So, the season of giving has just come and gone, and you’ve received a Linux-based netbook—the popular new class of ultra-cheap, ultra-portable computer. By definition, netbooks are very limited in what they can do; they’re primary meant for accessing the web as well as some moderate office and multimedia use. Their low-speed processor and minimal memory means that they’re just not suited for more intensive applications like gaming or video editing.

However, there are things you can do to get the most out of your little machine. For instance, you can swap out the limited OS that comes packaged with most Linux-based netbooks for a much more versatile distro like Ubuntu, which can be customized specifically for netbooks. It’s a somewhat complicated process, but in this guide we’ll walk you through it, step by step, and then we’ll show you how to get around in Ubuntu.

Installing Ubuntu

Before we get started, there’re two things you’re going to need to have. First, you’ll need a copy of the Ubuntu 8.10 live CD ISO, which can be found here. It’s about 700 MB, so the download might take a little while, depending on your connection. Second, you’ll need a USB thumb drive with at least 2 GB of space. This drive must be configured to use the FAT32 file system. To change the file system of the USB drive, you just need to right-click on the drive icon in the My Computer screen and select “Format.” Of course, reformatting your drive means nuking any data on it, so save whatever you need.

Note: If you’re using an Asus EeePC, you can save yourself a lot of headache by using the Eeebuntu distribution instead, which is preconfigured to solve a lot of hardware problems that EeePCs face when using Ubuntu. You can get either the regular Eeebuntu (which is nearly identical to Ubuntu) or the Eeebuntu Netbook Remix, which is preloaded with the Netbook Remix packages. In either case, follow the instructions below, substituting the Eeebuntu ISO for the Ubuntu ISO. If you use the Eeebuntu Netbook Remix ISO, you can skip the part about how to set up the Netbook Remix packages.

Additional Note: The Samsung NC10 has some major issues with Ubuntu. You can run the OS from a thumbdrive, so there’s no real harm in trying it out, but consider yourself warned.

Once you’ve got the ISO downloaded and your thumb drive configured properly, you’ve got two options for how to create the bootable drive. The first is easier, but involves burning a CD. If you think you might have use for an Ubuntu Live CD, or if you’ve already made one for some other purpose or just have a ton of extra blank CDs, this is probably the way to go for you. 

Creating an Ubuntu Thumb Drive From a Live CD

Simply burn the ISO disk image onto a CD using your burning software of choice (if you need a free burner, we recommend CDBurnerXP), then boot to Ubuntu off the CD. Recent versions of Ubuntu, such as 8.10, come preloaded with an app that allows you to create a bootable thumb drive from a live CD, such as the one you’re running off of. To access this app, simply click on System->Administration->Create a USB startup Disk. This tool is about as easy as it gets—just select your CD drive, your USB drive, and click Make Startup Disk.

Creating an Ubuntu Thumb Drive Manually

If you don’t want to (or can’t) burn a CD, there’s still a way to manually create an Ubuntu live thumb drive. You’ll need to download the Syslinux boot loader, which you can download here, and you’ll also need a program capable of opening ISO files, such as 7-Zip.

Once you’ve downloaded Syslinux, unzip it to a directory on your desktop called Syslinux. Insert your thumb drive, and make note of its drive letter. Then, open a command prompt and navigate to the directory that contains the Windows Syslinux executable. If you’ve been following along, this directory should be C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Desktop\Syslinux\win32. Install the boot loader on the thumb drive by entering the command syslinux –ma e: where e: is the drive letter of the thumb drive. If your drive has a different letter, use that instead.

Now that the thumb drive has the Syslinux boot loader installed, it’s time to copy over the Ubuntu files. Start by extracting the files from the Ubuntu live ISO to the thumb drive. There will now be a folder called isolinux on the drive. Move the contents of this folder to the root of the thumb drive. Finally, rename the files isolinux.bin and isolinux.cfg to syslinux.bin and syslinux.cfg, respectively, and you’re ready to roll.

All that’s left to do is to insert the now-bootable thumb drive into your netbook and boot from it. How this is done varies from model to model, though the most common method is to press the f12 key while booting. Once you manage to boot off the USB drive, you’ll see the Ubuntu boot screen and you’ll be able to run in live mode. For the time being it’s best to run in live mode (which is to say, off the thumb drive) so you can make sure that you’re able to get everything up and running smoothly and that you like the interface before you commit to a full installation. However, note that any changes you make to Ubuntu in live mode will be temporary, and will be lost when you restart your machine.

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