Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 hands-on

In episode 6 of our podcast we asked the question, "should netbook manufacturers standardise on a single distro?" Well, as netbook manufactuers continue to find ever more obscure distros to fit onto their systems, Canonical has stepped into the fray wielding a mighty cluestick: Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR).

When we interviewed Mark Shuttleworth a few weeks ago, he agreed that Ubuntu was late into the netbook arena. But the arrival of Jaunty Jackalope means that UNR has finally seen an official release, so there are lots of questions that need answering: how is it different from normal Ubuntu? How well does it work on average netbooks? And, most importantly, is it any good?

If you've already read our group test of netbook distros and want to know what Ubuntu can do to pull ahead ahead of the pack, you can read our full review of Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix below. Read on!

Lots of people loved it, just as many hated it, but few can doubt that Asus changed the computing world with the original Eee PC. Suddenly you can could get the functionality of A Real PC out of a laptop you could slip into your bag and still have room for lunch and a good book. Sure, it might have looked like something Toys 'R' Us would produce, but the Eee PC 701 has been followed by dozens of other devices that add more style, more power and more refinement.

But, despite having an early lead, Linux managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and Windows XP has managed to forge a home for itself on netbook devices. In fact, at the computer store nearest to TuxRadar HQ, nearly all the netbooks ship with Windows as standard, and most of them don't have a Linux option.

Part of the problem people were facing with Linux was that it simply wasn't Windows - they wanted their Start menu, they wanted My Computer and they wanted Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org, good as it is, just doesn't cut it if someone is looking for the ribbon toolbar from Office 2007. Another problem was that some of the netbooks were ridiculously oversold. The Eee PC 701, for example, was marketed as being a great laptop for photographers on the move, which is remarkable given that it came with nothing more than mtPaint.

But by far the biggest problem with Linux netbooks was that too much stuff just didn't work out of the box. People don't know what codecs are and they don't care. What they want is to be able to double-click on an MP3 and have it play. They want to watch kitten videos on YouTube. Someone called us once because they were having trouble installing Skype on their Acer Aspire One - they were double clicking a setup.exe file and, unsurprisingly, nothing was happening.

Thanks to its aggressive marketing, we all know that Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings", but can the Wizards of Polish really take the bruised and fragmented Linux market and make it work? Yes, they can.