During the school year we ran a pilot to see if Ubuntu would be a feasible choice for the OS on our Netbooks.  Ubuntu did fine as expected but using OpenOffice did not.  I had the students take a survey regarding their experience with the Netbooks and most had no problem with using Ubuntu.  In fact, they told me what I had projected all along and that is that the OS is irrelevent.  The students need a device to get them on the Internet and how they get there doesn’t matter.

Fast forward to now and the release of Windows 7 RC1 and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix.  The Netbooks we ordered are Samsung NC10 that came with Windows XP Home.  Vista does not run on Netbooks, it hardly runs period.  I put Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex on the Netbooks and used a tutorials from the Linux on the Samsung NC10 to customize the OS to work with the netbook.

This first showdown is installation.  You can purchase netbooks with Ubuntu Netbook Remix preloaded (not sure if it is 9.04) and soon netbooks will be available with Windows 7 but a good test of an OS is how fast a geek can get it on the machine.  Here is how each faired:

Windows 7 RC1:  Windows 7 has a very easy installation, especially if you are not planning to make multiple partitions.  I went with the fastest possible route and it only took 5 steps to get the installation started and a total of 40 minutes to get both the OS and Office 2007 Pro Plus installed.  I decided to put Office 2007 on and not OpenOffice because if you are going to purchase Windows 7 you are probably going to put down the extra dough for the Office Suite.  There are differences but I still struggle with the value point of Office 2007 compared to OpenOffice.

Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix:  I won’t lie the install was a pain in the butt.  Mostly because I didn’t read the directions to start with and also because the Ubuntu folks had to go an get innovative and make this a USB stick install.  It makes sense because Netbooks don’t come with a CD drive.  I have been working with a USB CD drive so I didn’t stop to think about it.  After trying to get the IMG image on to a CD (done with Infrarecorder) and then trying to get it to work, I started looking around for some direction.  The site instructed me to use a 1GB USB stick and I just happened to have one sitting around.  It took two tries, one with Flashnul on the command line (didn’t work) and one with ImageWriter (did work) and the install finally started 29 minutes after I started.  The rest of the install was pretty straightforward and was actually faster than the Windows 7 install.  Take away those 29 minutes that I lost trying to get the image to work and the install only took 15 minutes.

Part 2 will cover hardware and drivers.  Out of the box what is supported and not supported by each OS.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.