First of all the manufacturer clearly states that this gadget is designed to run Linux and recommends NOT installing any Microsoft product. It will not be delivered with a Windows sticker on it. One of the first things I will do is to put a Tux sticker on it. More on this in a minute. As for being overpriced, I will not be paying a Microsoft tax and any profit the OEM makes will be my voluntary contribution to the advancement of free software.

The product appears to be modular. I can plug in, and boot from, any USB flash drive with an installed OS. At my choosing I can have Knoppix, Puppy, EEEbuntu or whatever. The device will come with some kind of OS that the OEM promises will be “beta.” In my world “beta” is normal. Yes, I might encounter a bug or two. If I report them and the OEM is decent (remains to be seen) the bugs will get fixed in an an update. If not, I just install one of the established OS’s as the main OS. They have bugs too, just less of them. The bottom line is that it looks to be a lot of fun and that’s another reason for making this purchase.

How much touch screen capability will be implemented? At a minimum no mouse will be necessary. Undoubtedly the OS will have a virtual keyboard making the optional physical keyboard a convenience but not a necessity. As I pointed out in an earlier article, Apple has patented some touch screen capabilities. While these are significant on the tiny iPhone screen, they are less so on a 9 inch screen. My ancient Macintosh SE performed well with its small screen and a mouse. I used it to run a business for several years.

Linux needs some brand recognition. When conversation with my acquaintances gets around to computers and I say “I run Linux”, some will say “What’s that?’, and others will  comment “I’ve heard about that.” No one says “Tell me more about it.” It really hurts when a talk show  radio host like Kim Komando advises to stay away from Linux. I guess I would too if all my sponsors sold Windows only products but it’s bad advice going out to thousands of listeners.  A device like this can be a breath of fresh air. When you impress your friends with it you can show them them the Tux sticker and proudly say “This computer runs Linux, why don’t you?”

Linux does not have a talk radio show spokesperson. Yes, we have podcasts but Windows users don’t listen to them. If your computer is mobile, stickers are a good way to promote brand awareness. My laptop says TOSHIBA in big bold letters on the cover. Can’t miss it if you tried. On the inside there was a Windows sticker that I removed and replaced with a “Powered by Ubuntu” sticker. If you go to www.smokinglinux.com you will see a link to “F5 StickerBook.” That will give you a download for a sticker book with a multitude of Linux (and other) stickers. Just print. cut and glue. You might also find an article or two there that you like.

A final thought. Netbooks are not intended to be a complete replacement for your primary home computer. Yet when I think about that old Mac that I ran a business with in 1989, the new netbooks are clearly more capable machines and considerably less expensive. One can only wonder what the next few years will bring.

In order to fit on a 700MB CD the burnable .iso image cannot be larger. When installed to a hard drive a typical distribution, such as Ubuntu, uses over 2GB of disk space. To make this possible a compression technique is used. When the image is used it is read from the disc and uncompressed on the fly. This has several implications. The two most noticeable will be that using a livecd will be slower than using an installed distro; the second is that no changes can be made to the CD. At best, some documents may be saved to a local hard disk and some distros such as Puppy Linux can create a change file.

The use of a flash drive may or may not remove some of the livecd limitations depending on its size. Today, in the spring of 2009, you will have difficulty finding a flash drive with less than 1GB of memory that were common only a few years ago. 1GB drives sell for around $5, 2GB drives are priced at $10 or less and higher capacities of 4, 8 and 16GB are often on sale bringing the price down to less than $3 per GB. In a year or two, readers of this blog will probably chuckle at these prices. If you have a 2 or 4GB drive the tutorials at pendrivelinux.com will show you how to (1) get the iso image onto a bootable drive and (2) how to use the extra space for data or a “change” file. If you have a 4GB or larger drive it is now possible to make a full installation to the drive. This removes both limitations of the livecd. Most recent releases of popular distros include an option to install to a sufficiently large flash drive. Furthermore, netbooks can boot from these drives making it possible to replace the supplied OS (often Windows XP) with the Linux distro of your choice. Finally we now have a portable computer with a reasonably sized screen that will run for a number of hours between charges.

Now before you run out and buy that 8GB stick I will give you two cautions. The first caution is that once you configure your drive to use your host computer hardware you may lose compatibility with other computers. If portability is your objective an installed OS might not be your best choice. I personally carry a 2GB drive with Puppy installed but not configured along with a GRUB boot disk. At home, I keep a 8GB drive handy to install various test distributions one of which will eventually end up in the netbook I have on order for this summer. Yes, I could do the same thing with a “virtual machine” but this approach is simpler and takes up no space on my hard disc.

The second caution is about following the tutorials on pendrivelinux.com. Many make the use of a disc “partitioning” utility, either fdisk, on the command line,  or Gparted with its nice graphical interface. It is VERY EASY to make a MISTAKE with these utilities to select a WRONG drive and DESTROY your system!  Do not proceed with the instructions until you understand what they are doing and what they are doing it to. Linux drive designations can be cryptic to the novice. If you have a small flash drive and just want to make it bootable then use unetbootin and be safe. Enough said.

Have fun!

A lightweight distribution is one that requires minimal memory and fewer system resources. Some popular examples are Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, and Puppy. There are several reasons that you might want to have one or more of these handy. A previous article discussed using Knoppix as a rescue disk. Let’s consider a few more.

You have an older computer with limited memory and a slower processor. GNOME or KDE will just slow you down. XUbuntu with the XFCE window manager might be a good choice.

