Netbook Update

[ffutures]

I forgot to update on my netbook activities.

Regular readers will know that I reached a point where I could no longer work with the screen on my old HP Jornada 720, and got myself a 7" Packard Bell netbook instead. That was OK, but I still found myself straining a little to use the screen, and it possibly has the worst ergonomics of any netbook I've seen, with a ridiculous teeny touchpad and buttons that needs two-handed operation. I'll be selling it on eBay soon, incidentally, probably won't be terribly pricey.

I realised that the physical dimensions of the thing were actually bigger than some 9" netbooks, and decided to bite the bullet and get something better. I got lucky on eBay and ended up with an Asus eeepc 901 with the 16gb flash drive. It has currently has the current version of Ubuntu installed, but I think I'm going to install Mint Linux instead - I really hate the Unity desktop, and my experiences with Mint have mostly been pretty good, and what I've seen on line suggests it's the Linux of choice for most netbooks. Before I do that I was wondering how the original Xandros Linux for the 901 compares; I've not used it, and I'm not sure how good it is, though the fact that most people seem to install a different linux suggests I haven't missed much. I don't have a copy, though I'd imagine they're available, and it doesn't have a restore partition, but I'm sure that there are ways to get hold of it. Anyone got any experience with it?

Final question - is there any simple way to delete all personal data from a Mint linux install (on the old netbook) or should I just reinstall it?

Comments

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

I run Lubuntu on my netbook, it's Ubuntu with an LXDE desktop. Quite lightweight and runs happily in the 512MB memory I have. I get the advantages of a Ubuntu system but lose the hassles of Unity. LXDE seemed familiar right from the start.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

How do I get hold of that version?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Never mind, found it. What do they mean by "light applications" exactly?

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

It's the choice of applications delivered with the distro. They tend to go with the lightweight alternatives, such as Chromium rather than Firefox, Sylpheed instead of Thunderbird, Gnumeric & Abiword instead of Open Office or Libre Office. There is nothing to stop you installing the heavier-weight applications on it, in fact I have added Firefox, Thunderbird and Libre Office to mine, and they all work fine.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, that's not too bad. Thanks!

[pengshui-master.livejournal.com]

Even on my desktop for many purposes I prefer abiword/Gnumeric to oo,/libreoffice. They start up and shut downso much quicker.

The only downside I have is they not quite as good as reading some complex documents already saved in the microsoft format.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I really need full word compatibility, unfortunately.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've decided to go with Lubuntu - I'll just have to add Libre Office.

[pengshui-master.livejournal.com]

The Xandros stuff I've seen is old ancient and naff.

It seems to be based on ancient debian version. (Debian communitity distro Ubuntu is based on.) And then has a bunch of commercial extras added to make it 'easy to use'.

ravenrigan has one, she calls it the Russian camera[1] , and I think that partly due to the negative values of the bits Xandros has added to the install·.


[1] Remember , the old eastern European/Russian cameras you could buy in the 70/80s which were every so clunky - To her it reminiscent of those.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, I had a feeling I wouldn't want to go there. Thanks!