Easy Peasy V1.1 A Quick First Look

I had to send my netbook, an Acer Aspire One, for repair after three months of use. The unit originally came with Windows XP, but had 1Gb of memory and a 160Gb hard drive, a configuration not available on Linux versions. I installed Fedora 10 XFCE respin, but when sending in the unit I knew that Acer would probably re-install Windows XP; Acer was upfront about this. As I suspected the repaired unit arrived with a fresh install of Windows XP.

This leads me to Easy Peasy v1.1, which is based on Ubuntu 8.10. Installing the XFCE respin of Fedora was not uneventful. I had to search the Internet on how to configure the wireless adapter, sound and installing all of the multimedia codecs for video and Internet. It wasn't a difficult task, but took a little time going over different web sites and getting the configuration just right. After the work was done I was happy with the final result. I didn't really want to go through that process again.

Easy Peasy was originally designed for Asus Eee PC's, however, the latest version includes support for other netbooks including my Acer Aspire One. I downloaded the ISO image and the UNetbootin utility from the Easy Peasy web site. Using UNetbootin I created a bootable USB stick from the ISO image. This was done on a Windows XP machine since I was away from my Linux workstation, but there are UNetbootin downloads for both Windows and Linux.

Booting Easy Peasy as a live distro, I quickly found the install icon and installed to the hard drive. After seven simple steps I had an Easy Peasy netbook. I was able to setup wireless on my home network, and in short order had all the updates installed. Easy Peasy comes with several multimedia plug-ins and codecs installed by default. I tested a few web sites and with the exception of some widescreen videos not displaying properly everything ran fairly well. I have some Divx video files that did not properly display in widescreen with Movie Player, installing VLC, which I prefer anyway, solved that issue.

When running the Ubuntu Netbook Desktop, applications run maximized. Multiple window applications like Dia and Gimp do not run very well in this environment. The solution is to switch to the Classic Desktop, the normal Gnome desktop, using the Switch Desktop Mode application. Switching between desktops is simple to do as needed.

With the exception of a few glitches, for example the wireless indicator LED's aren't working, I'm pleasantly surprised with this netbook distro. Several popular Linux distributions are beginning to support netbook installs. For now though, the current version of Easy Peasy is more than adequate and I'm looking forward to Easy Peasy v2.0 which is in the works. While this wasn't a complete review of Easy Peasy, and despite its silly name, I'm enjoying exploring this netbook distro.