As easy as Ubuntu

Ok, I'll have to admit.., I refused for quite some time to take Ubuntu Linux for a serious test-drive due to bad experiences with the distro while it was in it's alfa and beta-stages. But since then, Ubuntu has come a looooooong way. So, I decided I'd take Ubuntu 9.04 for a spin.

It's still kind of bleeding edge with regards to compositing and visual effects, but they do work out-of-the-box. And hey, if things work...why fix them? On compositing and the like, I consider compiz as an extraordinary piece of rendering-code, but I also think it's too unstable for everyday production-use.

Ubuntu's UI has undergone major modifications to better suit it's userbase requirements, and I like it :)

Ubuntu's updating and upgrading facilities have also been much improved, with the addition of a scanning-tool to determine if you have hardware-components that has alternative proprietary drivers available, and lets you activate them with simple mouseclicks.

Easy Peasy v1.5 (formerly Ubuntu Netbook Remix) is a distribution developed with netbooks and net-tops in mind.

Focused on low-power consumption and simple apps for simple tasks, it's actually a rather comprehensive collection of software compared to many other netbook-flavours.

Lightning fast and with an intuitive and stylish interface, it does what it sets out to do, and more!

My Asus Eee 900 netbook had Xandros installed by default, but this distro did not let me do the things I usually do on a Linux-workstation, like: programming, compiling, scripting, etc.

In addition to be very restrictive, it was also heavily modified from it's Debian codebase, and was thus very hard to customize and proved a challenge in adding new and unusual software to.

NetBook Linux

I've been testing and trying to install a few untraditional Linux-flavours on my Eee 900 PC netbook. But much to my dismay, a lot of the distros targeted at netbooks are highly unstable on my Eee 900 for some reason (the unstable one's are usually ubuntu-derived, which dosen't really surprise me that much, I've had problems with all the ubuntu-flavours I've tried, even on standard desktop PCs).

But, that doesn't discourage me at all. I'm still trying to find an ubuntu-derivative that WILL work on my Eee 900.

So, next up I'll try CrunchBang, a minimalistic and stripped-down netbook-distro that reminds me of Slackware for some weird reason(?). It utilizes an OpenBox-based right-click, simple gestures UI.

But.., shouldn't CrunchBang work, I'll try my last resort, namely Slax. I know Slax works out-of-the-box on just about anything x86-based, the only thing I don't like about it, is the way it handles installing additional software. It takes a rather high-level approach (package-modules) compared to Slackware's original approach (gzipped tarballs), and I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. I can say I haven't always had good experiences using this package-system, running into problems ranging from software that just won't run no matter how much I tweak configs after installing them, and even throwing the machine into a panic after installing slax-modules from the online respository.

Anyway, I'll come back to how it went, and if it went well, I'll post a walkthrough on how I did what I did to make it work.

Update friday oktober 16th:

CrunchBang didn't work, nor did any of the other various Ubuntu flavours and derivatives that I tried to install on my Eee900. I'm completely giving up Ubuntu and Debian flavours, they just give me headaches.

If the website of my next distro-attempt is up, I'll be trying "SlackEee".

Good'ol Slackware derivatives. What would I do without Slack?

Update monday november 2nd:

I made my choice. And yes, it fell on Ubuntu-derivatives :P I chose the Norwegian-developed distribution "Easy Peasy 1.5".

Here are my reasons:

• it installed without supervision.
• it has all the apps I need.
• it is not power-hungry.
• it is quick and intuitive.
• it is based upon major-distro's (Debian/Ubuntu).
• it has exponential security patching and regular update intervals (Ubuntu).
• it has source-repositories for easy compilation and a plethora of non-standard repo's online which alltogether offer a massive software collection.