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How to choose the best Linux distro for laptops

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4wd:
Linpus Lite as came standard on the Acer Aspire One AOA110 was fairly speedy even on the dog of a SSD they had in them.

iphigenie:
Some less known distributions I have liked on netbooks and old laptops:

- Slitaz. Although it takes a little hack to install from a USB key if you have no CD. Very well done slick distro (wireless not so robust without work at getting drivers, eg: broadcom. note: this happens on all ubuntu, redhat and debian based distros too, on my hardware. none pick up the wifi)

- PClinuxOS has several light/minimal versions with openbox, lxde, xfce (even a basic kde or gnome but you'd have to pick-and-add tools)

- Salix is very beginner friendly and has a LXDE and an XFCE version - this is one distro that comes with a nice "how to start"

- Trisquel - amazingly resilient with working wifi out of the box on many machines where other more mainstream distros fail to work


PS: Meego is top on my list to try to use and like, because they I can get a N900 and have the same stuff on my computers and my phone and that is a very attractive thought :)

Deozaan:
I gave the first four I mentioned a try. Here are my impressions:

xPUD: I ran it from USB thumb drive which was fast and easy but I couldn't figure out how to get my wifi to work. It also seemed to forget everything when I rebooted, losing all settings and customization. :down:

Arch Linux: Won't install from USB. I used UNetbootin to transfer the ISO onto a bootable USB drive, but installation failed and kicked me out to the command line. The error message sounded like it couldn't find my hard drive. :(

Joli OS: I used the .exe file to install alongside Windows. It works as advertised. Even the WiFi works from the get-go. An interesting Cloud OS. It does have a couple of strange problems installing or uninstalling a few programs. I think I still don't want it as my main OS on my netbook.

MeeGo works really well off a USB drive and boots fast! It's pretty cool, too. I need to play around with it some more, but it still seems to be missing something(s).


I can't speak for Arch Linux, since I couldn't even get it to work, but the other three make me feel limited. I feel like I don't have the freedom to install whatever I want and tinker around with stuff. They feel restricted and limited in that sense.

I don't necessarily want a Cloud OS. Is there an OS that has all the abilities of something like Ubuntu but is really light on resources? Like a vLite for Ubuntu. :-D Maybe I need to look into Tiny/MicroCore and DSL...

I just want my machine to feel snappy. This thing is exponentially more powerful than my old 386/66. Why does it feel slower?

I'll look into Linpus Lite and a few of the ones you mentioned, iphigenie. Thanks for the suggestions!

I noticed I have 22 GiB of Linux Distro ISOs in my download folder...  :-[

Edvard:
To be fair, a Netbook is by design a rather limited machine, and the various distros targeted for the platform are doing their best to fit in the smaller package, and so some things do end up more or less missing.  :(

Actually, this post says Debian proper works pretty well, and then you'll have the benefit of the APT package management system and the vast Debian repositories:
http://duopetalflower.blogspot.com/2010/02/debian-squeeze-on-netbook-uses-less.html

You could also use the magical "alternative-to-kernel-patch" speedup hack and see how she goes:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=24650.0

iphigenie:
To be fair, a Netbook is by design a rather limited machine, and the various distros targeted for the platform are doing their best to fit in the smaller package, and so some things do end up more or less missing.  :(

Actually, this post says Debian proper works pretty well, and then you'll have the benefit of the APT package management system and the vast Debian repositories:
http://duopetalflower.blogspot.com/2010/02/debian-squeeze-on-netbook-uses-less.html
-Edvard (March 13, 2011, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---

If you know a distribution well, then just about any distribution that allows you to build up from a minimal install will work, and is a worthy approach since you already know the distro and the community. Gentoo, arch, Debian, Slackware (being a contrarian that is what I tend to use :D ) (I would not try this with any of redhat, suse or fedora as I have never had any luck getting any of these to give me what i would consider a minimal install)

The big challenge with that approach is figuring out
- the windowing/desktop environment
- a good mix of apps that fit well together and with the libraries of your chosen environment (qt, gtk, etc.)

that is a lot of research and figuring out (and I always end up giving up after I realise I have just messed up the mix by picking an app that has added half of KDE or Gnome or both!)

This is where I think that slitaz, pclinux0S and salix, for example, have "pre-made" a set of choices. Salix has access to everything in slackbuilds, and pclinuxos has a very large repository. Slitaz has "recipes" for a lot less, but it is easy to create one for a lot of software (even I managed) once you understand the process.

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