Just received this netbook for free.
Windows 7 is installed on it, but that's not helping anyone.
Actually always used windoze because i need it for school and find dualboot cumbersome but now I received this netbook which should do nothing more than play a vid now, browse the web and edit some documents on the go, so linux will fit the bill and will fit it probably better than windows.

So any light distro will fit but what would you install and what DE or window manager, that will fit the small screen and does use it correctly.

Specs
N550 Atom@1,5GHZ dual-core
2GB DDR3-667mhz RAM
Intel GMA 3150
resolution: 1366*768

What would you advise me to look into?

What is the screen resolution? In my experience, that is going to be the biggest issue. There are a few distros aimed specifically at netbooks. My missus uses EasyPeasy, which is basically Ubuntu with a Gnome primer and a netbook specific overcoat. It works pretty well, although some dialogue windows do not quite fit in the screen vertically. Which is kinda annoying when the piece that gets cut off is the piece with the OK button. Her netbook is AAO with a 1024x600 screen and... let's just say that Gnome is somewhat generous with its use of the screen real estate. But so is KDE, LXDE and Xfce. I am sorry to have to say that but Windows uses the screen much more efficiently. Why do all Linux window managers assume that I have the screen the size of a football field is what I will never understand.

Maybe ElementaryOS?
which is also ubuntu based.

@pichlo
I have Ubuntu12 (plain) on an old 10'' netbook and have the same display usage problems. But maximizing the pop-up window does/will most often help.

Resolution = 1366 x 768

I received it and it turns out I was wrong about the specs.
It's the better version than I expected.
Has
DualCore N550 Atom and 2GB of RAM and 1366*768 Resolution instead of the specs I listed above. Not bad

Yeah, real estate is where I am aiming for but not too heavy om resources either. Although specs are better than expected

Thinking about hacking some openbox/Fluxbox together in for exemple Manjaro Linux. I could go the full Arch way but what will I gain?

Al the screen is wider than it is high, taskbar should be left or right to maximize real estate.
À hildon-like interface could work well on netbooks too.
Thanks for the suggestions, I will look them up. Had found elementaryOS too but was bit hesitant as it still takes some space with interface things.

Basically I want a taskswitcher, current task in fullscreen and ditch window resizing completely. Basically mt question isn't what distro, but what DE or WM could do what I want?
Is that Elementary DE? Would LXQT suffice? Or can i3 be any meaning to this or is openbox/Fluxbox the way to go?


Edit:

Tried elementary OS, but the graphics were sluggish. It had some artifacts too. Now download Manjaro XFCE and will try to make good use of what XFCE can offer.

Also poked around with tint2 + openbox but was much effort to get something nice...

I have a dell latitude d620 with similar or even worse specs that works fine with Xubuntu. I am using a docking station and often hibernate the device.

I usually install SolydX
because it just works, being a rolling distro.
I gotta say the KDE version SolydK
is very nice and responsive (I don't agree very well with KDE)
and seems to not be the memory pig it once was.

but if you want something truly beautiful
you might try
http://makululinux.com/
My family loved the xfce version.

good luck

I would give https://ubuntu-mate.org/ a try. People use it well on a rasberry Pi, so it should run really nicely on you netbook.

x

Installed manjaro XFCE and it runs very well. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Generally speaking when looking for a distribution there is only one thing you need to keep in mind, and that is that you should only get one of the 'big ones', like openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and so on. Nearly every other distribution you will find is largely based on one of the big ones, with just a couple of changes here and there that could just as well have been shipped as some extra packages to install. In fact, lots of distributions do exactly that, bundle some extra packages by default and give it a new name. Normally this is not a problem, but these smaller derivative distributions always end up kicking the bucket, and then you're stuck with whatever is the latest version they released. Much better to get one of the big ones and never have to worry about anything, because the chances of any of these ever going down are very slim.