A couple of evenings ago I slotted a spare hard drive into my ASUS EEE 1000H netbook, and installed the latest build of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a distribution of Linux purposely designed for small form factor computers. I was very, very impressed.
Everything worked immediately.
I didn’t have to configure anything.
It is FREE!
You can install thousands of application for it - and they are free too.
Here are a few representative screenshots to give you an idea what it looks/works like;
Desktop
The Ubuntu Netbook Remix window manager is deliberately simple, but given the use most netbooks are subjected to, it’s not a problem at all.
gPodder
Showing a typical application running - in this case a podcast download tool called gPodder.
System Monitor
Why can’t Windows system monitor be this good ?
Terminal
Proving that (just like Apple OSX), behind the surface lurks Linux…
Overall, I like Netbook Remix a lot. As a utility operating system, it’s fantastic. Of course it’s not as pretty or as polished as OSX or Windows 7, but given that all I had to do to get a perfect installation was plug a USB stick in and hit the power button, I’m almost laughing out loud.
You can see where Ubuntu are headed with the application install tools too - instead of the age old APT-GET interface you used to see in Ubuntu, there is now the “Ubuntu Software Center”, which reduces most software installs to a single click. The roadmap for the software center points directly to commercial applications being available in there (at the moment it’s all open source software)… App Store, anybody?
I’m guessing Ubuntu are racing to claim some ground before Google Chrome OS arrives - which will undoubtedly have integrations into the coming Google book store, Google music store, Google movie store, and so on…