Netbook Operating System Choice

[VampyrByte]

I am currently running a Netbook that I use for web browsing and note taking in lectures and while out and about at University. Currently I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and I am finding it rather sluggish. I have also tried, and currently have installed, Ubuntu 10.04, which I find to be equally sluggish with both the standard GNOME UI aswell as the newer Unity interface. I have not tried the new 2D unity interface as I hear this is buggy.
Now I know I should not expect miracles without upgrading with more RAM and an SSD, but i would like to squeeze every essence of what is there out of this machine.
So what I am wondering is, what do you use for your Netbook? Is there anything you have done specifically to make it more responsive?

My Netbook:
Packard Bell Dot S2
Intel Atom N450
1GB DDR2
Intel GMA 3150

 

[shortylickens]

Vista and Win 7 are way too wasteful with resources to make good netbook OS's, even the stripped Win 7 is too much bloat. I prefer XP. It came on my netbook but I havent seen them using it in a long time.
I'd recommend Linux if you dont have a copy of XP laying around.

As for keeping it smooth, I use effective, low-end apps like Chrome and Avira. Mine works great, in fact when my main computer died I hooked it up to my 1920x1200 monitor and it was a fine substitute for a whole week.

 

[VampyrByte]

I had been toying with trying XP. Not really sure why I hadnt tried it. I guess I'm stuck using x64 OS' for some reason. I may try XP or Server 2003 when I've got some time to shoehorn it onto this netbook.

 

[lxskllr]

I'm using vanilla Ubuntu, and I find it acceptable. For something faster, you could give Puppy a try. You could also try Debian, and just install what you want; maybe with the Enlightenment DE.

AFAIC, XP isn't a choice... Ever... The only reason I'd use that is for dire compatibility requirements from other crappy old software.

 

[Nothinman]

1G is pretty anemic these days. You could try another WM besides Gnome on Linux, there are a lot alternatives and just about all of them are available in the default and universe repositories.

 

[lxskllr]

1G is pretty anemic these days. You could try another WM besides Gnome on Linux, there are a lot alternatives and just about all of them are available in the default and universe repositories.

On that note... Would I be able to try different Environments without dicking up my Gnome install? Say after using Enlightenment, would everything in Gnome be exactly the way I left it on the next login?

 

[JackMDS]

I use an HP Netbook 2GB RAM and Win 7 Starter, it works on the same agility level as Win XP.

 

[Nothinman]

On that note... Would I be able to try different Environments without dicking up my Gnome install? Say after using Enlightenment, would everything in Gnome be exactly the way I left it on the next login?

Yea, they're all self-contained and don't f' with each other. And you should just have to pick whichever one you want from GDM before you login, as long as Ubuntu's packages for them work as well as the Debian ones.

I use an HP Netbook 2GB RAM and Win 7 Starter, it works on the same agility level as Win XP.

Which I would consider a bad thing; XP's memory management is really dumb. Win7 felt faster than XP on my old work notebook with only 2G.

 

[lxskllr]

Yea, they're all self-contained and don't f' with each other. And you should just have to pick whichever one you want from GDM before you login, as long as Ubuntu's packages for them work as well as the Debian ones.

Cool. I think I'll do some playing on my netbook. I haven't really found any that I thought were that much faster than Gnome, but I only tried them for a brief period on a new install. Checking them out side by side will give me a better idea :^)

 

[Nothinman]

Cool. I think I'll do some playing on my netbook. I haven't really found any that I thought were that much faster than Gnome, but I only tried them for a brief period on a new install. Checking them out side by side will give me a better idea :^)

If you try Enlightenment make sure you try E16, E17 is significantly heavier. I still run E16 at work because it does things better than E17 and especially Gnome's WM.

 

[Bateluer]

OP, for less than 30 dollars, you can upgrade the RAM to 2GBs. Will make things much smoother.

 

[wirednuts]

my n330 netbook with 2gb ram and 8gb of readyboost runs win7 pro really well. screw xp, THAT os is slow.

 

[lxskllr]

If you try Enlightenment make sure you try E16, E17 is significantly heavier. I still run E16 at work because it does things better than E17 and especially Gnome's WM.

Thanks for that tip. That made things easier. Near as I can tell, E17 has to be installed from source, but E16 is in the repos. I have it installed, but I have no idea what I've got so far :^D Looks like I need to spend some time configuring. I already like it better than LXDE, which I installed last night. At least E16 has possibility. LXDE is just plain crappy. Most of the weight of Gnome, without the features :^/

 

[VampyrByte]

I had thought of just Upgrading to 2GB of RAM and possibly getting an SD card to use for ReadyBoost. But its £40-£50 by the time its finished which is a rather costly upgrade.
I am definitly going to give Enlightenment a try on top of Ubuntu. Will be a good bit of fun either way!

 

[JackMDS]

ReadyBoost is a waste of money.

If you use Win 7 on Netbook you need 2GB.

When using XP, 1Gb or 2GB does not make any difference.

Win 7 with 1GB provide sluggish performance with the Netbook.

With 2 GB the functional performance of Win 7 Stater is like Win XP on many Netbooks.

 

[lxskllr]

Small update from my experience FWIW...

