Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 on an entry-level netbook

David M Williams
Thursday, 07 May 2009 11:06

Opinion and Analysis

While sitting idle, 191MB of RAM was being consumed by the operating system or just over 19%. That’s a dramatic difference from Windows’ 465MB.

My total disk usage sat at 2.2GB, weighing in at less than one third that of Windows 7RC. Unlike Windows, UNR provides a full suite of applications, not just the base operating system. This 2.2GB included, among other things, the OpenOffice suite which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool.

Running OpenOffice Writer took RAM usage up to 284MB or 28.7%. Launching the Firefox web browser saw only a slight increase to 306.3MB or 30.9%.

Installing Adobe Flash Player saw the CPU hit a high of 80% but this was over in mere moments. The download and installation was a two-step process, unlike under Windows 7, but the combined time of these steps was still faster.

At this point, because the Flash install fired up Ubuntu’s package manager, I was duly advised there were 32MB worth of updates to my system since the time the USB image I downloaded had been pressed.

I opted to install these and during this time RAM usage hit its peak at 418MB (with everything else still open), or 42%. The entire time I tested out UNR my System Monitor duly advised swap space in use was a constant 0 bytes.

I connected to my WiFi network, played movies and checked the built-in webcam with the aptly-named Cheese cam tool. I could not find any hardware discrepancies at all.

The entire time I worked on the Acer Aspire One it performed reliably and with alacrity. Even when I was using several applications at once the computer never displayed any signs of slowing down. I was also more impressed with Ubuntu’s memory management within the 1GB available than that of Windows 7.

The video ran at the same native 1024x600 resolution as Windows, but it didn’t feel as cramped within the UNR environment, with its minimal reserved screen space.

At the end of the day, both Windows 7 and Ubuntu Netbook Remix installed and worked on the Acer Aspire One. Neither skipped a beat during installation.

Yet, one operating system ran smoother than the other and just plain felt like a more consistent, smoother computing experience - so much so I forgot I was using one of the cheapest machines I could find.