Most folks buy a netbook and treat it like an appliance - just plug it in and go with whatever is already installed on it. Certainly, when the Asus Eee PC 700 series were released, there was little capacity for choosing an OS as the hardware was quite limited. The tweaked version of Xandros was good enough for most users.

Now that netbooks have more storage and faster processors, the opportunity to choose your own OS has become a reality. That's been coupled with a huge effort within the open source community to create optimised Linux distros that don't overburden netbooks with useless junk.

Choosing an OS for your netbook can be confusing. Our advice - if you're happy with the OS your netbook came with then stop reading now. If you're looking to get a little more from your netbook then there a few things to think about.

If you've got an older netbook running the slower ULV Celeron CPU, and not the more recent Atom powerplant, then some flavour of Linux will be the way to go. Although some early netbooks shipped with Windows XP we've found that Linux distros tend to deliver better performance. Plus, Open Office provides excellent compatibility with Microsoft Office but doesn't use as much precious disk space.

Easy Peasy is a version of Ubuntu that changes the user interface so that you can start your netbook up and be ready to work almost instantly. This OS was originally called Ubuntu-Eee but the creators gave it a new name more in keeping with its aim of providing an easy to use, customisable Linux for the netbook crowd.

gOS is made for those that live, breathe and work in the cloud. Although this distro comes with Open Office 3.0, it provides quick links on the Mac-like icon bar running across the bottom of the screen to many of Google's online services. For Mac users growing impatient with Apple's non-release of a netbook it's a snap to make gOS look like OS X.

Moblin is another Linus distro that's getting plenty of attention. Originally pioneered by Intel, it's now been handed over to the Linux Foundation. Moblin's not for older netbooks as it requires an Atom processor. It's optimised for small screen with large text and icons. Be aware that it's still in its early stage of development and not yet ready for the mainstream.

By Anthony Caruana

Comments(1):

1. Links?

   While I can search for them, perhaps links to the best sites for each suggested OS would be quite useful. Also some info on how the various OS's are for tasks netbooks are commonly used eg web browsing, watching videos, listening to music etc

   Thursday, February 04, 2010 Peter