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Best OS For Netbooks and Underpowered Tablets?

Posted by Soulskill on from the vista-right? dept.

vigmeister writes "I hopped on the netbook bandwagon early this year in a rather odd fashion by picking up an outdated portable tablet (Fujitsu P1510) which just about matches the latest, greatest netbooks for their performance and portability features, while nipping them by managing to give me a better battery life. I've been happy using XP Tablet on this machine until recently, when I started thinking that by optimizing the OS for targeted use, I may be able to squeeze more out of the device. So, my questions are: What OS would you recommend for a netbook/outdated laptop? Usage is typically light — web surfing (with multimedia), email, word processing, spreadsheet and reading PDFs. Also, what OS would you recommend for a ultraportable tablet? Usage is similar to a netbook; there's a little more document editing going on, and good handwriting recognition and note-taking software would be great." Read on for further details about vigmeister's question. vigmeister continues, "I would like for the user experience to be snappy on a computer that is essentially running the equivalent of a 1.2 GHz PIII with 512mb RAM. The other objective for both of these is to maximize the battery life, as that is the major drawback of these ultraportables. A small memory footprint would work wonders, since the hard drives on these devices are typically slow and completely suck the joy out of using them when swap space is being used. Any tips? If you are still using your outdated laptops/tablets productively, please share with us how you're doing it, so we can too."

8 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Are you kidding? by HateBreeder · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're naively asking for an OS recommendation on Slashdot?

    talk about predictability of results...

    --
    Sigs are for the weak.
    1. Re:Are you kidding? by Aminion · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, all the Windows ME fanboism is getting really old.

    2. Re:Are you kidding? by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Serious response here: I gave up on windows ME/2000 and switched to windows flp. gotta pirate it, but it works wonders! (of course, nlite works wonders too)...

    3. Re:Are you kidding? by calmofthestorm · · Score: 5, Funny

      Really? I prefer linux myself, but ME definitely holds the edge for stability, security, and user experience.

      If I were a power user I'd consider upgrading my linux to genuine windows, but us casual users can get by with a lighter experience.

      --
      93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
  2. Re:That's enough computer to run Ubuntu by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh, and the critical factor for battery life? Run a recent Linux. And use PowerTop to check what's taking power, and disable it. Linux is getting REALLY GOOD at this stuff. On my Compaq 6710b (Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM) doing lots of browsing in Firefox 3 with hundreds of tabs and almost nothing else, Windows XP runs 2 hours, Kubuntu 7.10 ran 3 hours, Kubuntu 8.04 runs 3.5 to 4 hours. Your mileage may vary, of course - but the most up-to-date Linux kernel is well worth it.

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  3. If you're going with linux... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a Thinkpad x61 Tablet that I use to take notes at school; It's running gentoo (mostly so I could have a better chance at making all the obscure features work).

    If you do decide to go with linux, no matter the distro, the programs I've found useful are CellWriter, for an onscreen keyboard and handwriting recognition, and Xournal for note-taking. Xournal does well with the tablet's pressure sensitivity and higher resolution.

  4. I've got one of these! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I actually have one of these (a P1510D), and I was just thinking about this! :-)

    My P1510D is running Ubuntu 8.04 and dualbooting XP Tablet Edition; the Linux side isn't as reliable as the Windows side, unfortunately. I've got a page of notes here on how I got Linux working on the thing; you need to fool around with Perl to get a touchscreen "driver" working and install another group of applications to get the buttons working.

    Mine doesn't have Bluetooth, so I can't comment on that; wifi finally works out of the box, suspend is OK, hibernate is iffy, xrandr+compiz=crash, I haven't figured out how to get the fingerprint reader to work, the touchscreen "driver" likes to crap out and doesn't work too well, et cetera. Can't comment on the battery, since my battery is done for (it lasts for about 20 minutes before dying, on Windows or Linux).

    If you want specifics, let me know--I've spent a few weeks digging up stuff.

  5. Linux or Windows? by malevolentjelly · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're looking for linux recommendations, I can't recommend Mandriva 2009 enough for this purpose. With their experience with the Classmate PC, Mandriva went ahead and integrated all their smooth netbook features into their OS. Mandriva 2009 in particular now provides an available default LXDE desktop, which is far lighter than KDE or Gnome and less spartan than XFCE. In addition, any configuration settings dialogs deficient in LXDE can be made up with the Mandriva Control Center.

    On that same note, you might consider gOS 3, which will provide a lovely and lightweight interface on top of Ubuntu but customized directly for the needs of a netbook. It's a very realistic distribution, with ample codecs, default Wine, and a nice implmentation of Mozilla Prism for running web apps as desktop apps. (not that that makes any sense)

    Now, if you're looking for a Windows system, there's always Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PC's, a smooth and lightweight XP installatiion weighing in at under a gig default and using the XP embedded kernel. You can find that lyin' around somewhere on the web if you look hard enough- though you can't buy it. Oh yes, and it's full XP with no activation subsystem. ;)