April 4th, 2008
The best Linux distro for a new breed of PCs
Clearly, small, low-powered laptops are here to stay, with the advent of Intel’s Atom platform and the success of systems like the Asus Eee. Classmates are coming to a little lap near you, OLPC America is hard at work, and vendors should be jumping on the Atom bandwagon shortly. While we’re all thrilled at the prospect of using Windows XP Home on these machines (*sarcasm drips here*), the real question is which Linux distribution is best-suited for this new class of machines that I hope will be invading our classrooms in the next year?
*buntu is an obvious choice because of it ease of use and installation and presence of an alternative installation for low-end hardware. However, there are hundreds of distributions floating around that might work quite handily. Mandriva Linux, Fedora, and OpenSUSE can all be tweaked to run well and install easily, but again, they only scratch the surface of what is available.
The OLPC Sugar OS, for example, has a very small footprint, and, although its performance is a bit sluggish, the interface is a step in a very new direction. So here’s your Friday poll. What’s the Linux distro of choice for ultra low-cost PCs? Talk back and let us know if your choice isn’t in the list.
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Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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