Hey All,

First time poster in this echo.

Anyone here successfully setup a netbook to run under Xubuntu or similar distro?

I am looking to setup a simple and light portable netbook to use around the house mainly as a simple client machine when I do not want to have to sit at
my main PC.

Ideally I would like to just be able to run Xubuntu on it and have the following basic functionality / features if possible:
- Wifi
- Bluetooth
- USB

As a bonus if it was able to stream Steam Games / and RDP Sessions from my
main Windows PC as well that would be fantastic.

If anyone has any had any experience trying to set this up -- I would greatly appreciate any feedback / things learned from the experience to hopefully
point me in the right direction.

Thanks all!

---
LockeDown
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On 06-19-19 00:13, Mickey Frklic wrote to All <=-

Hey All,

First time poster in this echo.

Anyone here successfully setup a netbook to run under Xubuntu or
similar distro?

I use Lubuntu on old netbooks here. Works well.

I am looking to setup a simple and light portable netbook to use around the house mainly as a simple client machine when I do not want to have
to sit at my main PC.

Ideally I would like to just be able to run Xubuntu on it and have the following basic functionality / features if possible:
- Wifi
- Bluetooth
- USB

Yep all of those are working.

As a bonus if it was able to stream Steam Games / and RDP Sessions from
my main Windows PC as well that would be fantastic.

I can't comment on Steam (I don't use it), but there's a number of RDP clients for Linux, whatever distro you choose. Oh, and I have SyncTerm and Multimail running on my main roaming netbook. :)

If anyone has any had any experience trying to set this up -- I would greatly appreciate any feedback / things learned from the experience to hopefully point me in the right direction.

Should be straightforward, but in general, netbooks are better suited tp simple terminal duties. I find my Firefox configuration tends to bog the machine down, same for Thunderbird.


... Mind... Mind... Let's see, I had one of those around here someplace.
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Mickey Frklic wrote to All <=-

Anyone here successfully setup a netbook to run under Xubuntu or
similar distro?

Yes, many times.

I am looking to setup a simple and light portable netbook to use
around the house mainly as a simple client machine when I do not
want to have to sit at my main PC.

Ideally I would like to just be able to run Xubuntu on it and
have the following basic functionality / features if possible:
- Wifi
- Bluetooth
- USB

As a bonus if it was able to stream Steam Games / and RDP
Sessions from my main Windows PC as well that would be fantastic.

RDP would be no problem, but usually a netbook won't have the
horsepower needed to run any serious games.

If anyone has any had any experience trying to set this up -- I
would greatly appreciate any feedback / things learned from the
experience to hopefully point me in the right direction.

Not really sure what you're asking here... Installing any Linux
distro on a netbook is no different than installing on some other
piece of hardware. It'll work fine.


... So easy, a child could do it. Child sold separately.
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On 19 Jun 2019, Tony Langdon said the following...

Anyone here successfully setup a netbook to run under Xubuntu or similar distro?
If anyone has any had any experience trying to set this up -- I would greatly appreciate any feedback / things learned from the experience hopefully point me in the right direction.

Should be straightforward, but in general, netbooks are better suited tp simple terminal duties. I find my Firefox configuration tends to bog
the machine down, same for Thunderbird.

Thanks Tony for the feedback! I'll keep browsing around then for a good fit hardware wise.

I use Lubuntu on old netbooks here. Works well.

Out of curiosity what netbooks have you used with Lubuntu? Any good / bad / indifference between the different models?

---
LockeDown
[mysticisland.strangled.net]

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Mystic Island BBS [mysticisland.strangled.net] (1:218/220)

Re: Xubuntu Netbook Considerations
By: Mickey Frklic to All on Wed Jun 19 2019 12:13 am

Anyone here successfully setup a netbook to run under Xubuntu or similar distro?

I have two netbooks with both running Lubuntu. I had tried Xubuntu first and was not happy with its performance. After switching to Lubuntu I was kicking myself for not using it the first time around. I highly recommend Lubuntu.

HusTler
*Havens BBS havens.synchro.net:23 (1:267/160)*
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On 06-19-19 06:56, Mickey Frklic wrote to Tony Langdon <=-

Should be straightforward, but in general, netbooks are better suited tp simple terminal duties. I find my Firefox configuration tends to bog
the machine down, same for Thunderbird.

Thanks Tony for the feedback! I'll keep browsing around then for a good fit hardware wise.

No probs. Good luck in your search. :)

I use Lubuntu on old netbooks here. Works well.

