help me chose a distro for my netbook

[mamamia88]

can someone reccomend me a good non ubuntu distro for a netbook that preferably uses gnome? was thinking of open suse what do you think

[NightwishFan]

OpenSUSE has paid special attention to netbooks in it's latest release. Other than that I would recommend something lightweight such as Debian.

[mamamia88]

ok i tried debian once and it wouldn't let me install it because it couldn't detect dvd drive which of course there isn't one. is there a workaround to that?

[snowpine]

Why not Ubuntu, just curious? :)

I recently installed Fedora 12 (with Gnome) on one of my netbooks, and I have to say I'm impressed.

[mamamia88]

i don't want to use ubuntu because i tried karmic on it before and it kept locking up on me

[NightwishFan]

This tutorial is for an Acer netbook, but most of it should be valid in your case. If you choose to go with OpenSUSE, the community there are excellent as well, though you can still ask your questions here.

[mamamia88]

um sorry if this is a stupid question but what tutorial?

[NightwishFan]

I am sorry I must have deleted the link when I edited something:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianAcerOne

In general disregard anything that isn't related to the installation.

[mamamia88]

dang open suse won't boot from unetbootin created usb stick. stupid error saying can't find dvd drive

[Dougie187]

It might help to know what kind of netbook you have. That way other people who use the same one might be able to tell you what distro they use.

One thing that I have heard of, is easypeasy, though I don't use a netbook, and I think it's better for eeepc's but I'm not sure. It might be worth a look though.

Also, I think it's ubuntu based.

[mamamia88]

it's a samsung n130

[NightwishFan]

This may sound odd, but do you have it set to boot from USB? Or does this error occur after it tried to boot?

[mamamia88]

no it boots from usb just fine but after scanning for dvd drives it says some kind of error rebooting in 20 seconds

[Swagman]

/me scratches Samsung n130 off shopping list

(I'm waiting for an ARM netbook actually)

[NightwishFan]

The lockups are not unheard of, but the bug report says a patch is already available. As for the DVD error, I do not know. What is the exact content of the error message?

[mamamia88]

don't remember the error message i'm moving on to next distro to try in sabayon

[NightwishFan]

Other distributions with the 2.6.31 kernel will likely have this issue if more than one has already.

[mamamia88]

Other distributions with the 2.6.31 kernel will likely have this issue if more than one has already.

you have any suggestions? i have about an hour before my first class and at least want to get an os running i can always change it later.

[NightwishFan]

I can only think of something older like Ubuntu 8.04 or Debian Stable. If Ubuntu 9.10 boots, perhaps you can make enough use of that from live USB, until later.

[mamamia88]

nothing boots i had a dualboot between windows 7 and ubuntu and i deleted the ubuntu partition screwing up the bootloader so i'm just starting over and need a distro to put on there

[NightwishFan]

Does 7 work? I am just worried you will need it soon. We can help you when you have more time. If you get the exact wording of the message I can possibly search for an answer.

[mamamia88]

i already formatted the drive i just want to get an os on there now so i can worry about gettinig wifi working over break

[NightwishFan]

I could not find a review/tutorial for your specific netbook. Perhaps try an older version of Ubuntu and see if you can get it booted. Or you can try Puppy Linux, which is a fast system that runs entirely in RAM.

[mamamia88]

think i'm just gonna go with 8.04 and upgrade to 10.04 in april

[BryRidesThePenguin]

The only distro to work flawlessly on my HP mini 110 is Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Alpha 3.

I had networking/sound problems with other distros.

[michaelzap]

I would give Eeebuntu 4 a try. It's still in beta, but I plan to start using it as soon as I have time to install it. Despite the name, it's based on Debian and not specific to Eee PCs (previous Eeebuntu versions were Ubuntu-based and Eee-focused).

Cruchbang is also excellent if you like OpenBox (not everyone does).

There's a Debian with LXDE download available on the LXDE site. I haven't tried it but I'd like to. LXDE is really coming along, and Debian is far speedier than Ubuntu on limited hardware.

[chucky chuckaluck]

doesn't xandros have netbook edition?

[cleverusername]

Hello,

Sorry for reviving a seemingly dead thread, but I installed the 10.04 Beta on my Samsung N130 this afternoon using the Fedora USB creator in Windows and apart from the webcam, it seems to work perfectly once I got the wifi working.

If you need any help getting anything working on your N130, I'm no Linux genius but I'd gladly help if I could!