Posted by Kromey at 8:24pm Aug 19 '09You can buy an external USB CD-ROM for purty cheap these days. You can borrow one ever cheaper if you know someone who has one.
But these days, who needs CDs?
Ubuntu (and, I'm sure, other Linuxes) has a very nifty utility that can turn any CD or DVD ISO into a bootable USB drive. If you don't fully understand that sentence, the short is that virtually any CD can be put onto a USB thumb drive. Want to install Linux from that? No problem! Provided, of course, the BIOS supports booting from USB (if the thing doesn't even have a CD drive, then it supports booting from USB; if it does have a CD drive and was built within the last 5 or 6 years, it probably supports it as well).
I don't really have any experience with netbooks, just wanted to assuage your fears over the lack of a CD drive - don't worry about it, these days it's pretty much just pointless bulk anyway.
But these days, who needs CDs?
Ubuntu (and, I'm sure, other Linuxes) has a very nifty utility that can turn any CD or DVD ISO into a bootable USB drive. If you don't fully understand that sentence, the short is that virtually any CD can be put onto a USB thumb drive. Want to install Linux from that? No problem! Provided, of course, the BIOS supports booting from USB (if the thing doesn't even have a CD drive, then it supports booting from USB; if it does have a CD drive and was built within the last 5 or 6 years, it probably supports it as well).
I don't really have any experience with netbooks, just wanted to assuage your fears over the lack of a CD drive - don't worry about it, these days it's pretty much just pointless bulk anyway.
Lack of a CD drive - Kromey