Using Kubuntu on acer aspire one AOD270?

[Guest]

Thoughts on where to start looking for a good fit Linux OS? Got my wife a 10 inch aspire one netbook which came with Windows which is slow and prone to viruses.. I tried Ubuntu but the video card can't handle unity 3d and is having glitches with 2D. Here is what Priscilla would like on her small new aspire one D270 netbook Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz 1 MB ram .
A stable reasonably fast OS
1)A mail program that does a full address book and will import v cards- prefer thunderbird
2) A good word program. She likes Libre. not crazy about Abi
3) a music player that will transfer MP3's from ipod and play online radio
4) chromium
5) a simple photo program
6) maybe a skype type program

Kubuntu looks like it might do all this but any thoughts will be appreciated. Lubuntu?, Debian?, CentOS?

[Dutchman]

KDE does have a netbook version, I've never used it but I know it exists, and if you're a KDE guy you may want to check it out. You can turn off effects in regular KDE, kill akonadi and nepomuk and get a pretty zippy system that way, but it still might be a bit heavy for a netbook. I'd suggest perhaps downloading a few live CDs of some of the distros you think she might be interested in like Lubuntu or Xubuntu, maybe Debian or Bodhi Linux, and let her try them out on the CD for a while, see which one interests her.

For a mail program I think Thunderbird is your best choice. Though it is a bit heavy, it has the what you're looking for and is extensible. If she likes LibreOffice, then go with that. If you settle on a version of KDE then you might want to look at Calligra, but it has a lot of KDE dependencies and wouldn't be worth it without already using KDE. And if she's used to Libre (or MS Word) then Calligra will be quite different, it's more like Apple's Pages.

As to a music player, well I can't really help you there. I use VLC for everything, my music, web-radio, podcasts, videos, it's my one-stop media center. I've tried others like Banshee, Amarok, Clementine, etc., but always come back to VLC. I looked at it a minute ago, and I don't see anything for working with an iPod, though it may have a plug-in for that. I don't own one so I've never had reason to look.

Chromium, well that answers itself. It's heavy, but I haven't found anything better. Though if you need something lighter, I hear Midori is pretty good and fast.

Shotwell it probably one of the better light photo programs. It seemed pretty stable and fast when I played with it a while back. gThumb was another one that was good. Again, if you go with a KDE-based system, there's Gwenview, and it's about the best light photo manager you can find.

If you're looking for a light chat program, there's plenty of them, Xchat probably being at the top of the heap. If you need video chat support though, you're kinda stuck with Skype. I've had luck with Kopete on Google+ doing video, but the Skype plug-in requires Skype to be already running, so to me, what's the point? Might as well use Skype and save the megabytes.

If you or she might be interested in KDE for netbooks, here's a link.

[GreyGeek]

I bought my wife an Acer Aspire One 0D521. I installed Kubuntu 10.04. It ran slow. I purchased an additional 1GB of RAM from Amazon for, IIRC, $28. That did the trick. Her Acer is now very fast. Unlike many Acer One Aspire netbooks, the D521 has an access door on the back which allows one easy access to change what is in the two banks. Many AOA's require that the keyboard be removed so that a shield can be removed so that screws can be removed in order to loosen the back so it can be removed, exposing the back side of the mobo, where the RAM slots are. If that is your situation and you don't want to buy a special tool to remove the keyboard then creating a 1GB SWAP file may help.

[Guest]

Thanks for both of those replies. Both helpful. I was thinking of upping the ram and the program info is very helpful too.