Mainstream Linux gets more netbook-friendly

Eager to add Penguin-power to your pint-sized portable? While there’s no shortage of distros pared back to suit a netbook or even optimised for a particular model of netbook – such as the Ubuntu-derivative Eeebuntu for the Asus Eee PC family, or Kuki Linux and Linux4One for the Acer Aspire One – some very high-profile players in the land of Linux are working to become more netbook-friendly.

The just-released RC2 build of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring now includes driver support for the entire range of Asus Eee PCs plus Acer’s Aspire One, MSI’s Wind and other netbooks built on Intel’s Atom platform.

“2009 Spring includes full hardware support for every currently available Eee model” explains the Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Release Tour wiki. “We have used the original Eee as one of our main test machines in performance and usability testing, to make sure Mandriva Linux 2009 boots quickly, performs speedily and is fully usable on the Eee.”

“All the Mandriva configuration tools have been tested and tweaked where appropriate to fit into the lower resolution screens common on netbooks, and we have also tweaked some third-party applications for this restraint.”

The 2009 Spring edition also includes “the lightweight LXDE desktop in the Mandriva Linux 2009 repositories with an eye to netbook users”.

Another key change in 2009 Spring is the adoption of the KDE 4.2.2 desktop, including the new Plasma desktop shell, which provides a resolution-independent interface for KDE, so that the desktop is almost identical regardless of screen size or resolution.



And KDE itself is set to be re-invented for netbooks, with an all-new Plasma interface being designed for the forthcoming KDE 4.4. This will be specific to netbooks rather than designed for computers with small displays, although “it will be usable on a regular laptop or desktop as well, and I expect some will do just that” explains KDE developer Aaron Seigo on his blog.



But don’t go looking for anything like any current desktop. “We’re really breaking out fairly completely from the taskbar concept, as we’re not trying to make a ‘smaller desktop’” Seigo notes.

“We aren’t making an interface for a ‘smaller laptop’ or a ‘larger handheld’. The interface is for a netbook, which has a unique set of use cases and should have a unique, if familiar, user interface. To our knowledge, nobody is really doing this yet.”

“Just as Apple made popular an interface style on handhelds that is for handhelds with their iPhone/iPod touch interface, netbooks deserve a similar treatment. The emphasis in the design is on full screen usage, speed to information, integration with applications and visual beauty.”

Seigo believes that Linux interfaces have failed to keep up with the rise of netbooks, both in the challenges created by their small screens as well as their different usage patterns.



“Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a full screen launcher with window management tuned for full screened applications... this is what I mean by a ‘small desktop’” Seigo explains. He cites HP’s Ubuntu-based Mi shell on the HP Mini 1000 netbook as “a lot more interesting than that, if only because of the radical graphic design of it all.”

“But look at the ‘File / Settings / Logout’ at the top right, the system tray on the bottom right and the very ‘Hey, this is like a media centre’ design of the UI. I don't really get the purpose of that gigantic “this is not taskbar … okay, it is a taskbar, but it’s different” thing. Honestly, the link you put up there is a cluttered mess.”



“So while the HP design is a lot more interesting than the UNR (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) one in my opinion, it’s also heavily inspired by two well known worlds (desktop and media centre) and doesn't really make you go ‘holy crap!’ like the iPhone interface did for smart phones and music players. It doesn’t diverge enough into ‘what is a netbook used for’, it just diverges.”

“One obvious question is why there is no work on bridging the difference between full blown applications, small utilities and useful ‘start page’ widgets. And perhaps this is where we are diverging in our thinking: we aren’t looking at the netbook as a small laptop but as, well, a netbook: a simple system used for specific types of tasks, usually one at a time.”

“Everyone is more or less stuck on the Eee PC concept of a launcher page that kicks you off into full blown applications with all their desktopy-ness and little to no recognition of the fact that it is not a desktop. The HP Mini 1000 gets closest to addressing this with the email/web/music/pictures synopses .. but it’s only close and is still too desktop + mediacentre = netbook.”

“Device appropriateness is going to become a critical issue in the coming years, and achieving that with an affordable investment of time and effort will mean the difference between success and failure as devices proliferate.”