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With Mac OS X Snow Leopard released at the end of August, and Windows 7 coming in mid-October, it’s easy to overlook the third desktop operating system, Ubuntu Linux.

Despite a perceived Mac zealotry, I’m actually rather open to any operating system that gets the job done.  I own a Dell Mini 9 “netbook”, and it has the ability to run any operating system, including Mac OS X (with some hacking of course).

For the last year, the Mini has run both Leopard and Windows 7.  I found performance of Windows 7 on the Dell Mini 9 rather sluggish.  Leopard was speedy but buggy at times.  I figured it was time to turn to Ubuntu for a third opinion.

Ubuntu 9.10 Screen Shot

Ubuntu 9.10, code named “Karmic Koala” is due to be released on October 29th.  I decided to take the latest Alpha build (Alpha 6) for a test spin.  In addition, since I was installing this on a netbook, I decided to install the “Netbook Remix” version of Ubuntu.

Since Dell Mini 9 does not have an optical drive, I downloaded the ISO while Windows 7 was still installed, and used the UNetBootin utility to create a Ubuntu installer on a USB flash drive.

Once booted from the USB drive, installation took about 30 minutes to finish. As usual with any flavor of Linux, there  is always a driver or two missing, and in my case, it was the Broadcom 43xx wireless card that was installed in the Mini 9.  Thankfully, all I had to do was connect to the Internet via Ethernet, and, run the Hardware Drivers utility, and it scanned for and found a driver for my wireless card.  It took another reboot to get the wireless card activated and connected to my network.  All the other devices were found correctly, including the webcam and bluetooth.

So far, despite it’s “alpha” state, Ubuntu 9.10 is pretty stable.  I enjoy the Netbook Remix interface, which uses the GNOME desktop environment, plus two other tools, Maximus Window Management, and Netbook Launcher, that produces an interface optimized for a small screen.

Linux still isn’t for everyone – yet each version I install makes significant improvements in areas that would prevent a beginner or novice from using Linux on their computer.  I still find the most complicated aspect of the setup installing applications.  For example, if I want to run Chromium, which is the development version of Google Chrome, it’s a one click download and install on Mac OS X and Windows.  On Ubuntu, however, I needed to do a Google search to find the correct software repository to add into Ubuntu, and then install it using some commands in the terminal.  In addition, some software isn’t available to be installed from a repository at all, and instead needs to be installed manually from a .deb package (Songbird in this instance).  These are still the types of things that are limiting a widespread adoption of Linux in general.

I found that the Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix has provided me with the longest battery life so far, compared to Windows 7 and Mac OS X Leopard, on this Dell Mini 9.  I’m at about 3 hours so far, which is great considering the small battery installed.  I never managed to get past two and a half on OS X or Windows 7, although rumor has it that Mac OS X 10.5.7+ greatly improved battery performance on some Atom based computers.

Most noticeable is the speed.  The folks at Ubuntu have clearly optimized this for low-end hardware, such as the 1.6 GHz Atom processor.  The interface is snappy, and browsing is fast.  After installing Chromium, browsing became even faster.  The only disappointing aspect of browsing is the performance of the Flash plug-in on video based sites, such as Hulu.  Flash performance is dismal in Chromium, with lots of stuttering and frame loss when watching videos full screen.  Performance is slightly better in Firefox, but not by much.  There are a combination of issues at work here though, including poor hardware acceleration of Intel video drivers on Linux, and the fact that Flash performs poorly on any platform other than Windows.  At this point, getting reliable video playback in Flash require a NVidia or ATI GPU and a dual core CPU, to make up for the shortcomings of software.

Overall, I’m very pleased with Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6, and I expect to keep it installed on the Dell Mini in for the foreseeable future.  I can’t wait for the final release and I encourage any readers of this review to try it out, especially if they have an old PC or NetBook hanging around.