Slashdot Mirror
Comparing Windows and Ubuntu On Netbooks
Barence writes "With the arrival last month of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, PC Pro has revisited a familiar question: which operating system is best for a netbook?. The magazine has run a series of benchmarks on a Asus Eee PC 1008HA running Windows XP Home, two versions of Windows 7 (with and without Aero switched on) and Ubuntu Netbook Edition. The operating systems are tested for start-up performance, Flash handling and video, among other tests. The results are closer than you might think."
Can you even buy a netbook without windows?
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Some distros may be better than Windows, but not Ubuntu. It's a bloated buggy hog of a thing that is overkill on netbooks, and Windows will beat it everytime.
Bye bye karma.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Maybe if you were the crackhead that broke into a truck and decided to keep the laptop and take the route to Enlightenment rather than pawning it off?
Just a thought...
The results are closer than you might think."
Are you assuming that I'll think that Windows will perform better or that Ubuntu will?
OS X is pretty good on the MacBook Air netbook, but Apple won't admit it's a netbook.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Given that they're the same hardware and both operating systems have gone through major performance improvements recently, I imagined it to be very close. How close did anyone else think?
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Windows 7 is really good compared to other Windows operating system especially Vista. Ubuntu is good but if you think of mass public all will go for Windows than Ubuntu.
Testing wasn't done very fairly in my opinion. On my netbook, Ubuntu works faster, probably because Windows is bogged down by a bunch of programs which open at startup.
For a start, its not always the underlying operating system which makes the difference.
They compared -
1. Bootup (which is mostly fair)
2. Opening using OpenOffice. I'm pretty sure that the Windows version of this program is not the exact same one as the Ubuntu version. So you're comparing two different programs on two different operating systems.
3. Web performance - again, he used Google Chrome for one, and Chromium for the other. See above - the windows version is not the exact same one as the linux version.
4. Flash performance - this part was very funny. Anyone who's used flash on linux knows how crap it is. When adobe start supporting it properly...
So the testing wasn't very fair. It does not answer "but the key question is how each one performs on low-powered netbook hardware". If they wanted to answer that, they could have written a pair of programs in C to benchmark it - exact same code, exact same program.
Last week I tried installing Netbook Remix 10.10 on my mom's IdeaPad S10. No particular reason, WinXP worked ok on it, but I had previously installed Netbook Remix on a friend's Acer One & she loved it & said it seemed to start up & run much faster than XP used to. Mom isn't particularly attached to her netbook, so she said sure, you can have it for a week to do whatever you need to. So, I put Netbook Remix on a thumbdrive go to town. It installs just fine, all the hardware but the wifi is detected & working great. There is just one problem, no matter what I try updates fail. Ethernet works fine, but all updates fail. I try a manual update, nothing. I try jiggering with the repositories, nothing. I try *several* other distributions, some Debian based, some aren't, no dice. I scour the Internet to see if anyone else is having a similar issue, no dice. In abject defeat, ended up putting XP back on the IdeaPad, having wasted a week of evenings trying to get it to work.
The other Ubuntu PC I have serving music updates just fine.
Total anecdote, hopefully someone can clue me in to what was going on.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I have not messed with the netbook remix much, but in this day and age even the lightweight systems are still pretty heavy, and in my case ...
both my desktops actually take longer to boot ubuntu than windows 7, though its barley noticeable
I still have some little issues with flash video in linux, even with the latest n greatest nvidia drivers
but these are little things that unless you really want to be anal about it you would not notice but on occasion
The way I read the graphs is: XP and Ubuntu win on almost everything (Ubuntu loses once on Flash on iPlayer but that's hardly surprising), maybe only by a small margin by they do, and Windows 7 takes twice as long to boot as they do. The article doesn't recommend bothering to upgrade to Windows 7 if you already have XP on it, and suggests that Ubuntu would be just as good.
Now, let's look at *value*: Assuming you can get them all for the same price, they all provide roughly equal value (it could be argued that 7 is worse value but only by a small way). However, if you have to pay *any* extra for XP or 7, then you're just as well off with Ubuntu. So, it's all back to the old question: who wants to sell me a netbook with an operating system that's just as good as the others but which is FREE for life? In the early days, that's how netbooks became so cheap and so popular - I know, I worked with the original EEEPC's because a school could afford them but MS wanted about £50 a license to "upgrade" them to XP. Now it seems either Microsoft are giving people Windows for free, or Microsoft are stopping manufacturers from supplying netbooks with only Linux on them. I vote for the latter given previous history.
