Although there is a website that claims “It’s better with Windows”, we all know that it is not better with it. The open source world came into the scene and released a perfect distribution for the netbooks that have small screens. The Ubuntu people have released Eeebuntu, which is an out of the box experience for Asus Eee series netbooks. But the system runs on many other netbooks; it is not restricted only to Eee PCs.
Eeebuntu comes in three releases: Standard, Netbook Remix (NBR) and Base.
- Standard is the “standard” Ubuntu installation. It delivers almost the same desktop experience that you got used to, including the Compiz effects.
- Netbook Remix is tailored for the small screens and the desktop is arranged in a tabbed environment so as to provide easy and fast access to your documents and programs.
- Base is a stripped down version of the Standard and NBR releases. Many of the programs such as Compiz, additional language packs, office and media applications are not present with the installation to save space. You have the option to install them later depending on your needs and hard disk size.
Having looked them all, I recommend the NBR for the netbook users. The tabbed interface is easy and uncluttered and you can access all of your applications easily. I am seriously considering it to use with my desktop computer.
You may ask what are the differences between Eeebuntu and Ubuntu. Eeebuntu uses a different Linux kernel (called array kernel) and it is tweaked to have all the special keys, functions and features to work In other words, you save time by avoiding searching for information on the Internet, configuring your kernel modules, running into configuration problems and trying to fix the stuff that doesn’t work.
