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It was this site that sold me on the idea of a Samsung when I first went looking for a little computer to take out and about for work. I chose the N210 because at the time it had the latest revision of the Atom and it promised huge battery life. I have not been disappointed this little machine has lived up to all my expectations.
The machine came configured with Win 7 Starter and HyperSpace. I never got on with HyperSpace and pretty soon after it arrived it got a complete format, Win 7 Ultimate installed and upgraded to 2Gb RAM and that is how it stayed for a couple of months. It worked well and did everything I wanted but Win 7 did feel a bit sluggish and never really made the best of the limited screen real estate. So I decided to try and find a nice linux distro to install alongside Windows. I wanted something quick booting and fully featured, something that a linux noob could get along with.
I chose Ubuntu Netbook – http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook
The simple to follow instructions allow you to make a LiveUSB that will boot straight in to Ubuntu and allow you test everything before making any changes to your HD. The only things not to work straight out of the box were the screen brightness control, some of the function keys and the wireless connection would sometime refuse to connect. All of these issues were resolved by installing two packages maintained by a Sammy linux genius; voRia – http://www.voria.org/forum/index.php
With samsung-tools and samsung-wireless installed every single feature of the N210 worked and has continued to work exactly as it should.
Once everything was up and running on the LiveUSB I clicked the ‘Install’ option and chose to install Netbook alongside Win 7. The intention was that I would continue to boot to Windows when needed but would try to use Ubuntu as much as possible but I found that I hardly every booted Windows. Eventually, I would have to force myself to boot up Windows just to give it a chance to update and everytime I did I would want to scream at the sllloooowww boot time and laggy OS!
Ubuntu Netbook runs like a dream. It boots quickly and is very responsive to use. Gone are the lag and delays. The Ubuntu Software Centre is a repository of software that Canonical maintain; all of these software are free and guaranteed to work in Ubuntu. I haven’t looked back. One on my main concerns was work email and calendar; we use MS Exchange and I depend on it quite heavily. I knew that connecting to this with an email client within linux would be a challenge but this has been much less of an issue that I thought. I use the webmail client and it works well enough.
So after a few weeks of having a dual boot set-up I decided to go whole hog over to linux. Post two below describes where I am up to now.
Now I had a little more linux experience and I was getting in to the community aspects of open source. I wanted to do a fresh format and install and I wanted to try for the best performance possible. I considered looking as some of the superfast/superlight linux distros but I very much enjoy the safety and overall slickness of Ubuntu.
So I decided to go for Ubuntu 64 bit – the default Netbook version is 32 bit. Lets face it there aren’t that many 64 bit netbooks around, it is only the latest incarnations of the Atom that have 64 bit architecture.
Many of the forums suggest that 64 bit linux is less well supported and less stable than 32 bit. I was aware of this but still wanted to give it a go. Linux grows and becomes more stable as users use it, report bugs and fix the releases. If no one is using 64 bit it will never get more stable. I wanted to be part of the solution not part of the problem! Also, why not make the most out of the hardware you have bought?
I would recommend the default 32 bit as described above for most users but if you really want to get in to the spirit of linux and want the best possible performance then they following works for me.
Save any documents you want to keep to an external drive.
Download and build a 64 bit desktop version 10.10 Ubuntu LiveUSB – http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
Boot from the key.
Allow Ubuntu to format and use the whole hard disk, it will choose the best partitions for performance.
Install Ubuntu.
Copy your saved documents back to you home directory.
Add voRia’s repository and install both samsung-wireless and samsung-tools – http://www.voria.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=296
Reboot, you will now have a fully working N210 on 64 bit Ubunto desktop edition.
If the wireless is still flaky then you might need to install the driver directly, I say might because I had too but everyone else seems to be fine with voRia’s samsung-wireless – http://www.voria.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=750
Open up Synaptic Package Manager and search for and install Unity (this is the Netbook front end for Ubuntu).
Log out of Ubuntu (top right icon).
Once the log in screen appears, select your account and at the bottom of the screen you will see a drop down. Select Netbook and log in.
From now on you will automatically log straight in to Netbook. i.e You have created a 64 bit Netbook version of Ubuntu!Enjoy!