All this article confirms is that, basically, all the OS's are roughly the same now. A bar chart here or there but on average there is no winner. Thus, the free ones should represent infinitely better value. Strange how the manufacturers don't reflect that in their pricing / OS availability any more.
And one of the most important specifications of a netbook was ignored: battery life.
I recently "fixed" a friends netbook. He compressed his windows file directory when he ran out of space...because he didn't know any better. (Yeah, I know...)
All he cares about is the internet (namely facebook) and his too Ipods. I didn't have to show him a thing. The netbook version of Ubuntu runs faster and is fairly intuitive to his needs. While he isn't your grandma when it comes to computers, he's not exactly the "usual" linux user.
I know I'm preaching to the choir but hey man, netbook ubuntu rules!
Comparing apples and oranges.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
...Win7 Aero does not like Slashdot. ;(
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'd love to see a comparison between some of the other linux based netbook OS's. I run Ubuntu on my netbook and really like it but some of the other offerings lately have intrigued me, like Jolicloud and meego. Also I wonder if google's chrome os will officially be released as a distro that you can install yourself. I tried out Hexxeh's version of it that he called flow and on a netbook where I pretty much only open a browser it really did make sense.
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
Well, I can only answer this for myself. I have a desktop at home, which for all sorts of reasons (CPU, GPU, memory, dual monitors, full size keyboard+++) is where I like to do anything serious. When I want to go mobile, I want something small, light and cheap I can bring almost everywhere. I'm not a road warrior, so I don't need a powerful laptop. I'm not hauling it from site to site so I don't need a desktop replacement - I did have one of those as a consultant though. I just need a real computer to go and the 10" screen, cramped keyboard and anemic performance are acceptable tradeoffs.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
First of all when comparing operating systems, do not use the HP Bloat ware version of Windows 7. A fair comparison is to compare the editions as is, Ubuntu doesn't come with bloat ware and therefore cannot be slowed down by that crap. If people are going to write comparison articles and start the Windows vs Linux battle please compare them on fair grounds. I use both Ubuntu on my desktop.
I think the real test should be done after six months of regular use and service packs and updates installed. At this point the windows machine will have its registry so bloated that it will take twice the time for most operations. After one year to one year and a half, the best way to go is to reboot the machine.
This doesn't happen to Ubuntu installations.
Also, when your applications are fighting for CPU cycles with virus and malware, your machine feels much slower... and we know a hight percentage of windows installations end up in that situation while exactly 0% of the Ubutu machines do.
zaReason for example.
I bought an HP Mini that ships with Quickweb - a highly optimized Linux-based alternative to the Windows Starter also installed. It handles email, Skype, media, Web-surfing (Firefox "lite"), and it boots in about 10 seconds. It has a pretty painless "integration" with Windows too, so even novice users can choose what suits them best for a given task. For many netbook customers, all they really ever need is something like this. Supposedly, a ChromeOS netbook will drop any day, and Android tablets have been popping up on the radar. If HP gets its' act together and drops a netbook/tablet with an SSD and WebOS, it could undercut the iPad and the become the darling of the low-priced, entry-level set. Dual-boot takes care of any enterprise requirements, such as a Citrix client, W32 apps, etc.
really...
Because I can throw it in my bag to carry around without really noticing the space or weight it takes up, and if it gets lost or stolen I won't be as upset as I would be if I'd taken my $1200 laptop with me.
Does anyone else find it strange that the article talks about testing on an EeePC and the picture heading up the article is of a Samsung netbook?
Also, I'm not sure this test is very fair, it seems a very non-technical approach to testing how well the different systems actually operate. Granted, it isn't wholly bad to test the actual usability, but this testing isn't very rigorous or controlled in any way, I mean flash performance could change from one ten-minute period to the next just because of differences in internet traffic at the time. I wouldn't put much confidence in this article.
It is about 1/3rd in size and runs faster overall, since it's optimized for sub-500 MHz processors and 0.2 gig RAM instead of Win7 or OS X's full-gig requirement.
Also comes with Chromium, a nice compact browser that is very responsive to web surfing.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
> I just need a real computer to go and the 10" screen, cramped keyboard and anemic performance are acceptable tradeoffs.
I thought that too until I actually tried an eeePC. I could forgive the performance issues, but the keyboard was so small as to be completely unusable. If I get a wild hair and decide to try the netbook form factor again I may get stuck buying a Macbook Air unless somebody else has built in a full-sized keyboard to their netbooks.
This is lol.
