for everyone as it uses openbox window manager so it really shines on netbooks with limited resources.

http://crunchbanglinux.org/blog/2008/12/26/cruncheee-81001-release-candidate-1/

I was just at a conference and the people seated around me saw the crunchee install and it generated alot of oohs and aahs.

MC

Another vote for CrunchEEE. It's lightweight, real fast and works like a charm. Just awesome. Try it! -- http://crunchbanglinux.org/

I've used the default Xandros os and ubuntueee but for the last few month or so I've been using a CrunchBang EEE specific distro and I've been very happy with it. Works out of the box with all drivers present and reduced font size for those itty bitty screens. http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/424/cruncheee-81001-release-candidate-1/