The folks at the official Direct2Dell blog sat down with Doug Anson, one of the folks behind the custom interface Dell designed to use with the Ubuntu 8.04 Linux operating system used on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.

The most noticeable thing that Dell did was to create a new menu bar that hangs out on the desktop. Much like the easy mode Linux interface Asus uses for its Eee PC computers, the Dell menu places several large buttons on your screen allowing you to quickly find the applications you use the most. Out of the box, there are five buttons, for Entertainment, Games, Learning, Productivity, and Web. Clicking on any button brings up a group of icons for launching programs that fall under that category. For example, under Productivity, you’ll find OpenOffice.org.

You can also add applications to any category by hitting the + button in the bottom right corner. Or you can add entire categories by clicking the big + button in the menu itself.

If you don’t particularly like the Dell interface, you can disable it and just use the default Ubuntu/Gnome menu system. You can access the Gnome panel just fine even if you are running the Dell interface, so you don’t really have to choose between one and the other.

Or if you’d rather use the Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface, you can always install it manually.

Dell does offer a few other tweaks in addition to the menu bar. For example, the Dell Mini should be able to play most common media types out of the box, since restricted source codecs come preloaded. Dell has also partnered with Box.net to provide 2GB of free online storage to Inspiron Mini customers.

You can check out a video with Doug Anson after the break.

via Ubuntu Mini

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While Eee PC users wait to see whether the Aeeeris Tablet kit which will let them turn an Eee PC 701 into a tablet style computer ever materializes, it looks like at least one Acer Aspire One User has figured out how to build a cheap tablet PC out of his netbook.

There’s not much in the way of information at the moment, but there are a series of photos of the homemade UMPC over at the TodoUMPC forums. It looks like a full article with instructions could be coming soon.

It looks like the designer basically took an Acer Aspire One, swapped out the display for a cheap 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel touchscreen and somehow flipped the screen so that it lives where you’d normally expect to see a keyboard. That means you won’t be able to type on this machine. But it shouldn’t be that hard to install an on-screen keyboard, or even a custom Linux distro (like Ubuntu Mobile) which comes with one preloaded. For now it looks like the builder is running Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

via Mobility Site

A pre-release version of Ubuntu Mobile has been released. What’s Ubuntu Mobile? It’s a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed to run on handheld MID devices with 7 to 9 inch touchscreen displays. In other words, UMPCs.

Ubuntu Mobile is not the same thing as Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is designed for netbooks, or small, low power laptops with full keyboards. Ubuntu Mobile is optimized for devices without keyboards. it has nice big buttons that are easy to press with your fingers or a stylus and an on-screen keyboard for typing.

At its core, it’s basically a full version of Ubuntu. Anything you can run on the full desktop version of Ubuntu, you can run on Ubuntu Mobile. It just looks better (and in theory works better) on small screened devices.

While Ubuntu Mobile wasn’t designed with netbooks in mind, my first thought was to see how it runs on a netbook. You can find the answer, plus a few more pictures after the break.

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If you’re like me and you just can’t help trying new things with your netbook, the Foresight Linux development team have just released a mobile version of their distribution. At 530mb, this is no stripped-down distro. You’ll find a wide range of software preinstalled and a Gnome desktop tailored for devices with smaller displays - which Foresight has borrowed from Canonical’s Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Major packages include F-Spot Photo Manager, Firefox, Pidgin Instant Messenger, Banshee Media Player, GNOME Movie Player, and Network Manager (for painless wifi connections). Since it’s a Foresight spinoff, the excellent Conary package manager is included as well. Yet Another Linux Blog has a great writeup of what Conary is and how it works.

They’ve tested Foresight Mobile on the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC, so owners of netbooks like the MSI Wind or Acer Aspire One should have no trouble getting it running. Two known bugs currently exist on the Eee: software power off does not work, nor does the Eee’s wireless following a resume from suspend. I’ll be posting the results of my test run on the Wind later this week.

Foresight also recently announced a deal that will see their desktop OS ship on all Shuttle KPCs, which you can read more about on Shuttle’s US web site.

Want to know how Ubuntu Netbook Remix runs on the Acer Aspire One?

Spanish language blog Asus E3 apparently took the plunge and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Aspire One. As you can see, it runs pretty smoothly although it takes a fairly long time to boot.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is currently available as an add-on for Ubuntu 8.04. In other words, you first need to install Ubuntu, then you can install the Netbook Remix packages which include optimizations for the Intel Atom CPU and for devices with small screens. Eventually Canonical hopes to partner with PC makers to preload the operating system on low cost ultraportable computers like the Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire One.

[via Eee PC News.de]

Earlier this month, Canonical’s Gerry Car indicated that Ubuntu Netbook Remix would be able to boot in as little as 5-10 seconds. It turns out that isn’t true.

While anyone can install the packages that turn Ubuntu into a rudimentary version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says the ultimate goal is to ship cheap laptops with the open source operating system preloaded. And the company is working with several PC manufacturers to make that happen.

If you thought the Asus Eee PC’s 25-30 second boot time was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Canonical marketing director Gerry Carr tells Laptop Magazine that Ubuntu Netbook Remix will boot in just 5-10 seconds.

We already knew the Gigabyte M912 ultraportable tablet would run Windows Vista instead of XP. But if you look closely that this hands-on video from Laptop Magazine, you can see that it’s also capable of running Ubuntu. And not just any old Ubuntu. That looks to me like Ubuntu Netbook Remix, the new version of the open source operating system customized for low cost computers with Intel’s low-power Atom CPU.

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.

Canonical won’t be ready to ship its custom version of Ubuntu for low-cost ultraportable laptops until the fall, but that’s not stopping the group from showing off an early version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix at Computex.