A few days ago I decided to install eeebuntu permanently into the SSD of my EeePC, I've been running it live off a USB stick & increasingly found it far superior & far more flexible then the Xandros that came with the system. As u can see, I'm cautious about this step as I want to make sure that eeebuntu could effectively replace the Xandros. In this respect, I think the eeebuntu folks did a really great job.
As I increasingly discovered, Xandros did not afford me much flexibility & was in fact not performing well at all on my modest EeePC 701 4G. In operation, eeebuntu was much more responsive due to (I suspect) it's realtime kernel. The drawback though is obviously the boot speed, which I timed at about 1min 9seconds, this was far longer than the 34 seconds it took Xandros to boot. But compromises had to be made if you wanted a modern OS. eeebuntu is based on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04.1.
I'm going to try to detail my experience installing eeebuntu 1.0 NBR (Netbook Remix):
(Check out eeebuntu's Homepage)
- Installation went well without a hitch.
- Post Install, run the sndfix701.sh script in /eeesupport/scripts
- Sound should work fine now, but be careful when adjusting the volume with the Fn+hotkeys, for some reason it adjusts both Master & Front volumes. Adjusting it with the normal volume control works fine. For this I found that by setting the master channel to PCM (instead of Master) helped the volume control become smoother (still doesn't help the hotkeys issue though). In the volume options, I recommend to only enable these items: Headphone, PCM, Front, Microphone & Capture. Set Master & Front to the max & control all volume using only PCM.
- Due to a bug in the installer, the custom repositories used are not in the installed system. This is easy to remedy, simply boot the LiveUSB again, copy out the last 3 entries from /etc/apt/sources.list & put them into the installed system.
- The default ume-launcher has some issues of overlapping text on the 701. After updating to the new ume-launcher, the issue is resolved.
- SD cards will not mount because the system thinks they are optical drives. This is solved by commenting out the /dev/cdrom0 line in /etc/fstab
- I use zsnes to get my doses of old console games. zsnes will start with no sound at first, this is resolved by setting the sound sampling rate to 48000Hz & restarting zsnes with the parameters $ zsnes -ad sdl
Next time, I'll talk about optimizing the OS to boot faster, run faster & write less to the SSD.
4 comments:
Ter, I'm visiting Georgetown from New Zealand, and having problems connecting to the web.
I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 onan Acer 4315; te wireless doesn't work, but there is an ethernet connection - only I don't know how to configure the wired connection in Netwsork Settings. Can you help, please?
My handphone number is 016 491 0851 and my email address is don.esslemont@paradise.net.nz
Regards, Don
don dude, sorry man I don't update this blog that often, I just saw your comment today.
This notebook you have uses an Atheros chipset which has always had poor support in linux. I found this blog with exact instructions how to get you up & running.
Check it out.
http://jkyamog.blogspot.com/2008/07/acer-aspire-4315-short-review-and.html
Great advice on tweaking eeebuntu. Could you post the URLs for those repositories you had to add (to save people from having to reboot their live install and copy/pasting by hand).
Maybe you also have solutions to the two issues that still handicap Eeebuntu with respect to Xandros: slow resume (takes as long to resume Eeebuntu as it does to boot Xandros!) and weak wifi (with Xandros I can pick up many more networks, and get a better signal).
Thanks Pieter, but sorry I can't post much more on the EeePC cuz I don't have it in hand.
On suspend, I've never cared for or had any faith in Linux support for ACPI suspend. That's why I've been more interested in booting it faster, as in my post on Tweaking eeebuntu.
On Wifi, I never actually noticed much difference in Wifi performance between Xandros & eeebuntu.
I am still running on eeebuntu NBR 1.0. Not yet upgraded to 2.0 cuz I understand there are many unresolved issues.
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