First we followed the guide to create a USB flash drive for booting UNR. For older Ubuntu OS version, such as 8.04, we could follow http://ubuntuliving.blogspot.com/2008/11/usb-creator-for-hardy.html to install the usb-creator.
After the USB flash drive is created, we plug it into the new netbook, power on the netbook, and hit F2 (or whatever key for entering BIOS setup), and change the disk sequence to the USB drive first.
The installation was very smooth.
To delete games, open synaptic package manager, and search for "game". Then select all the ones that you wish to remove.
In the firefox browser, when you open a video website, you will be asked a couple of options for flash plugin. I installed the adobe one, and then later the "swfdec-mozilla".
No more SCIM. We now use a new thing called "ibus". See http://lichao.net/eblog/how-to-input-chinese-cjk-in-english-ubuntu-9-10-....
To install VLC media player, do
# apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc