Living with Ubuntu Netbook Remix
I purchased a refurbished Asus EEE Pc 701 SD in Ebay at a decent price. Considering that this model launched at almost 300 dollars, I am quite happy it. Nevertheless the version of Linux that came with it, an Asus based Xandros installation, felt quite dated even though it provided a good performance for the system. I decided to try Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), version 10.04 as a mean of updating the operating system.
The results have been mixed. There are things I liked compared with the Xandros bug as always, things that could improve.
Things that I like are:
- Applications work the way that they are supposed to do and takes advantage of the accelerated hardware on the 701.
- For the most part the use of the window maximizer proves to be effective on providing the needed real estate for many of the applications that are included in the distribution.
- Unlike the Xandros distribution, you can run executables off the SD card. In this way it increases the amount of space available to store programs.
- So far I have not got any issues with drivers. Many devices that were not working on the Xandros distribution work well in UNR.
Things that they deserve improvement are
- My biggest pet peeve with UNR is that they have forgotten those that have a 7 inches netbook. It seems that for the most part many of the applications have been tailored for a 9 inches display. If the current trend continues, many of the tablets that have been coming from Asia they use a 7 inch display. If this trends continues and if Ubuntu is serious on the emergent cheap tablet market, many of these applications need to be rethought for a 7 inches display.
- Evolution is useless on a 7 inch display. No amount of tweaking can make it to work. Thankfully thunderbird can be used as an email tool with the penalty of not been able to use Exchange. Being that using Exchange on Linux is an iffy proposition, it is really not a big loss.
- Maximus works well with Gnome, but so-so with other GUI toolkits. I tried to install the qGo client and I was not able to have the whole on view. I think it is because …
- For some odd reason, if the window is larger that the view, Maximus reinstates the windows decorations, making the application even more unusable. For instance, on Planner, I had to reduce the size of the icons to make it work well.
- OpenGL games need to be run in full mode, however extreme tuxracer does not work because it expects a larger window than the one provided by the 701. I presume that there is a workaround for it, but it does not work the way it is supposed to out of the box.
As you can see it has been a mixbag of good and bad, but I do not regret making the change.
