I am seriously considering purchasing a netbook. However, the number of choices is somewhat daunting. I currently have my sights on a select few:

The Samsung NC10 -Linux is not officially supported, but talk on the Archlinux forums suggest that the latest kernels support it well.

The MSI Wind - Highly recommended by a friend who uses it with Kubuntu, but I hear less than good things about it's battery life.

The EeePC 1000HE - The eeepc done right. They finally gave it a standard keyboard layout and got rid of the flimsy build; And up to 9 hours on one battery!

The (unreleased) Dell Inspiron Mini 10 - I am a huge Dell fan, and had been considering the Mini 9, but the keyboard layout is too unconventional. The Mini 10 has a 92% size keyboard, edge to edge, and a standard layout. It will eventually ship with Ubuntu so I am fairly confident of it's linux-worthiness.

These are the standouts in my mind. However, one thing I am wondering about all of them; how does KDE 4 perform? I suspect that they won't handle KWin effects very well, am I right? On the other hand, my Dell desktop uses Intel Integrated Graphics and handles KWin just fine. Is anyone using KDE 4 on a netbook? Are there any KDE specific issues?

zak89 wrote:However, one thing I am wondering about all of them; how does KDE 4 perform? I suspect that they won't handle KWin effects very well, am I right?

Don't have any experience with KDE4 on Netbooks myself, but some people seem to find it quite enjoyable, including effects:

http://adymo.blogspot.com/2009/02/kde-4 ... eview.html

Cheers,
_

I run KDEmod 4.2 on my (new) Samsung NC10, and I absolutely love it. Just upgrade the memory a few minutes ago, but can't really say that I feel a difference; KDE 4.2 runs surprisingly well on this little device, even with the default configuration (1 GB memory).

Desktop Effects are enabled, and effects such as Slide are very smooth. The only annoying thing is that the effects are faster than on my stationary computer...

OK, other than that there are some other nuisances:
- For some reason unknown, keyboard layouts won't work very well for me.
- Brightness and Powerdevil is no-no. Currently use xbacklight as a workaround, but I hope to get it fixed someday.
- Not all Fn keys work. Doesn't bother me much.
- Well, I can't get those 8 h battery life. Still have to do a lot of optimization, but I guess ~7 hours is the limit.

And I guess that's it! I'm very happy with my NC10, Arch and KDEmod 4.2. Once I've got everything set up the way I want it, I'm going to post a lot of screenshots in my blog (no screencast I'm afraid). I can post a link here if you're interested.

I have a 1000HD, and it works very well with Debian GNU/Linux + KDE4.2

I can post a link here if you're interested.

I for one would be very interested!

I'm glad to here KDE 4 seems to be working well on these machines.

Don't have any experience with KDE4 on Netbooks myself, but some people seem to find it quite enjoyable, including effects:

http://adymo.blogspot.com/2009/02/kde-42...eview.html

Actually, it was that very post that prompted me to start this thread. I was wondering what other's experiences were with KDE 4 + netbook.

I'll probably hold off on my decision until the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 comes out. We'll see.

zak89 wrote:

I can post a link here if you're interested.

I for one would be very interested!

Here are some screenies.

zak89 wrote:
The (unreleased) Dell Inspiron Mini 10 - I am a huge Dell fan, and had been considering the Mini 9, but the keyboard layout is too unconventional. The Mini 10 has a 92% size keyboard, edge to edge, and a standard layout. It will eventually ship with Ubuntu so I am fairly confident of it's linux-worthiness.

Mini 10 looks perfect, but there are some caveats:

a) It's more expensive than other netbooks
b) At least the RAM is not upgradeable. By that I mean that it's soldered on the MoBo.

Other than that, it seems like just about perfect machine.

Other contender to keep your eye on is the HP Mini 1000 Mi.

These are the standouts in my mind. However, one thing I am wondering about all of them; how does KDE 4 perform? I suspect that they won't handle KWin effects very well, am I right?

To my knowledge, they handle effects just fine

I'm running KDE on my eeepc701, nice performance and looks good.

Well, having a Samsung NC10, I have very much the same experiences, as Hans.
I've tried XP (the preinstalled - Forced upon me!!!), Windows 7 (build 5000), SuSE 11.1, Mint, Ubuntu and Kubuntu.
With the preinstalled XP, things seemed to work, but it's an anoying OS, on a little screen 1024 x 600 px.
And it's filled up with **** and has some strange idea'rs about the harddisk partitioning...

