My eeePC loves Ubuntu Netbook Edition

I had bad experience with Ubuntu before when I tried to install it on my Compaq V3000 series laptop. You know, the overheating problem that activates the ACPI and then turns off my laptop? Otherwise, my notebook will burn. I mean really, the whole unit is freaking hot.

Of course, I know that it has something to do with the BIOS. But I’m also well aware that I fuck the BIOS update, my laptop will become an expensive paperweight. That’s too big a risk to take a chance. That, coupled with other problems like FarmTown and FarmVille issues, lead me to realize it’s just too painful to make the notebook usable. And so I had to put on Windows XP again. Well, that notebook is primarily used by my wife and FarmTown, FarmVille and Social City are just too important for her so I don’t really have a choice but to put back XP on it.

And so I am stuck with an underpowered netbook, an eeePC 1002HA(btw, it was originally for the wife but since it’s damn slow, she got back the notebook). It’s a pretty decent netbook until I open a lot of tabs on my browser and run netbeans on top of XAMPP. It’s crawling and I understand. It takes ages for Netbeans to start up and do I still need to say that it takes at least 90 seconds to start up the machine(with all the things I run on it)? But then again, the prospect of installing Ubuntu just doesn’t appeal me because of my earlier experience.

So when Ubuntu came up with Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly Ubuntu Netbook Remix) and got good reviews, I was persuaded to try again. To make the story short, I installed it (dual-boot mode) and surprisingly, I am now a happy man. I mean, really!

It boots fast, all done and usable in 24 seconds. Yes, that includes all the peripherals like sound, bluetooth and WiFi working! Ok, not as fast as the Macbook Pro but hey, this is a netbook with an underpowered Atom N280 processor with 2GB of memory as compared to Core2Duo of MBP. And guess what, Netbeans starts in a flash.

If all goes well, I might decide to ditch XP altogether and just install VMWare or VirtualBox for my Windows needs. More about this Linux adventure later.