Ubuntu vs Windows 8

It is quite amazing how much trouble we had with Windows 8. We just got this new Asus Netbook (F201E). The pre-installed Windows 8 was not only completely non-intuitive to use, but so slow that we were close to just throwing the thing out of the window. The task manager showed that there were some processes running all the time on 50% CPU using up hundreds of megabytes RAM. Maybe you can get away with something like that on a workstation if it has multiple cores and lots of RAM. But it was defnitly the wrong thing for our netbook.

What fixed it? Ubuntu. That was my task for yesterday, which went really smooth. Just download the distribution. Then you need to create a bootable USB stick. Tweak the BIOS a little bit to make sure it reads the stick (activate CSM, deactivate SecureBoot). And even the Wifi worked pretty much right away (after I installed the updates).

And now everything runs smooth and as quick as you'd expect a modern computer to work (even if it's a low-end machine).