In my list of 'stupid microsoft ideas' I still put the registry at the closely contested #3 spot.
#1 is icons-in-executables combined with hideing extensions by default. #2 is HTML email, which they didn't actually invent but did make popular.
Reminds me of the Indian bush and crabs and ooozing jelly smelly hole !1
Windows reminds me of a summer's eve, with that fresh down there feeling !!
Which would YOU rather have, hmmmm ??
The Gnash free replacment for Flash will hopefully catch up and be useful, which will solve this problem. Open source codecs or implementations of codecs can be just as good as the closed source ones, as Flac and Ogg have proved.
I hope you choke and drown in a sea of cocks.
-AC
HTML email isn't as bad as all that, just how Microsoft did it and how some people abuse it.
And then how Microsoft use the Word renderer in Outlook to view HTML emails after all that...
Personally I would have gone with structured emails, with quoted areas explicitly tagged, etc. But that would have inevitably used XML...
Can you even buy a netbook without windows?
Yes. Next question?
Ahh, the mathematician's answer. The next question is as follows: Which make and model and which seller do you recommend?
I bought a Dell Mini about a year ago, came with Ubuntu. Haven't tried Windows, but I did try putting OSX on it (10.5.8 to be exact) and it out-performed Ubuntu in every area but start-up time. The especially nice thing was that it ran movies that were H264 720p without stuttering, under both Quicktime and VLC. On Ubuntu I couldn't get them to run that well no matter what video software I used.
on the X axis.
I didn't think that a list of stopwatch times to open apps could be labeled a comparison. It would be interesting to see which OS lets me stay away from a wall plug the longest, and a general compare/contrast of the features of each OS.
The smallest netbook on zareason.com is an 11.6", which starts to edge into "orthodox laptop" territory. The biggest one that will fit in my bag is the Dell Mini 10 that I currently use.
...but TFA fails to mention anything to do with user experience. How are well suited is the OS to small screen real estate?
For example, On Ubuntu, ccsm, doesn't fit on the screen (Image). Little like things like that crop up often with Ubuntu and it's really annoying.
I've no idea of Windows has similar issues because I don't have it installed, so perhaps somebody else will comment.
How can this be a fair test, if it doesn' t follow industry standards?
If I get a wild hair and decide to try the netbook form factor again I may get stuck buying a Macbook Air unless somebody else has built in a full-sized keyboard to their netbooks.
Haven't looked at the Mac Air but my netbook is 26 cm wide. Just from left Ctrl to right Ctrl I measure around 29 cm on a full size keyboard, and that is if you don't want arrow keys or insert / delete / home / end / page up / page down. So unless you have a fold-out keyboard it's just not possible to do a full size keyboard in that form factor.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"For this test I used the latest version of OpenOffice.Org on all platforms (with the "Quickstarter" disabled)
This isn't a fair test as msOffice loads most of its 'bits' at boot. A better test is to compare file open/save/close times with Quickstarter enabled. All it does is open DLL/library files in the background. Also msOffice displays the first page while the rest is loading, giving the impression it loads faster.
I heard that ubuntu lost horribly in the botnet performance test. They couldn't get it to join
Since when? In my experience, the Distributed.net client works equally well on Fedora and Windows XP, and the BOINC client works equally well on Ubuntu and Windows XP.
This anecdote isn't about netbooks, but rather a triple booted MacBook Pro. Nevertheless it is about the difference between Windows and Ubuntu. Performance is not all that matters.
I managed to kill my laptop's ubuntu operating system yesterday and had to reinstall.
Why it died: I did a "sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-dev" so I could build some 3rd party app, and then my OpenGL apps wouldn't run (some version disagreement on the nvidia driver). So I rebooted, expecting the versions to match upon restart -- instead it would lock up during the ubuntu boot. Rescue mode also failed. I'm sure there were ways to rescue the operating system without reinstalling but I figured it would be easier to just install. I was already out of date (10.04) anyway, so why not upgrade?
I downloaded Kubuntu 10.10 ISO image on another computer, burned a CD, and used that to backup the data off the hard drive to an external one. This took about 1 hour, mostly because of my botched attempts to burn a CD from Windows (fail -- no CD burning software is installed by default!) and then Mac (fail, then success).
The install took 30 minutes and it recovered all the data in my $HOME dir. The software update took another 20 minutes, and didn't require a restart. apt-get install FTW.
A very easy rescue operation. None of my Windows rescues have gone so smoothly.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
Perhaps I'm wrong, but these tests did not appear to include the extra overhead incurred by anti-virus/anti-malware software running on top of Windows XP and Windows 7. Those can gobble up huge chunks of RAM and hobble performance, especially on a netbook.
