which distro / best distro / distro comparison

I have gone through a lot of distro's since my linpus died on me I'll share my experience and try to put some useful information within this post.
My aao has a slow ssd and only 512MB ram, not exactly the best preforming model. Nevertheless I use it quite often and I 'm not a patient man, so performance has to be acceptable for me.

1. Linpus (native acer)
I had it tweaked to the maximum and that worked for me, until it crashed. :evil:
fast booting 15-20s
memory use (i believe) 350MB (150MB free)
points (for me) 7/10

2. moblin v2
nice showcase, but even harder to install apps than linpus .... clearly not for every one
fast booting 10s
memory use ??? (forgot to check)
4/10 :ugeek:

3. ubuntu 8.04 + nbr (default gnome) (unr-1.0.1.img)
had high hopes for this one, but it was completely impossible to work with, lagging even when I typed text in firefox or opening more than 3 tabs
boot time : 1min30 - after kiku kernel and major tweaking 45s
memory use out of the box 470MB (50MB free) after a lot of modding 80MB free --> start firefox and the next app may crash your system or you'll have to start swapping
3/10 (totally impossible to work with, might be better if you put 1GB of ram into your AAO) :cry:

4. ubuntu 8.04 + nbr (switched to xfce)
it was a little bit better, however the nbr had some window display issues and response with firefox was still very sloppy.
boot time still 45s
memory use 350MB (150MB free) - at least it was workable
6/10 (boot times, display issue, memory use)

5. linpus lite 9.4 official
at first sight it ran fairly well, however the wlan wasn't supported.
but when I played a bit around, I noticed that it runs on kernel 2.6.20, which is from aug 2007 = ancient
0/10 (bad hardware support, no specific forum so no support from that side either) :?

6. fedora 10 xfce spinoff
I had never used fedora before, but to my surprise it runs damn well.
I followed this guide to the letter: http://jorge.fbarr.net/2008/11/10/fedora-10-on-the-acer-aspire-one/

This fedora really puts the fun back into computing and feels very vivid even on such a light system. o
in this guide there are only 2 things missing, firefox cache disable (can be found on this forum) and autologin, a must have for me

boot times : 25s to graphical login (autologin yet to configure) could be better but seems acceptable to me.
memory use 180MB (which leaves an astonishing 320MB of free ram)
glx gears : 390fps, xfce compositing enabled
9/10 (no 10, because it has no specific netbook interface) :mrgreen:

Have some fun with this post and share your info when you run another distro

 

i too have tried lots of distro's apart from those you have already covered i also tried

sidux
reasonably fast boot (37secs) to graphical prompt after some tweaking (numbers from bootchart, hardware support isn't all there yet and it's slow in actual use, even on my A150 120gb hd and 1.5gb ram.

opensuse 11.1
didn't like this one from the get go so i didn't perciveer with it so i wont comment other than to say the usual problems were there.

Fedora10 XFCE spin
this one like the previous poster i like a lot, all hardware works on first boot, though the sound might require some pulseaudio tweaking (thread in the fedora subforum that details this), no wireless traffic indicator light (but you can recompile the ath5k module with a small patch and it works perfectly, also these changes will be in the main kernel soon) and both cardreaders work with sd cards perfectly, suspend and hibernate work with no problems and it is very fast in day to day use. boots to graphical login screen in 27secs (numbers from bootchart)

i m currently setting up linux mint 6 xfce on a partition on my one, i'm not really keen on ubuntu derivatives but i try to keep an open mind when using distro's for the first time

for just now F10 XFCE is my reccomended distro for the AAO, and as most know fedora is also one of the main pioneers when it comes to new things in linux so your always able to try out the new toys lol

in the future i will be trying out the Fedora11 xfce and lxde spins and also the F10 lxde spin (the beta of Fedora11 is released tuesday 31st of march 09, so if you want to get involved in helping squash bugs feel free to download and report your findings) also i'll try out kuki when the release their final (they are on Kuki2 Alpha just now, or kuki 3 pre-release 1.6 but tbh i kinda don't like using ubuntu derivatives, i prefer straight debian over what ubuntu has done to it, but that's my personal preference).

well that's me for now, anyone else want to share their findings?

 

Yes, there's already a nice discussion going on about good distros for the little One here:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12216

Linpus lite 9.4, btw, is not suited for the Acer netbooks and the Intel Atom I read somewhere. The distro is not meant for anything I guess, just like the Linpus website.

 

nope that's a thread on how fast and great sidux is, which after testing i can safely say it is neither

as for linpus, well the less said the better lol

phil

 

Way to express your experiences truth

Sidux is perfectly fine. I don't understand your experience tbh, I have the same AAO as you, except I with only 1 GB ram (no upgrade), and I never had any of your issues. I suppose there's the whole familiarity aspect too, I came from a ubuntu/debian background...

Each to his own though

 

Happy Harry

Once again you are comparing how sidux runs on your A150 with a hard drive, and this is a little unfair as I can categorically state that sidux is one heck of a lot faster than Fedora 10 on the ssd drive with 512 meg memory, now perhaps on your machine this is not the case, but lets have like for like eh?

I tried Fed 10 and didnt like the speed or the size of the icons or the amount of space an app was taking up on the screen and it was damn slow!

Perhaps we should have a separate thread for what runs better on what machine? but it would take some pretty intensive testing !!

I have tried just about the lot! and sidux is the one for me!

One happy user here with sidux and thats for sure!!!

