So I have a Asus Wee PC it has a atom N270 cpu with 1 or 2 gb ram(It comes stock with 1gb but I think I have upgraded to 2gb) and a 160 gb hdd. I am having some issues with it, that I think might be os related, I have win 7 on there now. but I am thinking of loading linux on it as running win 7 is a little taxing on it. here is what I need it to do. hook to my wireless network (I have a dlink wireless router) as this pc in in the garage and there is no way to get a cable to it. 99% of the time the only thing this pc does is log onto slacker radio thru the internet. everyone in a while I do surf the web, and it woudl be nice if I could connect to my main PC (shared drive) and play my music I have on my hard drive. so what would you do run a version of linux? or stay with win 7? or even XP?
Unbutu on a dual boot. Read up on it, it will probably be your best solution as nothing you are doing is very processor intensive.
Well to start that machine is not going to run like an I7 no matter the operating system. The Atom is meant to hit a price point to suit netbooks and performs as such. Is it Intel graphics as well or did you get an Atom with the Nvidia Ion graphics? That's a nice little combo..does well for any web browsing,email streaming medai and such. Even does good HD video. The Intel graphics are not as good.. My advice if your other machine is Win7 is to stick with Win7 and just format the box. Fresh install of 7. Hit the manufacturers support site and pick up any newer revision of the BIOS and drivers for that machine. Setup and Windows Homwgroup and be happy with your ability to stream any music fro your main PC to the little atom box...network permitting.
Venom, that is the setup I have now, and I am not sure but I would bet it has intel graphics on it. I know it is not going to be fat by any means, and as nice as win 7 is I thought some linux distros were really easy on processors which is why I was thinking of running linux, but running a dual boot is an option.....
Sure..dual booting is always an option and their are plenty of good Linux distro's out there. Ubuntu and Fedora will be good places to start. If you really want a little more performance out of the box you could toss an SSD in it and drop in 2x2 gig sticks of memory but beyond that it's processor bound. The N270 was an early single core processor and just isn't very good.
No need to install a 10+ year old OS on anything. Certainly not one that's been poked in the ass by every 12 year script kiddie on the internet.
Screw windoze. Too many security issues and too much overhead. For what you're doing I'd say Linux Mint with Ubuntu being a close second. You can download and boot both from a flash drive if you want to test drive them first.
On that machine, XP would be best. IMO What you really need to do is not spend a dime on it, cut your losses and get something that's cutting edge by today's standards, Of course that machine will be obsolete soon after today but the good thing is you get a lot for little money these days.
I've been using Linux since 1998 and I vote for Ubuntu. Its really nice not having to worry about viruses/malware and expensive junk software. Plus its so user friendly, you can be a complete dumb ass and still navigate around the interface just fine, no shell scripting needed! If you like playing games, then you must dual boot windows. (surf net in linux, and play games in Windows).
Unbuntu is good but getting bloated. Lucid puppy Linux works well and is fast, but not meant to run an he'd but it will be the fastest OS for that system. It is basically a live CD with a persistent loop that saves your changes. So it will do every thing you want and fast. It is what I use for every day computing. http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm
Figured out the other night that i have somehow gotten the "internet security 2012" virus. I think i am going to wipe the hd and do a dual boot system. Just to get some experiance with linux.
Linux is a low powered netbook's best friend. Ubuntu is the most novice friendly and is plenty feature packed. Not worth the headache running Win7 on that little guy.
WINDOWS too if you roll your own. dual-booting USB is nice, multi-booting USB with multiple OS's is where its at though but dont use a flash drive unless you can configure the OS to non-persistant. it wont save changes this way but it has some advantages even on USB HHDs too. p.s. search "Grub4Dos" if you want multi booting USB capabilities (and RAM boot)