Do they have included an anti-virtus application that needs to be installed and constantly running in the background for Windows XP and Windows 7?
Do they have included in the benchmark that in Windows 7 Starter edition the user can't even change the desktop background and the Visual Styles? Furthermore, if you are a small business user you have to buy the more expensive Windows 7 Professional edition so you can use your Windows in your network.
Not only you don't need the constant performance drain anti-virus but all Ubuntu versions are Enterprise versions.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Actually, they did. Windows is a virus.
No, they will be exactly what I'd think after I read the article. They might be different, "than what I'd think they would be", or maybe different "from what I'd expect."
OK, a bit pedantic, but I'm tired.
An option is to get either one of the HP 12.1" tablet PCs (swivel around touch-screen, I seriously love mine, best character sheet ever) or you could go for one of the Pioneer x86 based tablets and use a standard bluetooth keyboard and mouse on them.
...
Because sometimes you want a portable computer, where handhelds are too small (can't type) and laptops are too (inconveniently) big.
The ideal portable would fit in your pocket but somehow have a way to type easily. Nothing like that is available yet, though, so netbooks fill the niche as well as it can currently be filled.
Ubuntu uses Unity for its current (10.10) Netbook version of the main distro. This has a modified interface. It has a dockbar BUT has shifted it to the left. Since most if not all laptops and netbooks are widescreen, this means it saves space in the horizontal. More reading room.
Netbook edition also maximized the fast majority of windows and the 10.10 introduces a new trick where the top bar (similar to OSX top/menu bar) integrates with the window top bar. So the Icon Program name and close buttons don't take up more vertical space.
Windows 7 lacks all of this. With Aero a LOT of vertical space is wasted and the OS makes no attempts to optomize itself for the reduced screen size or the on-the-go experience. This matters more then you think. Netbooks have very small trackpads and on the move, they often shake. Pixel perfect cursor control is what Windows 7 desktop expects on a netbook.
As for boot up, I got two netbooks right now, a very early atom and a dual core now and linux on the old one boots faster then windows 7 on the new one. And that is with Windows 7 without search indexing on a slow HD or restore points.
Current netbooks are fairly speedy machines some even coming with highly decent video cards. The problem is that OS'es are typically written for desktops where the mouse is a an easy to use and high precious instrument and screenspace is measured in miles. Finally, the HD in netbooks is usually slow as hell, even on the better ones with a rpm of 5400. Since nobody seriously uses HD's anymore in a desktop, the speed difference between a slow HD and a nippy SSD means a totally different user experience and requires an OS that can be configured NOT to want to write to the HD every millisecond. Seeing my netbooks HD constantly light up because MS loves trashing HD's is one of the reason that I will soon replace it with Ubuntu again.
It just seems that at least some people at Ubuntu are thinking about the user experience on a small computer. MS? Doesn't give a damn.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I dual boot Windows 7 HP and Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) on an Asus Eee PC T101MT. It's got a resistive touch screen that is not well supported by vendors, nor by Microsoft. While Windows7 does respect the 1024 pressure levels the screen can read, inking is extremely slow as compared to that in Ubuntu, and the pressure levels don't translate to Photoshop or the GIMP. The only programs that seem to recognize the pressure levels are Windows Journal and OneNote, neither of which is intended as an artist's tool. By contrast, Ubuntu has very fast smooth inking, and a wonderful paint program with full support for the pressure levels (MyPaint). Considering that I purchased this netbook for the explicit purpose of being able to paint as well as take notes and read books, etc., Ubuntu saved the day for me.
At this point in time I've got everything working spectacularly on this thing- from painting with pressure levels to reading Kindle books, multitouch to two-finger scrolling, media keys to Wiimote as gamepad, handwritten notes to DropBox, Skype to Arduino development, even handwriting recognition and an OSK. You name it, I've got it going on this thing, all thanks to Ubuntu. I am quite willing to say that, although almost every other computer I've ever had has in some way (usually proprietary hardware-related) ran better with Windows and in some way better on Linux, Ubuntu far outshines Windows on my T101MT in every way.
The biggest flaw with Linux on netbooks is the speed at which the accessibility tools run. The Orca screen reader runs incredibly slow on my Atom machine. It takes multiple seconds just to close a window in nautilus. On the other hand, it took Microsoft fifteen years to add a basic feature to the screen magnifier: full screen support. That is kind of important on a 9 inch screen. MS waited until *everyone* else had full-screen magnifiers out of the box: Linux and Mac. It is just one more reason i am disgusted with MS.
