After a short foray into the world of ChromeOs in the form of Hexxeh's Flow I have moved back to Ubuntu. After a brief flirt with the latest Beta of EasyPeasy I have settled back down with Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 and too be honest it's not a lot different from EasyPeasy (which is also based on Lucid Alpha).
First off, I have to say I found EasyPeasy quick. If anything it performed quicker than ChromeOS. Which isn't that surprising really I guess, considering the pre-release, pre-alpha nature of ChromeOS. Fair play to Hexxeh though, he has put together a fair decent OS which boots quicker than anything that's gone before.
After finding a few missing packages in Easy, namely VPN based stuff, I quickly reverted to Ubuntu Netbook version, installing from a USB Sticked ISO. It installed in a jiffy and after an initial hiccup on bringing up X - it seemed to hang but after a quick flip to the text login, it flicked into life. Subsequent boots have been without incident. A word on the boot front. It is quick - not the quickest I've seen - that honour goes to ChromeOS Flow - but still 18 seconds is quick in my book.
First off, I installed Chromium Browser and VPN bits I couldn't get from Easy Peasy, namely openvpn and pptp and Flash - can't live without a bit of flshing - so it'll never be an apple a day for me sadly because I really liked the look the iPad - oh well, maybe next year...
In use the browsing is quick and for the first time on my lowly Acer Aspire One, video plays without much judder - result. Generally I'm finding far less pauses and short hangs while surfing. I've had a few app crashes - which is to be expected on an Alpha but so far - and we're only talking four hours in - I'm finding Lucid Netbook to be a very able and rapid system. I think I'll stick with this for a while...
