Blogs

Home

Andrew Miller's Blog

What makes a netbook?

Posted in Linux on December 3, 2008 at 5:40 pm

A netbook that takes longer than 30 seconds to boot is not a netbook. Not everyone agrees with that, but I do strongly believe it to be a defining feature that separates netbooks from small notebooks. Size just isn’t an important enough reason for defining something as a netbook. It if was purely size related - why call it a “net” book in the first place? Why not picobook? To me the use of the word “net” suggests that internet use is its main use, which in itself suggests less than a full operating system and a cloud like environment. The small size is merely for the convenience of portability. Installing Vista, adding unreliable hard drives and making them bigger, blurs the line significantly and gets away from the point. I still feel the operating system on the EeePC is what differentiates it from the rest of the crowd. There is no coincidence that Asus and Acer control 90% of the netbook market and both have stripped down Linux based operating systems that boot in under 30 seconds.

Earlier in the year, I was doing a feature for Custom PC, using the incredibly small and light “Slitaz” Linux distribution. What started as me writing an article on it, ended with me knee deep in scripts and contributing a significant number of changes to the OS - making it possible to simply install it to a USB drive in a wizard like manner. I really liked the way the OS was only 22MB, yet had a modern look and everything you need from a Cloud OS - FireFox, Pidgin, GIMP etc. However, I think it needs to mature a little - mainly by adding in better network card support and wireless - so I am no longer using it on any of my machines.

Browsing the web today, I came across a story about gOS (Good OS) releasing a new, stripped down version of its operating system specifically for cloud use. This ticked all the boxes that Slitaz did, but as we know gOS is a little more mature. This also sounds pretty similar to the Asus SplashTop, but has the added benefit that it’s not under the Asus brand. This makes it considerably more likely to be adopted by other manufacturers. What I like about the OS is that it is not designed as a complete replacement - but it will boot up in a number of seconds, giving you a web browser that will do 90% of what you want. Then if you feel it necessary to load the entire OS, you can simply click a button to load your full-blown Windows or Linux OS.

The more I think about it - considering the Asus / Xandros operating system doesn’t take up much space at all (around 2GB). Why isn’t Asus bundling its OS with the Windows versions of the EeePC as well, but on an SD card that can be removed from the machine? Flash memory is so damned cheap now, after all.

So to get back to my original point - gOS Cloud could really level the playing field in the netbook market. Then I would be free to purchase one with a decent shift key without fear of getting a sub-standard OS…