You have a new netbook. The same reason above applies. Your netbook may have come with Windows XP. In that case you may want to replace it with something more efficient and not subject to malware. Rumor has it that Microsoft is nearly giving away XP licenses to OEM vendors so don’t fret about the M$ tax. You will not save much by hunting for a Linux model. Buy the XP Machine and search the web to see what other folks have done with it.

You like the idea of carrying a computer in your pocket or purse. Just borrow a friends CPU and boot up your own system. This is really great when your friend is having Windows problems. You get to show off Linux and maybe solve a problem or two.

The Amazing Puppy

All of the aforementioned distros share these characteristics but I think Puppy comes closest to having a computer in your pocket. The core distribution of Puppy is less than 100 Mb. It will fit on a USB flash drive. Even an old one. Despite it’s size the base distribution comes with a nice variety of applications for productivity, internet browsing, multimedia and a few games. There’s plenty more in the Puppy repository if you want them. Of course you are asking “But wont adding applications make Puppy bigger?” and “What happens to my data when I shut down?”

First of all, when Puppy shuts down it offers you the option to save your data. Where to save it is entirely up to you. Use some space on a local drive, another USB disk or even the boot drive if there’s space. Another nice feature is Puppy’s built in ability to remaster itself. After you have added software and perhaps have  done some additional customization you may want to create a new boot disk with your personal version of Puppy or “Puplets” as devotees call them. Puppy will create an ISO image to your liking. Simply amazing. The Puppy home page has  a number of Puplets created by others for you to try.

Another interesting property of Puppy is the way in which it loads into your computer. When you boot it, it loads into RAM in its entirety. This makes it as fast as your machine will allow. Once loaded you can remove the boot media be it either CD-ROM or flash drive. The annoying “CD stuck in drive” phenomena is avoided.

CD-ROM or USB Flash?

Puppy is distributed as an ISO. Your first inclination will be to burn the ISO to a CD. Linux users need only to right-click on the ISO file to be offered a burn. Less fortunate Windows users will need a third party utility such as ImgBurn. This is okay provided (1) you have an optical drive (some netbooks do not) and (2) you get a good burn (as opposed to a coaster). After you actually use your CD your “SAVE” options will be limited since you cannot save to the CD.

It makes good sense, therefore, to install Puppy to a flash drive. The flash drive usually boots faster than a CD anyway. By the way, Puppy has a built-in feature to install to flash drives. I know, some of you geeks are thinking “Why not use the unetbootin utility to create the drive?” The answer is that you can but satisfactory results are not guaranteed. A bootable image is not quite the same as an installed distribution. In practice I do a combination of both. I keep a GRUB boot CD handy whose sole purpose is to boot a flash drive if one is present. This also avoids needing to update my BIOS when I change the device or slot that I am booting from. Instructions can be found here and here. I can boot the flash drive directly or indirectly(via the CD-ROM) depending on the situation.

Special Offer

Depending on how “geeky” you are, making a GRUB boot disk and bootable flash drive will either be easy, difficult or beyond your ability. Let me do the hard work for you! For the princely sum of $20(US) I will send you a bootable flash drive (at least 1 Gb) with the latest version of Puppy plus a GRUB boot disk with instruction on how to boot from a CD in case your computer is not already setup to do this. If your outside the US, add a couple of dollars for overseas postage. Just click on the DONATE button near the bottom of the page and be sure to include your mailing address!

Over the years I have found only one truth that is infallable in regards to computer rekated technology. What is new and good today will be out-of-date in a year or so and most likely obsolete in four or five. In the last two decades I have not purchased any computer, peripheral, or software package with the expectation of still using it after 36 months. Most items have not made it that long.

The latest technology craze is netbooks. First intoduced about a year ago by a company called Asus, there are now a number of competitors including some models from well known manufacturers such as Acer, HP and Dell. The concept behind the netbook is simple. Take an inexpensive low powered processor (specifically the Intel Atom processor), cut out peripherals like optical drives and numeric keypads, and fit the result into a chassis about the size of a small textbook. Finally, use flash memory instead of a disk drive thereby eliminating moving parts and making the gadget more rugged. As memory is limited, office type applications would be performed on remote desktops via the internet as well as the multitude of other activities now being delivered by the world wide web.

Clearly these devices fill a niche. I can envision these gadgets being of incredible utility to students, for example. But are they worth the cost? My local BestBuy has a nice selection of Asus models. The small, entry level model with a 7 inch screen and running a Linux based operating system, is priced at $279. If ultra portability is really important to you that might be just the machine for you. For myself, a home user,  it’s just not enough “bang for the buck.” A far better investment would be a budget laptop/desktop with more power, more memory, larger screen and etc. Like most new technology I think we can expect to see price drops within six months. That’s simply the result of good retail strategy.

Also, in six months I predict that Microsoft will have released Windows 7. The Atom processor does not handle Vista very well. XP is okay and Microsoft has extened it’s extended it’s life mostly to accommodate the new netbooks. On the other hand netbooks are truly great evironments for Linux based operating systems availble now and exceeding the capabilities of XP. Fearing this competition is another reason for my prediction.

If you are considering a netbook here is something to think about. Unlike Linux, Microsoft operating systems are subject viruses and must be protected against them. The protection doesn’t always work. Now imagine that a virus infects your netbook (without an optical drive) and trashes your system. How do you restore your netbook??