Quote:
Originally Posted by frabjous
For fast loading linux distros for netbooks, maybe look at xPUD or BrowserLinux which I think are geared towards running Firefox and (almost) nothing else. ( gOS may be similar.) I've never tried any of them, however.
There are also several linux distros designed mainly to be run from USB or similar which could probably achieve fast boot times, like Damn Small Linux, Tiny Core Linux, and Puppy (and variants like MacPup), which has already been mentioned. I think the smallest linux distro, which did boot insanely fast when I played around with it, is Slitaz, which does have a working web browser (Midori), but I really can't imagine trying to use for serious work. |
I've killed some time today playing around with some lightweight Linux distros. The test is whether or not I could load the thing on to a USB drive, boot from the USB with a short boot time (it needed to be noticeably shorter than my usual Ubuntu load time), and get online with a decent Web Browser, with sound working. Another trick is that I'm using my laptop in the Barnes and Noble cafe, and hence need wireless support out of the box, and can't require access to anything not on the USB. I'm sad to report that many of the above failed the test on my hardware.
The winners so far are xPUD, Puppy Linux, and
CrunchBang lite (based on Ubuntu), all of which passed. Using Crunchbang right now in fact.