I have also done the following to optimise and speed things up.
Install Google Chrome (search for “chrome download” and install 64 bit debian version).
Get rid of FireFox (Synaptic Package Manager and uninstall)
Turn off unwanted start up features (Startup Applications app in Ubuntu). I switch off the following as they are not needed…
– Bluetooth
– Check for new hardware drivers
– Evolution Alarm Notify
– Gnome Login Sound
– Print Queue Applet
– Remote Desktop
– Ubuntu One
– Visual AssistanceReboot.
The performance is outstanding. I am not sure what makes the most difference 32 vs 64 bit or allowing Ubuntu to choose the best way to partition the drive or the tweaks that I applied or a combination of all 3, but there is a huge difference.
Boot time is now about 10-12 seconds. That is from power on to having chrome open a website and all HD activity finished! Software starts in a blink of an eye it is so quick it is almost like restoring a minimised window in Win 7. The fans almost never spin up, my laptop is essentially silent. If anything the battery life is better on 64 bit than it was on 32 bit, certainly better than in Windows. Other than the slight issue with the wireless driver I have had no problems yet. Every piece of software I have wanted has installed and worked flawlessly.
Then there are all the obvious benefits of linux. Very secure and stable. No virus software needed. No concerns about malware on websites. This computer has never crashed in linux – ever! It is free and all the software is free. That is free as in ‘free speech’ not just free as in no financial cost. Most importantly…
You become part of the solution not part of the problem 🙂
nice thread….i tried Ubuntu Netbook a few months ago and it wouldn’t run Conky so i tried the regular Ubuntu and still can’t get Conky to run the way i want it… 🙁 looking for something to replace StatBar that i always used in WinXP….other than that Ubuntu is decent and my mobile broadband device works a lot better than it does in WinXP….
only thing about ubuntu, linux etc is it difficult to install program without that Software Centre for noobs like me….i dont understand why each program doesn’t have its own folder with its files like they do in Windows – seems like they all dump into “user – bin” something or other…
i just got tired of all these software re-ups on the Windows side though and some programs like Open Office, Firefox, etc are free and work just fine in Ubuntu now….much better than paying $200-$300/year for various M$ OS, Office, Anti-virus apps, Roboform, and on and on….and worst part about Windows, if you buy like a new Sammy netbook there is no OS CD anymore, just these idiot restore programs that i loathe….in Ubuntu i can just scrape mt data off D: and E: drives and wipe and re-download OS for free and start over again….can’t beat that….
only thing is there seem to 10x amount of the great little freeware apps in Windows than there are in Ubuntu as far as i can tell…..for instance i just want a little volume slider and mute button that i can apply to the panel in Ubuntu w/out having to do several clicks and i don’t see it avail…StatBar and plain old Windows let me mute on one click and Statbar let me change volume on one click….maybe its there in Conky but too much of a PITA to install and get working so far…
Hey Jeff, I just tried Corky. Installed using the package manager and used CorkeyWizard to set it up – http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/ConkyWizard?content=126352
Works perfectly in desktop but does not work in netbook. The netbook interface is Unity and it doesn’t accept x windows running unless they are in a window. You could try Unity2D should work with that.
Version 10.10 on a N220 – http://www.stewartpratt.com/?p=443
Version 10.04 on a N210 – http://seaborne.blogspot.com/2010/07/ubuntu-on-samsung-n210.html
Some stuff to try once it’s installed – http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2010/04/ubuntu-1004-post-install-guide-what-to.html
First post here as just picked up an N210+ with win7. For the last year I have been using an eee 901 netbook and loving its boot time of 24s from switch on to wifi connect with Linux (Lubuntu = ubuntu with the LXDE windows manager which I much prefer over unity and a little prefer over gnome). So the 90s boot on the N210 is too slow for me. I’ve already dropped the boot time down to 70s by removing the eyecandy and I can probably improve on that. I’ll probably try linux as a dual boot initially. I read that some people were having problems with wifi. Have you had any major problems?
For information the install was easy. because the n210 came with 4 primary partitions I have to delete and empty one first. wifi connect was ootb. Boots twice as fast as win 7.
cimh
n210+ win7+ lubuntu 11.04
eee901 lubuntu & bodhi
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