The folks behind Mandriva Linux already added support for the Eee PC 700/701 series to their 2008.1 release which was released in April. That means you can install Mandriva on an Eee PC from a CD or from a flash drive and it will work out of the box, no modifications necessary. That means the Fn keys, the WiFi, and the graphics should all just work.

But if you have an Eee PC 900, you'll need to tweak things a bit by upgrading your kernel and hal-info packages. But it turns out there's another option: You can purchase the Mandriva Flash 2008 Spring edition for 59 Euros or about $91. This version comes on an 8GB USB flash disk and includes all the updates you need to get Mandriva 2008.1 up and running on an Eee PC 900.

Canonical doesn't plan to launch Ubuntu Netbook Remix for a few more months. But if you're itching to check out the customized version of Ubuntu designed for low cost subnotebooks like the Eee PC, the current source packages are already available for download. Keep in mind, this software is still under development, so your results may vary. Of course, open source software is always under development, but if you don't want to risk mucking up your Ubuntu system, you might want to create a new user to test out the Netbook Remix interface.

Or you can just hop on over to Ars Technica, to read an early review of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. As I pointed out yesterday, the first thing you'll notice is a new program launcher with big buttons optimized for computers with small screens. But Ubuntu Netbook Remix also has a novel program switcher. Instead of minimizing programs to the system tray, every program you open is always maximized. You switch between programs by selecting icons from the switcher bar. The effect is a lot like switching from one tab to another in a web browser.

The switcher bar is basically just an applet that you can add to the Gnome Panel. Underneath all the shiny Netbook Remix lies a full version of Ubuntu. So if you like the program launcher but not the switcher bar, all you have to do is remove the panel and customize your screen to your heart's content.

Aside from the visual changes, Netbook Remix will also be optimized to work with Intel's low-power Atom CPU. While this doesn't necessarily mean that a stock Ubuntu distro won't work with an Atom chip out of the box, Ubuntu Netbook Remix will be designed to take advantage of the chip's power saving features.

When Asus first announced the Eee PC, the company explained that one of the ways it would keep the price down on its tiny laptops would be by shipping machines that run Linux instead of Windows. But Asus rose some eyebrows with its choice of Linux distributions. While Ubuntu, Fedora, and several other distros have gotten a lot of attention over the last few years for being consumer-friendly versions of Linux, Asus went with Xandros, a less popular distro.

There are a few advantages to Xandros. First, the distro is extremely conservtive, which means beta software doesn't make it into the main repositories very often and if you install something that is in the repositories, there's a good chance that it's going to work. But on the down side, you'll often have a hard time finding the newest versions of popular applications like OpenOffice.org or Firefox. There are other, more technical reasons some folks have a love/hate relationship with Xandros, but honestly I never paid much attention to the relationship between Xandros and Microsoft and all that other stuff.

Even though Asus is now giving Eee PC customers a choice between Windows and Linux, the initial decision to use Xandros has given the distribution a lot of attention. And it looks like the Xandros team wants to leverage that attention to market its software towards other netbook/ultraportable device makers.

It doesn't sound like Xandros has signed any new partners just yet. But I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more from this company in the future.