CentOS - Apr 2015 - Related to the new laptop question: CentOS on a netbook?

I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild about
ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well, it's a
few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook, and
were there any problems?

        mark

On 4/15/2015 12:55 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
> ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well, it's
a
> few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook, and
> were there any problems?
'netbook' is a mostly obsolete category, they were just low power 
1st/2nd generation Atom 10" notebooks with 1024x600 screens and 1-2GB 
max ram, painfully slow.    They've been largely superseded by the 
Ultrabook category of 13" ultra-slim ultra-light notebooks.

I'd expect the only major compatibility issue with any of these would be 
the wifi adapter.   Most of these small format consumer machines don't 
even have an ethernet port.   Otherwise, they are pretty much bog stock 
Intel based architecture machines, using Intel integral graphics on the 
newer Core i3 Mobile processors.


-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

John R Pierce wrote:
> On 4/15/2015 12:55 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
>> ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well,
it's a
>> few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook,
>> and were there any problems?
>
> 'netbook' is a mostly obsolete category, they were just low power
> 1st/2nd generation Atom 10" notebooks with 1024x600 screens and 1-2GB
> max ram, painfully slow.    They've been largely superseded by the
> Ultrabook category of 13" ultra-slim ultra-light notebooks.
Right. And it serves me perfectly well when I'm travelling, for email and
websurfing. Why is it that I should go out to spend $$$$ on a larger,
ultralight notebook, before this one dies? It does *everything* I want
from it... and it cost me something like $40 (never before in my life had
I heard of a phone company giving out promotional
items....)
>
> I'd expect the only major compatibility issue with any of these would
be
> the wifi adapter.   Most of these small format consumer machines don't
> even have an ethernet port.   Otherwise, they are pretty much bog stock
> Intel based architecture machines, using Intel integral graphics on the
> newer Core i3 Mobile processors.
Original HP, and yes, it has an RJ45 as well as wifi. Sounds like I should
follow the other thread's suggestion, and build a liveCD on a flash drive,
and boot from there. I was just wondering if someone else had done this.

     mark

On Apr 15, 2015, at 2:28 PM, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>
wrote:
> 
> On 4/15/2015 12:55 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
>> ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well,
it's a
>> few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook,
and
>> were there any problems?
> 
> 'netbook' is a mostly obsolete category
Yes, but:
> They've been largely superseded by the Ultrabook category of 13"
ultra-slim ultra-light notebooks.
Only among the well-heeled.  Your typical ultrabook is around $1,000 today,
whereas a true netbook was $200-300.
> low power 1st/2nd generation Atom 10" notebooks with 1024x600 screens
and 1-2GB max ram, painfully slow.
Netbooks were widely misunderstood as ?cheap notebook? because they happened to
run desktop OSes.

The netbook category didn?t turn into ultrabooks, it got calcinated and
distilled into tablets and Chromebooks.  Those processes left you with a device
that *only* did what the original netbooks promised (i.e. cloud terminal)
without trying to provide everything we expected from a ?real? notebook
computer.

If you were happy with the original netbooks, I recommend picking up a cheap
Chromebook and installing Crouton on it:

  https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

That only currently works with Debian type OSes, but it gives you *most* of the
best of both worlds: fast boot into ChromeOS most of the time, with the ability
to shell out into a real Ubuntu or Debian environment when you need to.

You can get a full desktop GUI if you?re willing to burn the CPU time, RAM, and
SSD space, or you can just set up a CLI-only chroot, if that serves your needs.

You can run everything off the internal SSD even on even the lowest-end
Chromebooks if you only need a fairly straightforward user environment without a
lot of user storage space.  Much of the OS is shared with the ChromeOS host, and
Debian type OSes lend themselves to small-footprint installs.

If you do happen to need more than 4-ish gigs of user space, don?t spend a bunch
of money on a big internal SSD, unless you?re also going to jump to a high-end
Chromebook like the Pixel.  If all you need is more storage space, most
Chromebooks have SD card readers, and Crouton lets you set up encrypted disk
images on the card.  With a reasonably fast card, it works fine.

Is an Ultrabook running CentOS a nicer experience?  Sure, in some ways.  But for
3-4x the cost difference, you?d certainly expect that.

On Wed, 15 Apr 2015 15:55:26 -0400
m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
> ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well, it's
a
> few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook, and
> were there any problems?
I have an Acer Aspire One netbook.  I use it every day.

I had Centos 6 on it up until Centos 7 was released.  Now I have Centos 7 on it.

It works perfectly.  I use it mostly for reading books and a tiny bit of web
surfing.


-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 02:52:51PM -0600, Frank Cox
wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Apr 2015 15:55:26 -0400
> m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> 
> > I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
> > ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well,
it's a
> > few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook,
and
> > were there any problems?
> 
> I have an Acer Aspire One netbook.  I use it every day.
> 
> I had Centos 6 on it up until Centos 7 was released.  Now I have Centos 7
on it.
Me too, though before Centos-7 I was running Fedora 19. Everything works,
including the dedicated fn-<some key> functions.

Mine is a dual-core Atom, so it's not quite as painfully slow as many of
the other netbooks.

I've also got an older Asus 901, originally shipped with their version of
Linux. Got tired of that hacked up and crippled linux and started trying
other distros. found that Fedora worked pretty well, back at F10, though
some things required tweaking. There was a guy (no longer recall a name)
who was building custom Fedora kernels specifically with the 901 in mind,
that enabled the extra goodies that didn't quite work right. I ran that,
thru F10-F14, until F15 came out--took a look at Gnome 3.x and had to
run to the toilet to throw up. disgusting. Right now, it is sitting here,
running F20 with MATE desktop, operating a webcam for me.

You don't say which netbook it is... the earliest Asus models came with
severely limited storage. There are people who've managed to put some
relatively modern linux on those, though I don't really know how they
managed to shoehorn that all in. google is your friend.

-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us
-----------------------------
                       I can do all things through Christ 
                              who strengthens me.
------------------------------ Philippians 4:13 -------------------------------

running a cheap Acer Aspire one 722, 2gb ram, dual core 1ghz, swapped 
the HDD for a SSD. it's running fedora 21 LXDE. it's fast, powerful 
enough for working on the move and boots / shuts down in about 10 
seconds flat.

I also had Centos7 on here before but Fedora has better support for 
multimedia in my opinion.

ran into one issue about waking the netbook after sleeping. ended up 
disabling it.

On 15/04/15 20:55, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
> ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well, it's
a
> few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook, and
> were there any problems?
>
>          mark
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

scratch that, I swapped the 2gb for 4gb. most people are amazed at the 
speed of it...

I managed to convert a few people to linux on their netbook recently and 
they will never turn back. great way to rejuvenate old hardware.

On 16/04/15 10:39, Michael Horne wrote:
> running a cheap Acer Aspire one 722, 2gb ram, dual core 1ghz, swapped
> the HDD for a SSD. it's running fedora 21 LXDE. it's fast, powerful
> enough for working on the move and boots / shuts down in about 10
> seconds flat.
>
> I also had Centos7 on here before but Fedora has better support for
> multimedia in my opinion.
>
> ran into one issue about waking the netbook after sleeping. ended up
> disabling it.
>
> On 15/04/15 20:55, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> I've got a netbook, circe 2009. When I got it, not that I was wild
about
>> ubuntu, but there was specifically an ubuntu netbook remix. Well,
it's a
>> few years later - has anyone put CentOS (6, preferably) on a netbook,
and
>> were there any problems?
>>
>>          mark
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CentOS mailing list
>> CentOS at centos.org
>> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>>
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