Of all the other ones, actually only Ubuntu (Gnome) could be made to work correctly.
And thats thanks to:
www.linuxonmysamsung.com
Tryed to use the repos with me KDE install, but couldn't make it work.

But KDE seems to me, to be the absolutely best desktop on a netbook.
The menusystem is perfekt for small screens, and you get good looking effects, that doesn't slow the pc down.
If only there was a simple (non Geek way ) to make the Fn-keys to work in my KDE (Kubuntu)...
For now, I'm going with setting the BIOS screen-brightness to User Controlled, and I've adjusted powercontrol, so that it's on Performance for 90% of battery-time.
Giving me full screenbrightness !
That eats a lot of battery life, but I can still operate for + 5 hour's...

And is there anyway "One Button" method of getting more Window-frames, Windows decorations...?
Using Plastik, because it's easyer to use on the move in a bumpy train. But it's boring...

BTW the little Samsung is GREAT !
I recomend it !!!

Interesting to hear how people are getting on running kde4 on netbooks. I hav been on gnome and xfce since ubuntu 8.10 because of the kde4 mess but wondering whether to try kubuntu 9.04 on my netbook as hopefully kde4 is settling down and becoming more useable.

Ubuntu has developed a netbook specific gnome based interface (UNR) with features meant to improve usability on the small screen. I see in one of the linked articles above that it is possible to run windows with no borders or menus. Is this quite easy to do and toggle on and off? Also I always had problems with various dialogs in kde, even on a big screen, being badly designed and needing to be expanded to see all the buttons. This would obviously be impossible on a small netbook screen. Any problems with this on kde4?

The screenshots do look very nice. I am in two minds since swapping to gnome. It was always the kde apps I preferred but tbh there are only 2 I still use, kmymoney and digikam but I still don't feel completely 'at home' in gnome.

Also, what is it like on resources? Netbooks obviously are not that powerful and with battery life being key. I remember that before kde4 launched many people said it would be less resoure hungry than kde3.5 but it seems the reverse is true.

I've set a window-specific setting to maximize all normal windows and also hide the border. For applications where this behavior is unwanted, you just have to set a rule to ignore the general rule.

You can easily set a global shortcut to show/hide the window border if you like. I've also set a shortcut to maximize the window horizontally, which means that I can easily set two windows side by side. Whether you can hide the menubar or not depends on the application. In most KDE applications that I use, you can. For Firefox I use a special extension that hides the menubar and toolbars.

There are some dialogs that are oversized, but it's not a big problem - you can move the window by holding down Alt and hold down the left mouse button.

If you were talking about my screenshots, I can tell you that they much better on the real thing.
Yeah seriously, I think they look very dark and strangely sized on my TFT monitor. Guess I'm used to see it on my Sammy. But anyway, thanks for the compliment (if you were talking about my screenies, that is).

Hi Hans, Yes, it was your screenshots One thing that did surprise me though was that your taskbar was showing rather than being on autohide to save space. Was this just for the screenshots?

I seem to remember that kde3.5 had a key shortcut to toggle the window border on and off. I never used it on full size screens but it would be ideal on a netbook.

I see you are running Arch. I was thinking of trying that but I am hearng good things about ubuntu 9.04 on my netbook (Acer aspire one). I don't have the time or, I have to admit, interest for too much tweaking these days so ubuntu is sounding more attractive at the moment.

Nope, it's always shown. I think it's worth the few pixels for the information shown - current desktop, windows on the current desktop, system tray, battery, device manager and clock. I might decrease the height in the future, but the system tray looks bad if the height becomes too small.

I try to avoid using the mouse as much as possible, so autohiding isn't a good option for me. Besides, I want to be able to see this information all the time. If an application requires more space, I also have a hotkey to toggle fullscreen.

As far as I know, most netbooks are able to run KDE4. You have to do some adjustments and the OS is also an issue but it works for me. I use a Dell Inspiron Mini and a friend helped me to set up KDE4. I can only say good things about it - after I have sorted a few things, it does a great job. The friend runs KDE4 on a Samsung netbook and is happy with it, too. So if you want to use it on the road, a netbook could be a good investment.