The other day I wrote a story about people putting Android–the Google operating system for phones–on netbooks.  I can’t say that it was my most exciting assignment ever.  I put porting Android to the EeePC on a long list of things people do just because they can.  Possibly because it’s cool.  Sometimes because they want to stretch their abilities and test their own limits.  But the end result for everyone is not always practical.  Yes, you can put Android on some netbooks, but it doesn’t work all that well and won’t connect to the app store/market, either.

Perhaps I’m being a bit curmudgeonly.  I use my netbook to get work done, so I need it… working.  But for developers, figuring out how to port things to different platforms and hardware is work.  Still, I always look at news of this type with a bit of skepticism.

Yesterday Brad Linder (of Liliputing) and Adam McDaniel put up instructions on how to create a LiveUSB of the HP Mi Edition version of Linux (which is basically Ubuntu with some semi-extensive tweaks).  This is big news for anyone interested in the Mi OS because up until now you could download it but the install would overwrite everything on your hard drive.  Most Linuxes have the ability to make LiveCDs or LiveUSBs so you can try a distro out and, as far as I know, all of them can install alongside an existing OS (in theory).  But I don’t know if HP expected there to be this kind of interest in the Mi Linux.

Anyway, Brad and Adam spent some time figuring out how to tweak things, so now anyone with a lot of time who isn’t turned off by using Terminal can spend an hour making a LiveUSB of this (admittedly sleek) OS.  Does this fall into Because You Can?  Maybe not.  After all, the OS is usable and meant to run on a netbook.  On the other hand: look at all this tech speak!

I’ve already been promised that I don’t have to do it.