Leeenux is a light weight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It takes up just 1.2GB of disk space and has a user interface that’s designed for netbooks with screens as small as 7 inches. In other words, it plays well with first generation Asus Eee PC models.

Last time I checked in on Leenux was a few months ago. But the developer just sent me a note to let me know that Leenux has been updated from version 1.3 to version 2.0. The latest update brings a number of new applications including Firefox 3.7 beta, Thunderbird and Lightning for calendar, email, and contact management, and a number of emulators for old school Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games. Because you know, when you’ve only got a limited amount of storage space and screen real estate, old school gaming is the way to go. Or something like that.

You can grab Leeenux 2.0 from the project download page.

If there’s one thing the world probably doesn’t need right now, it’s yet another custom Linux distribution for netbooks based on Ubuntu. But that’s exactly what we’ve got with Leeenux. And yet there are still a few reasons you might want to give it a try, especially if you have an older netbook like an Asus Eee PC 701 with a 7 inch display and 8GB or less of disk space.

For one thing, once installed, Leeenux only takes up about 1.4GB of disk space. That means you can install it on a netbook with as little as 2GB of storage. The user interface is based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is designed to play well with smaller, 7 inch displays. Leeenux also uses eee-control, a power management tool for Eee PC netbooks which can help prolong battery life.

The operating system comes with a number of Linux apps preloaded including the Evolution email client, Firefox 3.5, AbiWord for word processing, the Gnumeric spreadsheet app, and Totem Movie Player. You can always install other applications including OpenOffice.org if you want a fuller feature office suite. But OpenOffice takes up a heck of a lot more disk space than AbiWord and Gnumeric.

Leeenux is based on Ubuntu 8.04 (or rather, Easy Peasy, which is based on Ubuntu 8.04), so it won’t feature all of the updates available in Ubuntu 9.10 which is coming out this week. But the folks behind Leeenux plan to launch a new version based on Ubuntu 10.04 in May, 2010.

via Eee PC It Runs on Linux