What operating system for netbook? Tried XP/Ubuntu...

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dug987654

New Member
I have tried XP and Ubuntu on my netbook. I like the look and feel of Ubuntu, but with XP I get a hour to hour and half more battery (5hrs compared with 3.5~4hrs).

Whilst XP does everything I need, I find it looks/feels outdated now. Both operating systems run smoothly on my netbook, which is an Acer Aspire One (1.6Ghz Atom, 1Gb RAM and 120Gb HDD).

What operating system would you recommend for internet browsing, word processing etc.?

Thanks, Doug.
 
Use the XP if ya like it. Works fine and yes i have one. Cheap upgrade if possible would be max out the ram and call it a day. I have a Asus Eee and added another gig. Its done for me. Small and lightweight. good for what your using it for. Support for XP may be done now or soon will be though. Always took critical and security updates. Take most on the other computers.
 
Ubuntu is hell on batteries. It always has been.

My suggestion is Ubuntu Netbook edition, or look for Mint 11 in netbook flavor if you can find it. Mint is a lot more user friendly in my experience.

I would say Stay away from BG's poison if at all possible (not possible if gaming, but still)
 
I have the same Acer netbook which originally came with XP, 1G RAM and 160G HDD. I upgraded the RAM to 1.5G (max for the Acer), replaced the 160G drive with a 64G SSD and installed Win 7 Pro. It runs Win 7 very smoothly. I can't speak for battery life though as I never run mine on battery, where ever I take it there are outlets so I always plug it in.
 
I'd like to recommend Linux Mint. I had Version 9 on my laptop for some time and I always used that when I was on battery because it seemed to extend the battery life a lot more than Windows ever did.
 
OK, I'll give Mint a shot.

Is there any benefit in using the "lightweight LXDE desktop" over the GNOME version in terms of performance/battery life?

Thanks, Doug.
 
the lightweight desktops keep the computer from using as many resources. The less resources it uses, the less heat is created, and longer battery life.
 
I would definitely use LXDE over Gnome3. Gnome3 is terrible on battery life in general, while an LXDE desktop will require little more resources than Win98 if that (depending on your configuration) and I find it very functional.
 
If you want a nice user interface and low system requirements then use something with a KDE interface. Only using 300 MB of memory and it has a some pretty advance battery setting as well.
 
That is the opposite that I have heard. Back when Gnome 2 was the standard, KDE was heavier than Gnome. Not too sure how it stands up to Gnome though.

I would recommend using XFE or LDXE if you are going with the *buntu variants (Xubuntu Lubuntu respectively) Linux Mint is a great choice as well.

If you really want to go small look at Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux. Both are not as full featured as the others but they will not need nearly the resources.
 
Memory usage isn't necessarily a good indicator of processor-intensive a piece of software is. I've seen people install Gnome3 on Arch and still have a fully working desktop that uses less than 200MB memory, but it still is quite hard on the battery life.
 
salvage-this said:
That is the opposite that I have heard. Back when Gnome 2 was the standard, KDE was heavier than Gnome. Not too sure how it stands up to Gnome though.

I would recommend using XFE or LDXE if you are going with the *buntu variants (Xubuntu Lubuntu respectively) Linux Mint is a great choice as well.

If you really want to go small look at Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux. Both are not as full featured as the others but they will not need nearly the resources.
Click to expand...

DSL is a bad recommendation, from what I have read it is no longer having any support, pretty much a dead OS.
 
Gnome and KDE have always been known as "heavy" window managers/desktop environments.

I'd suggest peppermint as a OS to use, just because it's pretty full featured like Ubuntu/Mint/etc but it uses a pretty lightweight system. Another choice would be lbuntu. I personally use Crunchbang linux on my laptop, but that's for a different reason. It is really light on resources, and there are a lot of tweaks that can be done to save battery life.
 
salvage-this said:
I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing that out.
Click to expand...

Yeah and sad too if I may say, it had a lot of potential and a decent look for being as small as it was. I would say Puppy Linux would be my next pick for extremely light OS but it reminds me of Windows in a sense with a lot garbage pre-installed but if I may say Mac Puppy has a nice user interface.
 
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