DIY Netbook Linux There are a variety of netbook distros out there, but you can have a little fun creating your own.
You can chose any distro but my favourite is, of course, Ubuntu. The 9.04 release is particularly well-suited to netbooks because it not only works well on most of them, but includes the ultra-quick boot-up technology that will probably mean the desktop appears in about 25 seconds of powering-up. This removes the need to hibernate or suspend the computer each time you've finished with it, which also removes the need for a large swap partition because this is where the hibernate file is stored (my Dell Mini 9 only has a 4GB SD disk, for example, and has 2GB of RAM, so a swap partition is simply impossible). By selecting to manually partition during installation, you can avoid setting-up a swap partition and simply create one large root partition. This is extremely useful if your netbook has a small hard disk (i.e. 4GB or less). Ubuntu will warn you this is a potentially bad thing, but will let you continue. When you boot into your new installation, you can create a single swap file, just like with Windows. This will live in the root partition. Using a swap file in preference to a swap partition won't allow your computer to hibernate, but it will otherwise act just like a standard swap partition.
Full Story: DIY Netbook Linux - PCWorld.co.nz
You can chose any distro but my favourite is, of course, Ubuntu. The 9.04 release is particularly well-suited to netbooks because it not only works well on most of them, but includes the ultra-quick boot-up technology that will probably mean the desktop appears in about 25 seconds of powering-up. This removes the need to hibernate or suspend the computer each time you've finished with it, which also removes the need for a large swap partition because this is where the hibernate file is stored (my Dell Mini 9 only has a 4GB SD disk, for example, and has 2GB of RAM, so a swap partition is simply impossible). By selecting to manually partition during installation, you can avoid setting-up a swap partition and simply create one large root partition. This is extremely useful if your netbook has a small hard disk (i.e. 4GB or less). Ubuntu will warn you this is a potentially bad thing, but will let you continue. When you boot into your new installation, you can create a single swap file, just like with Windows. This will live in the root partition. Using a swap file in preference to a swap partition won't allow your computer to hibernate, but it will otherwise act just like a standard swap partition.
Full Story: DIY Netbook Linux - PCWorld.co.nz