LXDE - Crappy interface, and it polluted my Gnome install with it's applications(I installed the whole Lubuntu suite). It's been completely uninstalled, but Synaptic doesn't understand the meaning of "Completely remove". I still have a bunch of LXDE apps in my system, and when it boots, it says it's loading Lubuntu :^/

E16 - Lots of potential, but I don't feel like putting the effort into it. The effort wouldn't be so bad, but I have visions of upgrading the system, and having to do it all over again. Also, it boogered up my Gnome install, and the window manager migrated to that, even when picking Gnome as my DE. It still isn't completely right, and my screenlets are AWOL. Might be a good time to try Conky, so all isn't lost.

Final thoughts - Gnome really isn't that heavy. It's got a lot of features, and the application footprint can be customized from default Ubuntu. There's lighter alternatives to some of the heavy programs, and with Gnome as a base, it's as light as anything(usable) out there.

 

[Nothinman]

Small update from my experience FWIW...

LXDE - Crappy interface, and it polluted my Gnome install with it's applications(I installed the whole Lubuntu suite). It's been completely uninstalled, but Synaptic doesn't understand the meaning of "Completely remove". I still have a bunch of LXDE apps in my system, and when it boots, it says it's loading Lubuntu :^/

Changing the splash screen isn't exactly polluting and should have no adverse affects. Neither should leaving a few of it's apps installed.

E16 - Lots of potential, but I don't feel like putting the effort into it. The effort wouldn't be so bad, but I have visions of upgrading the system, and having to do it all over again. Also, it boogered up my Gnome install, and the window manager migrated to that, even when picking Gnome as my DE. It still isn't completely right, and my screenlets are AWOL. Might be a good time to try Conky, so all isn't lost.

I don't know how off the top of my head, but you can tell Gnome which WM you want to use and switching back to Metacity or whatever shouldn't be too hard. On Debian it adds a separate "Gnome with Enlightenment" option to GDM.

Final thoughts - Gnome really isn't that heavy. It's got a lot of features, and the application footprint can be customized from default Ubuntu. There's lighter alternatives to some of the heavy programs, and with Gnome as a base, it's as light as anything(usable) out there.

Yep, pretty much all of the people complaining about bloat in Gnome are looking in the wrong place. And if you're low on memory you'll have more issues with things like FF than Gnome.

 

[beginner99]

You can try jolicloud. it's a specialized ubuntu version for netbooks.

http://www.jolicloud.com/

It comes as either as a dual boot version ( I think it uses oracle vm stuff) or as a "normal" install. I suggest the vm version for testing it. I installed that version on my eeepc t91. runs a lot smoother than XP. For browsing it's fine and I think you should have no issue with your netbook.
Note: it detects your hardware. You really just have to run the installer. Updates are also auto-detected.

 

[VampyrByte]

I got Lubuntu installed at the moment. It is much faster than my old install and I am very pleased. I havnt tried using any different interfaces and stuck with the default so far. I tried the "netbook" edition of the Lubuntu interface. Which was very disappointing So I may try Jolicloud, it certainly looks very good. Although I never really liked the idea of having links to web pages on the desktop. I like to the keep the web in the web browser, as it were.

 

[beginner99]

Although I never really liked the idea of having links to web pages on the desktop. I like to the keep the web in the web browser, as it were.

makes it easier especially on tablets/touchscreens + you get more screen real-estate than running the same app in the browser directly. But I agree, it's just a gimmick and not that important.
But AFAIK you can run normal ubuntu compatible client/desktop applications. So it's not like you are locked into it.
I suggest you create a jolicloud account and don't use a facebook-login, because it always automatically post messages in facebook like when loging in and so on. Annoyed me a lot...

 

[MadScientist]

Running Win 7 Ultimate 32bit on my Dell mini 10v with 2Gb ram. Runs great. You definitely need to upgrade to 2Gb ram.

 

[ultimatebob]

Vista and Win 7 are way too wasteful with resources to make good netbook OS's, even the stripped Win 7 is too much bloat. I prefer XP. It came on my netbook but I havent seen them using it in a long time.
I'd recommend Linux if you dont have a copy of XP laying around.

As for keeping it smooth, I use effective, low-end apps like Chrome and Avira. Mine works great, in fact when my main computer died I hooked it up to my 1920x1200 monitor and it was a fine substitute for a whole week.

Really? I found that Windows 7 Home Premium runs just as well as Windows XP Home did on my Acer Aspire One. It's not a hot rod by any means, either... It only has a single core 1.6GHz Atom processor and 1 GB of memory.

 

[SimMike2]

An SSD would dramatically improve the performance of any netbook, but you would probably need Windows 7.

 

[shortylickens]

An SSD would dramatically improve the performance of any netbook, but you would probably need Windows 7.

No.
Even if the drive were only running in UDMA 4 or 5 mode it still doesnt matter. SSD's dont do anything to speed besides open up the bottleneck of that mechanical spinning disk. You dont need a special controller or anything to get the best performance out of them, because aluminum and glass hard drives were so horribly slow to begin with. Now we are finally getting the speeds we've been promised all these years with SATA 2 and 3, and fully using the UDMA 5 & 6 interfaces.

 

[jarplpn]

i have used xp for years and when i bought my new computer it has windows 7 and i find it bogs down easily.