 

well to me my experiences are the truth

the familiarity was not a problem as i run debian as my desktop distro for a few years before returning to fedora (debian is nice and stable but it's only that way because it stays way behind the development curve), i just found sidux to be slower to boot and slower in actual use compared to F10-xfce.

as i said before if we all liked the same things the earth would be a boring place

phil

 

well for the size of icons and size of windows you need to set the dpi to a usable size (just like you did with sidux) and also make sure your running the correct screen resolution @ 1024x600 (which vga=788 @ 800x600 isn't correct )

also the thing is that anything that runs quick on your stock A110 should run quicker on my modded A150, the only slight advantage you have is faster read speeds from the ssd, but that won't account for much difference in usage.

also after following an advanced guide on setting up sidux madwoolything only managed to get sidux to boot at 39 secs to login prompt (see here >> viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12216&start=30#p79167 ), i managed slightly better at 37 secs but that's still not close to the 29 secs i have with f10 xfce.

perhaps you were all impressed when running it from ram and have convinced yourself the speed is still there now it's running from the drive, or maybe you are shill sidux debs trying to boost your distro's community, or maybe you just don't like fedora, i don't know? all i know is that in my testing sidux wasn't what most in that thread have claimed, heck even after i pointed this out one or two of those on the bandwagon realised they were caught up in the spin and realised it wasn't as fast

so like i said the last time don't take it so personally as it's only a distro, it's not like i'm dissing you wife or kids so no need to jump to it's defence when i post my findings, or i might just start following your posts and posting how bad i found it after you post your findings

phil

 

Hey now, man, you're talking about me here (I think) hehe. Please don't refer to me as being on a bandwagon -- you can say I was on the REO Speed Wagon, that's a different story then.

No, seriously, let Phil have his own opinion. We all have different expectations and wishes for any given operating system. I like Sidux, btw, but it was no way near as fast as I initially thought. To me #! CrunchBang is faster. And I'm sure Happy Phil has wonderful experiences with Fedora too. In the end of the day, we all have a choice with Linux distros so why not be happy for each others choices instead and learn from each other and perhaps even get inspiration!? Can't fight this feeling of being able to choose operating systems freely.

 

csmo

Couldnt agree more the choices that Linux gives us is fantastic! and its everyone to their own at the end of the day. Your happy with Crunchbang, I too tried it and found it quite impressive but would have liked more features probably cause I am getting lazy in me old age its the same when using xfce it doesnt have the ease of use that kde or gnome has built in. I used to think that xfce is always going to be faster than either gnome or kde but this is not the case with sidux as kde flys along, and you have all the stability and feature of a more complex system at your disposal. This for me makes things easier and faster in itself as you are not always adjusting things, simple things like the icons in xfce that are always on rectangular backround and the panel colour are not so easy to change, yes they can be altered to ones liking but not without messing around in the file system! this is fine if thats what you like doing however, but Ive been there and done that and give me a click and point solution anyday

As for Phils threat about following up my posts and references to my wife and kids well thats all getting a little juvenile.

His comment about his machine should be faster as it has a hard drive fitted is simply not true ssd drives are MUCH faster being read from than a hard drive and if the operating system is setup to do less writing to the disk then the ssd version WILL be faster.

Once again its everyone to their own, Phils happy with Fedora your happy with Crunchbang, and me well I dont need to say what I am happy with do I??

 

Hi
I tried most of those Os's. I did quite like Sidux as it was the only one that worked with my wifi until I found Crunchbang
http://crunchbanglinux.org/
this is my choice by far. 40secs boot time. Everything working although mic was a little figity and you have to edit some stuff if you want to add installed software to the menu but Im a nube and did it all ok

I hope Moblin gets good though. I want a 10 sec boot time

remainz

 

a 40 second boot is nothing to boast about

phil

 

I would be happy with boot times around 40 seconds for now. I own the D150 (Atom N280) model and for some sad reason I cannot use any of the modified AAO kernels. I just get a black screen during boot up with a initramfs error or something and then nothing. Bloody annoying when I was used to shorter boot times with my old 110L thanks to the special AAO kernels.

with Jaunty on the D150 I have boot times around 50 seconds after tweaking and disabling start-up programs. That's the only bad thing I can say about Jaunty at the moment. Otherwise it's a great distro. Ubuntu's best so far for me and my Acer One.

 

Hmmm, I timed my Crunch Bang boot and it took 20 seconds till the login screen and after logging in it took another 5 seconds for wireless to connect. A total of 25 seconds. I did however follow the guide to install Crunch Bang with the SickBoy kernel, which boots quicker and makes everything work optimally, even the wifi LED light works.
The following how-to explains everything including the SickBoy kernel install.
http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/aspireone

 

Hello. Just joined the forum, but definitely been reading for a while (about 4~5 months since I've had my AAO). I've upgraded my AAO to 1.5GB and 500GB HD. I'm running #! 9.04.01 with the SB 2.6.29.1.20090414 kernel. For me Linux is not just an OS, it is a hobby, so I enjoy "tweaking" my system (usually until it breaks, then I start over). But of course, I always backup my data. I have been using #! for about 3~4 months, and after following all the tips, tricks, and tweaks available on different forums, and upgrading from 8.10 to 9.04, I am very happy with my system. Where XP took @ 400MB ram with the system up and wireless connected, #! currently uses about 72MB. Right now with the system running, wireless connected, I have open Thunderbird (mail and RSS feeds) and Firefox (with 3 tabs open) and I'm using @ 193.5MB ram. -Cheers
edit - just updated to Sarvatt's 2.6.30-rc3-atom kernel. Everything still working.

 

What the devil is #! 9.04.01?

 

Crunchbang Linux

 

Yes. #! is Crunchbang Linux, based on Ubuntu, light.

 

Were you like me surprised about the version?
I don't think that version is out yet. But may be via update from 8.10.

Grtz,

 

Yes, I had #! 8.10. I did an update to Jaunty 9.04, then ran the crunchbang-installer-9.04.01.sh test script. I just updated to Sarvatt's 2.6.30-rc3-atom kernel yesterday and everything seems to be working great.