Out of curiosity what netbooks have you used with Lubuntu? Any good /
bad / indifference between the different models?

I have a bunch of old Lenovo Thinkpad Mini 10s, which were popular in schools here - mine are surplus from a couple of schools. I also had a couple of the early Asus netbooks, which originally ran Xandros, but I put Debian Squeeze on them. They ran text mode really well, and were OK with a GUI for very basic applications.


... Love is grand. Divorce is fifty grand.
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So for anyone interested I got tired of trying to look online for the "right" netbook and last night picked up the following HP 2in1 laptop/tablet from
"Best Buy" to attempt and and run Xubuntu on it:

HP Pavilion x360 - 11m-ap0013dx Product Specifications https://support.hp.com/sg-en/document/c06337117

In comes with Windows 10 S Mode which off the bat restricts you to the Microsoft store sanctioned applications and forces you to use Edge browser. Fortunately it is easy to switch to standard Windows 10 mode to run any
windows 10 compatible software.

I came across the following guide on using Wubi to install Ubuntu distros: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17486/install-ubuntu-netbook-remix-with-wubi-in staller/

The version mentioned only works up to Windows 7 -- however found a newer
guide that has a version that works with Windows 10: https://www.lifewire.com/wubi-linux-installation-program-2201175

Now purists will probably not want to use wubi but I figured it was a good first attempt to try it out and not completely hose the system if I screwed something up I could always fallback to Windows 10.

For the most part it was pretty easy but every step seemed to have some blocking issue that took a minute of research to figure out so hopefully this will help anyone attempting to do this in the future.

1) When WUBI asks you which distro you want to download you can let it
download it for you but sometimes you will find it errors out at the end of
the download with a log saying it could not access the file. You can find the ISO that was downloaded in the c:\ubuntu\install and copy and paste it to the same location the wubi installer exe is located and wubi will auto detect and default to that ISO and work fine. So just rerun it and if it asks to
uninstall due to incomplete install just say yes and it will restart the install process not have to download ISO.

2) Disable Secure Boot - In order to be able to access different boot OS options you will need to make sure this is disabled in the BIOS. For this machine it was simple as hitting ESC pre windows boot and choosing F10 for
bios and disabling the Secure Boot / Clearing related keys.

3) Wifi drivers not loaded - First thing I noticed right off the bat Xubuntu was not able to properly load a wifi driver during installation. But fortunately I found the following guide to enable it: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1071299/how-to-install-wi-fi-driver-for-realtek -rtl8821ce-on-ubuntu-18-04

Only issue is -- it requires Internet access to pull the components down to compiled the driver :) As there is no built in LAN port I had no easy way to attempt to access the Internet. I saw someone mentioned they used USB
tethering to phone but as I have an iPhone I did not want to dare go that route. But I did notice that it looked like Bluetooth was functional and I
was able to pair to my iPhone and have it act as a network gateway as a temporary way to get online and it worked great! A little slow but once you
get the driver loaded and reboot wifi works fantastic!

So I have only just started using it but already in love with the setup. I am also using the mini laptop with netrunner terminal to connect to BBS's and it is great to run in Full Screen for a full classic laptop BBS experience (just smaller, lighter and quieter then back in the day and better battery life).

Hopefully someone else found this informative and helpful.

---
LockeDown (Mickey Frklic)
[mysticisland.strangled.net]

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Re: Re: Xubuntu Netbook Considerations
By: Mickey Frklic to All on Thu Jun 20 2019 08:23 pm

So for anyone interested I got tired of trying to look online for the "right" netbook and last night picked up the following HP 2in1 laptop/tablet from
"Best Buy" to attempt and and run Xubuntu on it:

Nice writeup. Wifi, just like old modem cards, are sometimes designed just for
Windows and need special drivers just like you had to.

I didn't know wubi now supports windows 10... might have to look into that.. ;)

Glad it's working out... ;)
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Re: Re: Xubuntu Netbook Considerations
By: Mickey Frklic to All on Thu Jun 20 2019 08:23 pm

So I have only just started using it but already in love with the setup. I am also using the mini laptop with netrunner terminal to connect to BBS's and it is great to run in Full Screen for a full classic laptop BBS experience (just smaller, lighter and quieter then back in the day and better battery life).

Hopefully someone else found this informative and helpful.

Wow, that sounds like a awesome experience! Too bad you didn't record it, I would have liked to see all that in action!

Glad to see everything worked out for you. I've never heard of Wubi, I'm gonna have to look it up and do some reading...

Thank you again!
Regards,
KrUpTiOn
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