Netbook compatibile productive distro

[Mikeo0302]

I currently have Peppermint OS installed on my netbook, which is great for netbooky things like being on the net. I'd like to keep it this way, but also want to use the netbook for productive matters, mostly to do with my work as a secondary school science teacher. Instead of just installing LibO or similar on peppermint, I'd love to keep it lightwieght and net-based and install a second OS to dual boot when I need it for more professional stuff.

I have used Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and UNR (which I really disliked) on the netbook before and all were pretty good. I'm wondering if debian would be worth a look?

Also, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not fussy between XFCE, GNOME, KDE, or maybe even OpenBox. Mint interests me, but I'm having some trouble with it on my desktop at the moment.

TL;DR: Want a distro for netbook exclusively for work-stuff, no preference of DE, not Mint.

[Oh well!]

I'm in education too and have found a netbook incredibly useful. A lot will depend upon what wi-fi card your netbook has and which distros support it - unless you want to compile from source (provided the source is available). Having spent more hours than I care to remember fiddling around trying to get things to work as I want in Linux, I tend to just go for the easiest option these days, which happens to be Ubuntu for my netbook. Everything works 'out of the box'. It's a bit boring, I wish it were Frugalware or something else, but I just can't be bothered with any fussing about. I even wrote a shell script for re-compiling the wi-fi driver in the past when I had Fedora installed, but I can't even be bothered with the small trouble of running the script any more.

So, my advice would be: take the easiest option, then enjoy the sunshine. Debian's support for netbook hardware is not as good as Ubuntu's, so I would stay clear myself. If your netbook is usually plugged into a power socket, try KDE's netbook 'activity': it's well designed. If you are usually running it on the battery, use Gnome or XFCE. However, running Lib O on Peppermint probably won't affect performance noticeably: just make sure it isn't preloading anything at start up.

[heiowge]

In education netbook user here too. I use Kubuntu (not netbook remix). Before that I used plain vanilla Ubuntu (switched to KDE after problems with Unity).

I find it works well for me, but I have a fairly powerful netbook (if there is such a thing), as opposed to the really light ones that first came out.

My old one (800mhz celeron, 512MB RAM, 2GB SSD, 7" screen) struggled with anything heavier than Lubuntu, and only has that on it because /var is on a separate 8GB SDHC card. My daughter uses it now to play angry birds through wine.

My current one is better (1.6 Atom, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, 8.9" screen, 90% scale keyboard), so manages full *Ubuntu better. I think if I still had a smaller keyboard like my old one, it'd have driven me batty by now.

[ajgreeny]

On my netbook I find Lubuntu to be the best distro I have used of the ubuntu family, which I now know and really like. It is fast and the DE does not get in the way of the applications running on it.

In short, it's plain, simple, fast and extremely good.

[shaddack]

I installed MeeGo 1.2 on my Asus Eee PC 1015. Works very well the interface designed to work on netbooks. MeeGo is also very net centric which I like.

I recommend that you to try it out!