Gnash is dead.
I own a Lenovo S10 with 2GB of RAM.
I triple-boot it:
With Windows and Debian it is very snappy. In previous years I was a hardcore Windows basher, but I can't really complain with how it runs on this machine. Likewise with Debian, I never feel like the software is ever hindering me from getting what I need to do done.
Mac OS X also runs well on this particular machine. But it seems slower than the other two. The OS is good but if I were deciding what to boot simply based on performance I couldn't honestly pick this one. Yes, the hardware wasn't "designed by Apple in California" -- perhaps that's part of the problem. But to be honest I've never been a fan of Mach/XNU. I've always thought it would be interesting if Apple built OSX atop Linux or a stock BSD rather than Mach. A lot has changed in the days since NeXT, so it's strange that their kernel still uses that approach. I do think the performance suffers as a result.
If it weren't for XP these netbooks might have SSDs and 2GB RAM. If you could REALLY get a linux netbook it would have these things and perform even better. Plus Ubuntu netbook 10.10 sucks, I wish they would have used 10.04, which is to me much better. Perhaps Jolicloud would be a better comparison as well.
I'm running OS X 10.6.4 on a dell mini9 netbook. that's with an atom processor, which became unsupported as of 10.6.2. a little patch allows me to run it. It's a sweet OS for my netbook, but having 2gig of ram on it helps a lot. the processor is a little pokey, which is why it's a netbook and not something in a better class with a better processor. It gets great battery life too.
I would LOVE to have the same netbook with an updated processor. dual-core atom would be nice!
iPlayer has SWF Verification though so unless the BBC has a sudden outbreak of common sense people are stuck using Adobe!
there's no such thing as "an eePC". There have been 30+ models, from 7" to 12. Strangely, keyboard sizes vary accordingly, from maddeningly small to normal size or quasi-normal (98% IIRC)
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I'm 6'1" and I quickly got used to the keyboard on my Dell Mini 9. It did take a week or two to stop hitting return every time I wanted an apostrophe (the key is very thin and right next to the enter key), but apart from that I type the same as I would on a full sized keyboard.
As Kjella points out, because of the compact layouts of netbook keyboards compared to their full sized counterparts, the keys aren't actually that much smaller.
which is totally what she said
>The Gnash free replacment for Flash will hopefully catch up and be useful
2000 called. It wants it's hopes back.
see also: mono, wine, OOo(MS Office Documents)
Could you be any more of a butthurt Friends fanboi?
The largest downfalls of the Atom in general is floating point computations.
For me, the eeePC 901 (and what I have now, the Acer Aspire One) are both a perfect form-factor.
Except for when I'm doing PHP and PERL, then the 10" screen is a little tight.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
ok... W7 is slow, and I can not watch videos with Ubuntu, I guess I will stay with XP then!
Also my netbook is an HP Mini 311, it has a 1366x768 11.6" screen and a ION chipset, I can watch 1080p and it uses only a few percent of the Atom power... This netbook is fantastic, if it dies I don't know if there is an equiv on the market now.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Slow and clunky with an infuriating and confusing UI is how I would describe it. Now, Netbook Edition 10.04 was perfectly fine and useful, and the UI actually seemed to a good job of using the minimal screen real estate. After upgrading to 10.10, I switched over to the regular desktop version of 10.10 (which performs fine) just to get away from the disaster that is Netbook Edition 10.10.
I also dual boot Win 7 Starter on this netbook, and based on my experiences and my "gut feeling" benchmarks, performance and usability is just about even all the way around between Win 7 and different versions of ubuntu. The one exception being the latest edition of netbook edition 10.10, which was painfully slow at time to the point of almost being unusable.
my dual-boot Acer Aspire runs 3.5 hours of XP, or 2.0 hours of Ubuntu netbook edition. Linux power management sucks. The laptop is now the "desktop," so until Linux gets serious about power it's going to be relegated to a beige/black box under your desk/in your server closet.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I loathe 10.10 Netbook Edition and Unity. I've lost my thumb drive with 10.4 on it, or I'd re-re-image my EEE 901. I even went back to Xandros for a while, but since it doesn't do anything, went on to 10.10 big boy edition. I miss 10.4. a lot.
AC recommended the NB200, but Toshiba.com states that it has been discontinued in favor of the NB250 and NB300 series, which come with Windows 7 Starter.
