Programming on Netbook Edition of Ubuntu.

Hello,

  I am new to the Ubuntu/Linux community. I just had some questions. I am buying a netbook, and I saw that on Ubuntu's Desktop 10.10 edition you can program on them. I am an Information Science and Technology major, and was wondering is it the same on the Netbook version of the OS. Can you program on the netbook edition? Does these things come pre-installed like the other versions? Also, can you try out the OS before putting it entirely on your computer? I am familiar with parallel but have never used it, would something like that be necessary? My netbook will be running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit. With an Intel(R) Atom(TM) N550 (dual core,1.50GHz) + Broadcom(R) Video accelerator + Intel(R) Graphics 3150, 2GB DDR3 System Memory (1 Dimm), 250GB 7200RPM Hard Drive. This will be on the HP Mini 210. If you have a better netbook option I would like to know about that as well. I also have a Macbook, and was a pc user until last year, just for background information. Sorry for all the questions. Its just that I am a total newbie with this, and I wanted to see if someone could answer my questions. I have read up on some of the forums, but I couldn't find this information. Thank you any information you can give me, or if you have some more links I could read. I would appreciate that too.