Test drive: Ubuntu 13.04 Gnome beta (Live) on the EEEPC 900

I'm definitively a Gnome user. I started my Linux adventure with the good-old Gnome 2. I don't like so much version 3, but I switched to it once I realized it kept, at least in part, its flexibility thanks Gnome shell extensions. I'm actually using Gnome 3 on my desktop computer so, once I heard that Ubuntu was going to have an official Gnome derivative distribution, I started thinking of replacing the Linux Mint 12 installation on my EEEPC 900.

First impressions

The daily-build ISO image I downloaded was quite big (about 958 KB) so that I couldn't use my usual old 1GB USB disk. Not a big problem (I used a 4GB SD card) but I really hope they'll manage to keep the disk image size smaller in the definitive version. Once the SD card have been prepared I rebooted my EEEPC. Ubuntu Gnome boots on the usual featureless default Gnome 3 screen

The side-bar, in the activities screen, appears a little too crowded on the small EEEPC display. This, unlike Unity, means dealing with microscopic icons.

by the way unwanted icons can be easily removed.

Here is the application search screen

As I already said, I don't like the default way Gnome 3 works but, after a brief visit to Gnome extensions page I managed to get a desktop the way I like it

Conclusions

Ubuntu Gnome works well on the EEEPC 900, once properly configured it becomes quite usable even if it gave me the impression of being slightly less responsive then Unity. By the way e little less responsiveness it's a small price to pay in exchange for Gnome 3 flexibility. It's highly probable I'll install on the EEEPC once the final version will be released next April.