I tried to boot into Windows and install from inside Windows using Wubi. It hung while booting from the USB drive, with a single line telling me nothing useful except that it wasn't my netbook's fault. I plugged it into my netbook's USB port and rebooted, choosing USB Boot. Fine, I selected a general option which allowed me to point to the Ubuntu Netbook ISO I downloaded earlier and it successfully created a bootable USB drive with Ubuntu Netbook Edition. It turned out to be the wrong choice.įirst, the Universal USB Installer mentioned apparently hasn't been updated with Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook edition in its dropdown menu.

Since my netbook, a Samsung N220 (Intel Atom N450 with 1GB RAM) comes with no CD drive, I used the instructions found here to get the ISO and the utility to create a bootable USB drive so that I can boot up or install Ubuntu with a USB thumb drive. So with the latest version, Ubuntu 10.10 or 'Maverick Meet' as it's dubbed released recently, I decided to give its Netbook edition a spin, since it touts a new netbook-friendly Unity interface optimized for the limited screen real estate on a netbook. It is polished beyond the typical Linux distro and has a great community behind it if you encounter any problems. Canonical's Ubuntu has been one of my favorites in recent years. But I do try them, hoping to find one that I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for an alternative to Windows. I don't actually use the many different flavors of Linux floating out there.

Ubuntu 10.10 universal usb installer