I've been using Ubuntu on my desktop machine for some time now, so I'm intrigued by the idea of running it on my Asus eee netbook also. With the release of Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix (UNR), I decided it was time to really check things out, especially since it can run from a USB drive without having to install the OS. I built an install USB stick and booted up with fingers crossed.
With one glaring issue, everything just worked; wifi, the on-board webcam and microphones, suspending on lid close, even Bluetooth. The custom shortcut keys did not work initially, but once I mapped them to a command they also worked without problem.
All that appears to be missing is CPU throttling. While that's maybe a minor point, one of the reasons I chose the eee is it's long battery life, achieved through throttling the CPU to save juice. UNR just runs the CPU at full tilt, giving me only 4.5 hours of life instead of the 7-8 I get running the eee's native Xandros distribution and throttling the CPU. There is a package called eee-control which appears to provide the functionality, but it does not yet have an official release for 9.10, so I'm reluctant to load it up and test it out.
The other issue which I have yet to find resolution for is whether I'll be able to overwrite the protected drive currently used for the Xandros distro. The eee uses two SSD's, one which houses the OS and another which holds the user data. Under the Xandros distro, the OS drive is unwritable. It appears that UNR will allow me to edit that drive, so that I could remove Xandros and install UNR to that drive, but if that's not the case it may be a deal breaker for me. I don't like the idea of giving up a quarter of my total storage space just to load Ubuntu.
So, in overview, UNR looks to be great, but I'm not willing to fully commit to it just yet. I'm going to keep playing with it from the USB drive and when the 9.10 version of eee-control is released I'll test it out. If it works as advertised, I'll install UNR to the user drive and dual-boot with Xandros for a bit to do some more testing before taking the final jump to wiping Xandros and going fully UNR.