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Like the Eee PC’s hardware, but wish it had an operating system besides Windows or Xandros Linux? There are dozens of other Linux distributions that run on the Eee PC without complaint, and a handful of distributions that even supports the Eee PC’s hardware all the way down to the Fn key shortcuts right out of the box. GoblinX Mini falls into the latter category. Sort of.

This Slackware-based distribution comes in a lightweight 150MB ZIP file. You can create a LiveUSB simply by unzipping the files to a USB flash drive and running bootinst.bat from the Boot folder if you’re using Windows, or typing “sudo sh bootinst.sh” into a terminal window if you’re running Linux.

GoblinX uses the XFCE desktop manager, is fairly quick and responsive, and doesn’t use much RAM, even in LiveUSB mode. The Fn keys for brightness and a few other functions work out of the box. And there’s an installer program in case you want to load the operating system onto your solid state memory or to an SD card. But for the few minutes that I played around with GoblinX Mini, I was completely unable to figure out how to get the WiFi working, so I see no real reason to make a permanent installation.

[via eeextra]