HP Mini Note 2133 with Linux

I purchased an HP mini note 2133 laptop just before I left for my trip. This is an ultra notebook about the size of your standard tech paperback book and weighs about 3lbs. It is pretty nice. The 9" screen is small but readable with a resolution of 1280x768. Much better than what you will find with most ultra portables like it. In addition, the keyboard is 90% of the normal size so it is still pretty big. Having seen an eee pc at Rails Conf, I am not sure I could type on that. The keyboard on the mini note is not a problem.



I purchased the Linux version with 1gig of ram and a 120G hard drive from newegg for about $550 like the one you see below. Apparently Amazon is going to get a few of these in sometime.



The main problem I have to date is the Suze Linux installed with the system looks for a DVD ROM drive for additional software packages. This is a bit humorous since the mini note has no DVD or CDROM drive. HP. Don't you think it would be better for this system to look at some network repository for packages? Maybe? lol. You can't make this stuff up.



I found a DVD image on the HP support site. I am downloading that to see if it has some of the packages I want. Really, I just want to add Apache, PHP5, and Ruby. Maybe Thunderbird, SQLite. Just stuff I can play around with when I am bored. Gonna call too to see if they can give me some sort of network URL.



Now I know most Linux geeks are gonna say, just wipe the sucker and install Ubuntu. I have thought about that, but I'm not that good of a Linux geek and I don't really want to take the time. Heck it would be nice to use another distro just to see what it is like.



I will update you on my progress.