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Specification of my laptop are : CPU Intel Atom N450(1.66 GHz, 512 KB cache, 1 GB Memory. Which will be a suitable Ubuntu and how to install it?

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In the Ubuntu family, the lowest resource usage is with Lubuntu which uses the lxde desktop environment. You will want the 64 bit version which can be downloaded here.

That download is for the 15.10 release which has a shorter support time-frame. So, your post indicates that you're new to Linux or, at least, to Lubuntu. Because of this, I'm going to actually suggest that you download the LTS (Long Term Stable) version. Again, your CPU is 64 bit so you will want to download the 64 bit version. For the sake of consistency, I strongly recommend that you do go ahead and use the LTS version until you're used to it and then you can decide if you want to use something a little more bleeding edge.

  1. You will want to format your USB drive. This means that you'll loose any information that you already have on that drive so be sure to back that information up. You will want to format the drive in FAT32. Using Windows you can just insert the drive, open Windows Explorer, right click on it, and select to format the drive.

  2. Download the .ISO file from the site linked above to your current PC. Once you have downloaded the .ISO from the site then you will want to copy the image to a USB drive. Now, this is not really a direct copy, you don't just drag and drop it there. Instead, you need to use the .ISO (an image file) and some special software to do this. I recommend that you use unetbootin for this. It is fairly simply and does a good job.

  3. Then you'll boot the computer and change the boot order to boot to USB drive first. On the Acer Aspire One models this means that you press the DEL key during boot. In those settings you can select to boot to USB as the first order of boot.

  4. Then, you're on the way. This page gives a nice rundown of how to do the actual installation process. If you have any specific questions then we can probably help with those.

Some final notes:

  • Your netbook is a bit dated now. There's not a whole lot of RAM and the CPU is woefully underpowered. Compared to your current OS, it will probably run much better than before. I've installed Lubuntu on a few netbooks (specifically from Acer) in the past and found the performance to be acceptable but one needs to keep in mind what the computer is capable of. You won't be running YouTube videos in full screen and in high definition. You won't be running a bunch of applications at one time. You won't be opening a few dozen tabs.

  • However, if you just want to browse the web, maybe read something on the go, or if you want to check email and maybe do some quick note taking then it's absolutely fine. I've had nary a hardware issue so there should be no difficulty in those regards. I've not done so in a while but I am presuming that the hardware support is the same as it has always been.

  • I should also add that, given the nature of the beast, I'd not bother with trying to dual-boot the OS. You can, if you want, but Windows 7 (the OS that the netbook came with) is no longer in mainstream support, support ended January 13, 2015 and it will be EOL (End Of Life) in 2020 - so you'll get no new updates except for security updates. You'll get no new features. Dual booting is probably not required for you - it's not likely that you're using your netbook to do any serious gaming as it is. Unless you have a very compelling reason then I'd just recommend formatting it entirely and installing Linux in its default mode.

  • It is easier to install and make sure that it is configured properly when it is the only Operating System on the computer but it will also give you motivation to learn about Ubuntu and Linux. Dual booting can be done but, unless you have some very specific application that you can't live without, Linux will almost certainly accomplish anything you'd want to do on netbook hardware.

KGIII
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I wouldn't expect a default Ubuntu installation (using the Unity desktop) to work fluently on this setup; I've experienced the Unity desktop to be eating far too much CPU and RAM to run on such limited resources. Also, GNOME 3 would most likely struggle, too, and so would KDE, but as far as I have experienced, to a much lesser extent.

For this setup, I'd go with one of the desktops with less impact on CPU load and memory usage, such as Xfce (used in Xubuntu) or LXDE (used in Lubuntu):

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f8z0qlHFD1Q/U05j0X_oZrI/AAAAAAAASOI/5HBR5bcQcH8/s1600/xubuntu-14.04-whiskermenu.png
The Xfce desktop in Xubuntu 14.04.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AKlZxXX2jf0/U0_HmeZAh5I/AAAAAAAASTk/r84tn7M4wVo/s1600/lubuntu1404.png
The LXDE desktop used in Lubuntu 14.04.

I assume both of them to work pretty well on your hardware, so it's up to you which to choose (as it wasn't from the beginning...). To find out which you like better, you can put both systems on a USB stick, and boot directly off it. Please note that in this scenario the fact that the whole OS is running off an USB disk can be a real bottleneck (but needn't be, as I've impressively learned). So you may experience a slightly less fluent system from the USB stick.

You can get the boot images from here:

Xubuntu

Lubuntu

Please choose the image fit for your system architecture. If you're using an UEFI-based computer, best use a 64bit image, as I've experienced Linux to work not as ideally with 32bit UEFI systems. For an older PC, you may want to choose a 32bit image.

For installation, please refer to this extensive guide at the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki.

s3lph
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