Optimize software for ZG5

I have just made the move off of Windows into the world of Linux and want to become a regular user.

I have bought a 2 year old with the following

Model: Aspire one
OS: Linux (Linpus Lite)
CPU: Intel Atom @ 1.60GHz
System Memory: 512 MB
Internal Memory: 8GB (Solid State)
Battery: 3 Cell

I want to know what software/OS updates I can make to optimize this system without losing too much of the native hardware controls.
I have heard of Lubuntu as an OS, not sure if this is the best for my machine.
I have openoffice 2.3 installed, not sure if this is the latest, but I need to be able to run MS powerpoints (ppt and hopefully pptx) off this machine.
I tried to use google voice chat, but it said it was missing some libraries, I wonder if this is something I can correct with an new OS.

I would appreciate any help getting started here on how to optimize the system, keeping the hardware in mind. I would like to become a regular contributor here.

Thank You.

 

I quite like Lubuntu 10.10 as being fast and light and supporting everything on my machine. But running Windows, I learned a lot from the more user-friendly Desktop Ubuntu 10.10, which has a lot preinstalled.

I found the Xubuntu, which is also light and clean, couldn't find or didn't recognize my hard drive, which appears right away with other versions. I found, like many others, that Ubuntu Netbook version was slow and buggy.

I suggest you experiment with "persistent" Live USB - you set your BIOS to boot from a USB drive. The "Live" install runs nearly as well as off a hard drive, and there's no risk to your hard drive installation until you decide what to do. (The "persistence" saves settings between boots, if you don't do it you lose them.)

The "show me how" steps here are really clear, but they don't include the "persistence" step - the Windows installer has it, but I have no experience trying to create the Live USB from another Linux OS.

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Running Live USB on a 4GB USB thumb drive, with 2GB for the OS and 2GB of Persistence, should be plenty to preview and compare ease of use and compatibility of different versions with your machine and peripherals.

 

I've heard of Kuki Linux and Joli OS as being 2 distros that could work with this netbook.

Kuki linux looks like it was designed for the aspireone, any issues with the hardware on ZG5?

Or should I just keep the linpus linux software

Thanks.