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I want a basic machine to do some Internet browsing, email, Twitter/Facebook, and to learn C/Python on. I would prefer to keep it under $300 and therefore I'm looking at a netbook. Can anyone recommend a netbook that has hardware well supported by Ubuntu? |
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If you can live with the small screen on a netbook, anything will do. You may even think about getting one of the older Asus models with SSD-disk. These are cheap and rugged. I'm running Ubuntu Netbook Edition on a Asus 901, and it provides mail, browsing, text processing, 2D-cad, photomanagement and a few other activities like viewing movies while traveling, extracting photos from my cellphone via bluetooth and generally helping me out in situations away from home. Asus claims 8-hour battery life, which is not true - i'll get 5 hours or so, but i've turned on all the eyecandy i can find and wlan is always on. But nonetheless, it has revolutionized my computing experience. Knowing that from opening the lid and hitting space, it takes me 5 seconds flat to get productive. I'm telling you - it's blisteringly fast! And when i'm done, just closing the lid will put the machine to sleep again. This has brought computing to a new level. Example; ever been watching a movie and wanting to know this or that about e.g. an actor, but didn't want to go through the paces of firing up your slo-mo-stationary PC in the next room to search for facts on the 'net? No more. Just reach for the sleeping netbook... I haven't had mine shut down for the last month or so - i just top up the battery every other day. As stated above, the Asus 901 sports an SSD-disk offering 16 GB of storage. Sure, but i kinda like the cute little WinXP that lives there, so i've popped an 8GB micro-SD card in the machine and had my Ubuntu live there. Works like a charm :) I cannot understand why anyone would ever think of putting a 160 GB mechanical harddrive in a netbook. It's not needed, it's powerhungry and it's fragile. All wrong! So: My recommendation would be to get a Asus 901 and put Ubuntu Netbook edition on it. Everything works out of the box! I've even installed Skype on it and had video+audio work - just like that. Don't like the 901? Grab an Asus 10"-model. Or an Acer-thing. Or a Lenovo. Just make sure it's not all-new on the market, has been sold in large quantities and that it features 'all-day-computing'. Then, chances are that Ubuntu Netbook edition will fit right in and 'just work'. |
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I have a 1201n EEE PC running 64 bit Lucid and its the most pain free Linux experience I've ever had. Cost about $400. Good battery life and generally a nice clean experience. Only thing Id say is its not great for development ... just a bit too slugish and you'll want 8 times the screen space for development! (but those remarks will be common to all netbooks I reckon ... better off getting a desktop for that). |
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Ubuntu Netbook Edition on just about any netbook. I've been running it on my Asus EeePC 1000HE flawlessly for months now. I hack Scheme, Google Go, and Ruby in Vim on it, can run Eclipse but almost never do. The usual email + social networking works fine too. UNE is optimized for Atom processors, and designed to maximize the available screen real estate of small netbooks. Hardware Compatibility List here. |
