I have a HP Mini 1001TU netbook with a failed 60Gb HDD (which was running Windows XP).

I removed the HDD. It was a 1.8″ drive, which is difficult/expensive to replace.

I decided to get a 16GB SD card and install Linux.

This will make the Netbook slightly lighter, and also extend battery life slightly.

I decided to install EasyPeasy 1.6 (a variation on Ububtu Netbook).

Installing linux to an SD card can be tricky:

Don’t install the “liveCD” image directly to the SD card, as it will always think that its a read-only media, and any changes you make will not last once you restart the Netbook.

What I do instead is:

• Make a bootable liveCD from a cheap 1GB USB drive (unetbootin is good for this)
• Boot from the USB drive, while the blank 16Gb SD card is inserted into the SD slot.
• Start the “install EasyPeasy” application, and make sure you install to the SD card.
• Shutdown the netbook, and make sure you remove the USB drive.
• start the netbook and press F10 -> System Configuration -> Boot options -> boot device priority -> make sure the first boot device is: “USB single flash Reader”
• Now the Netboot will always boot from the SD card.

My next challenge was getting the WiFi wireless network going.

Everything seemed to be in place, the netbooks WIFi button was in the ON position, but I would not see any wireless network on the network icon (top-right of the screen)

After a lot of searching around, I found the solution was actually quite simple:

• Make sure the netbook is connected to the internet via the ethernet cable.
• Click the “System” tab on the bottom-left of the main screen
• Click on “Hardware Drivers” (near the bottom of the System page).
• Click “broadcom STA wireless driver”, then install.
• Once the driver has been downloaded and installed, I usually remove the ethernet cable and restart the netbook.
• The network icon now allows me to connect to WiFi networks… it works just like any windows-based system… simple!