Upon receiving my ASUS EeePC 900 I knew I wanted to run Ubuntu on it over the default Xandros Linux OS. With Marc Hugentobler and John Krutsch both having an EeePC 900 as well, I figured this would be a good chance to compare Ubuntu to Xandros on this small wonder of a notebook.
The really good news is I was able to get Ubuntu up and running in less than an hour by following the ubuntu.com EeePC tutorial, and had it fixed up and tweaked out in another hour–and I am no Linux-head. I had done enough preliminary reading before starting to install the Ubuntu distribution that I felt prepared for the handful of quirks and tweaks I would need to do. I admit I had cold feet Saturday afternoon, second-guessing whether Xandros might be less resource-intensive and faster than Ubuntu, but after the weekend I’m now completely comfortable with my choice.
A few things to know about my installation of Ubuntu:
- I installed Ubuntu 8.4 off of a USB drive, which I formatted on Windows XP using UNetbootin to prepare the ISO
- I had to change the BIOS “hard drives” set up to use the USB drive first. This is different than changing the “boot order”
- There were a number of fixes I had to conduct to set up the EeePC hardware: ethernet/loud fan battery remove, Mad WiFi drivers, and a couple other fixes documented on the EeePC Ubuntu wiki
- I also ran a few Ubuntu tweaks documented by Many Ayromlou to tighten things up and further increase performance
- Finally, I installed extra apps like gFTP, and Bluefish, all through the Ubuntu Add/Remove Applications interface
My success was based on the great online resources, wikis, and blogs that are out there–I myself have only minimal knowledge of terminal commands, namely sudo, cd, and chown. The hardest part by far was setting up the wireless LAN with the Mad WiFi drivers, and even that wasn’t too bad, and then discovering some quirks and hunting up fixes.
UPDATE: My wireless network card has stopped working entirely. I went through the steps of updating the driver with no luck. I will be looking for a solution to this problem and posting it here.
I will also add that compared to the XO laptop, the EeePC blows it out of the water–who cares if the XO is supposed to be for kids? Sugar is still frustrating in it’s usability and very nearly pointless in comparison to the limitless desktop apps you can access through Ubuntu. Ken Woodward keeps reminding me that the XO has Tam-Tam Jam.
How exactly did you solve the wireless network problem? I’ve been searched through the internet without succeding results.
@Eddie I haven’t solved it yet, though I did just by a Dynex USB wireless adapter to see if that will work in the interim. I’m almost never wired, so I need wireless just to figure out the wireless!
I finally got this working by installing Adam McDaniel’s custom kernal: Array.org EeePC Ubuntu Repository Custom Linux Kernel - Hardy Heron. I ran this fresh, did a bunch of updates, then had to run Adam’s updater (at the terminal: sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc linux-headers-eeepc ).
What’s ridiculous, though, is that I _also_ had the wireless turned OFF through the fn button.