I picked up a new Samsung netbook recently and installed the Ubuntu Netbook Edition. I've been less than thrilled with it.
First- Windows 7 Starter sucks too. I'm not going back to it, and am not happy with either of them. My main complaint about Windows 7 Starter is the notion I have to pay Microsoft to use an external monitor or set my desktop background. I expect those to come in the stripped down OS and I'm absolutely unwilling to give MS one more cent. In fact, their policy on Windows 7 means my next game console will be a PS3 instead of an Xbox (and I'm tempted by Kinect, have owned several Xboxes and enjoyed them).
Ubuntu issues in the first two months of use:
* right click just stopped working. I have to click and hold left click to access those functions. I didn't mess with anything related to X, and kept things as default as possible. spent a fair bit of time googling without luck.
* nm-applet network manager just stopped working. all interfaces show "disabled" when I resume after suspending. then nm-applet disappears completely. I'm forced to use my crackberry browser to find a solution since I'm on the road. It was painful.
* update manager locks up all the time.
* Many applications put dialog controls out of sight on this tiny monitor. I can't directly fault Ubuntu for third-party apps, but it still seems like the OS ought to detect this condition and offer me some kind of workaround.
That's not all, but those are the biggest complaints that have me looking for an alternative.
My old XP install started giving me blue screens, and attempts to resurrect it via a clean install from an external CD drive and even a hacked together USB installation all failed. (On the upside, I'm now set up to install XP via BartPE on USB any time I need to, which is pretty handy.) So Ubunto 10.10 it was. When nothing else will run because the hardware is dying, it suddenly goes from the worst option to the best option.
Really, though, half my applications won't even run without some extensive witchery, and the final result was that I'd rather fork out the cash for a shiny new netbook than continue to be forced to use Ubuntu on the old one. It's not bad by any stretch, but as the results show, the video capabilities leave a lot to be desired.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It's extremely portable; mine's less than half the size of a ThinkPad, and light. The battery lasts over eight hours. Every piece of software I have that will run on a desktop will run on it. Oh, and it only cost me $300.
The laundromat has wifi. The bar has wifi. McDonald's has wifi. Even the car repair shop has wifi. Why would you NOT want a netbook?
In fact, the only reason I have for wanting to build a new desktop is for an entertainment center.
Free Martian Whores!
A good test should include battery life.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Still no usable multitouch on eeepc 1005pe when running any flavour of Linux.
There are plenty of Linux netbooks. The great feature with are that they are exactly 50$ cheaper than the corresponding Windows model.
I no longer see them in stores in my area. Target and Best Buy used to have them, but now they don't. As for buying online, if I can't try a product's keyboard and screen, that $50 discount gets eaten up by the 15% restocking fee for a laptop returned as unusably unergonomic.
I have an old Dell Celeron M 1.3GHz laptop with 256MB RAM.
It had Windows XP on it. It would take 15-30 minutes to boot. Once booted, you could click on a window or 2. Then it would churn for 30 minutes.
When it was new, it worked. Now, after restoring to defaults and doing windows updates, it's a heat sink.
I tried installing Lubuntu and Xubuntu with no success.
Finally, I installed Debian Stable from a netinstall CD. Works great! I can surf with iceweasel which is really all I want.
Well, I'd like to get firefox on it.
Netbooks are more powerful then this machine. It irks me that a working system has become worthless over time until modified. The default install should still work..
They now know that software comes from the repositories, not via email or random websites so anything asking them to download and run an arbitrary program throws up warning flags.
So if they are asked to install a .deb file for a package that does not match the nit-picky philosophies of their distro, such as FFMPEG vs Debian, or else asked to modify their repo list to include these third parties, do the newbies A> research and make the right decision using their keen powers of observation, or B> rely on you to guide them each time?
That might not be a terribly common problem today, but as Linux Desktop acceptance rises both the sheer number of software projects to add to the repo and the number which fail to meet a distro's philosophy will rise as well.
FBOW, there are magnitudes more applications available for Windows than there are for *nix at present, from ameture to polished, from open source to boxed, and that number grows daily. This is possible partly because the distribution of Windows software is not presently bottlenecked in any centralized repository.
It stands to reason that the ecosystem of any distribution would have to scale hugely to be able to support a comparable number of apps. Does the current Repository model scale to certifying thousands of millions of applications as being free of malware?
If not, users will still be asked to install "uncertified" software from websites or boxes to fill the gap. Of course they should avoid anything coming through Email, but some users have a hell of a time distinguishing websites from email.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.