Suggest Net/Notebook OS

[SteveRiley]

Kubuntu 12.10 was a big disappointment as it was too slow to be usable.

Did you try installing kubuntu-low-fat-settings?

[Jonas]

Wow - thanks for all advices - KFN to the rescue (as always)!

Bodhi looks interesting, especially since it's elementary and that'll be a new experience for me as well

Another friend called me yesterday and asked for advice with his notebook which ran "painfully slow with Win XP". I told him what I posted above and advised him to look for a LXFC or Xfcd distro, later he texted me and said that his old notebook was "running like #¤%&/ rocket" with Lubuntu. So I think I'll follow his and your advice here and dual with Bodhi and Lubuntu.

Thanks for the heads up on low-fat Kubuntu Steve, think I'll give that a try too, if it's not a keeper atleast for my own amusement

For the sake of consistency, for my friend, I think it'll be best to stick in the Deb/*buntu stream.

Thanks a bunch again!

B.R

Jonas

[PaulW2U]

Did you try installing kubuntu-low-fat-settings?

No, I didn't even think of it. :eek:

Anyway I was always intending to (re)-install Lubuntu on my netbook.

[sdfasfwes]

I encountered the similar problem last time. Good guys.

[Achaean]

If the value is not zero then you have PAE

If the processor hasn't pae extensions, you can't install *buntu based distros.
You have to go the Debian way.

SolydK has KDE and SolysX xfce.
Forks from mint debian based.
I have installed SolydK on an older computer and seems to work well.

Maybe antiX is another option (with fluxbox and icewm), but I have not tried it.

PS. Altough it is possible to install a *buntu based distro at non-pae system, you'll have to install the linux kernel manually every time.

[Jonas]

I know it's late in this thread but for light weight I can recommend Razor-QT.
http://razor-qt.org/

It's not I haven't yet had the time to finish install this dual boot machine, and return it. I have just recently moved to a larger (and cheaper!:cool: ) apartment and been busy with that. The other machine I installed for this guy is a MintKDE & Kubuntu dual boot, sticking with KDEish lightweight solution is welcome. I know about Razor-Qt but I have never tried it myself, and didn't think of it either. Will give it a spin when I get time. Thanks for the advice!

b.r

Jonas

[vw72]

It's not I haven't yet had the time to finish install this dual boot machine, and return it. I have just recently moved to a larger (and cheaper!:cool: ) apartment and been busy with that. The other machine I installed for this guy is a MintKDE & Kubuntu dual boot, sticking with KDEish lightweight solution is welcome. I know about Razor-Qt but I have never tried it myself, and didn't think of it either. Will give it a spin when I get time. Thanks for the advice!

b.r

Jonas

Since it is not too late, you should be able to run Kubuntu acceptably well on a 1GB atom netbook. You probably want to install the low-fat settings (I'm not on kubuntu right now, so I can't check the package name) and also turn off the desktop search and blur effect. Both the netbook plasma interface and the desktop plasma interface work well after minor tweaks to the system for Kubuntu, I have not run MintKDE, so I do not know about its performance on a netbook. (If you are going to run plasma netbook and you have a problem with freezes, remove the opendesktop applet from the config file and it will work (Bug #1066861)).

Since the user you are setting this up for is not very computer savvy, I would shy away from the ultra-light types of setups because they probably won't be functional enough for them. I have setup Kubuntu 12.10 (and 13.04) on a number of Asus netbooks with 1GB of ram for a number of people and it works very well, once the above settings are made.