Life With Eee PC, Day 20: Integration

I’ve had my Eee PC for nearly three weeks. In that time I’ve used it to write many emails on GMail (tried Evolution Mail but it’s just too expansive to fit on the tiny screen), written some online course answers using AbiWord, scanned my wife’s transcript using the XSane Image Scanner, socialized via Twitterfox and gtwitter — in short, it’s become a useful tool rather than a novelty gadget. All this is apart from its daily use as my personal media player (PMP).

My replacement 8GB SDHC card finally arrived courtesy of Newegg, so now I’m rocking an extra 12 gigs of storage (SDHC card + 4GB flash drive) over and above the 4GB internal SSD. I had initially thought that I would use the SDHC card as a test bed to dual-boot the Eee PC, but I’m finding that I’m really happy with EeeXubuntu, and I don’t feel the need to switch to any other OS at the moment. EeeXubuntu is fast, stable, usable, and with access to the entire Ubuntu repositories, highly expandable (something the default Xandros OS is not).

These folks are trying to get Mac OS X Tiger running on the Eee PC.  So far the main problem seems to be that the OS 10.4.9 kernel thinks that one second is 2.6 seconds long on the Eee PC. Several people on the site are offering cash rewards for solutions to getting OS X running smoothly on the Eee PC. Personally, even though I love the Mac OS, I don’t think it’s a good fit for the Eee PC; I think it would need to be heavily modified before it could be useful on the tiny wonder. I’ll be watching their progress, though.

Eee PC as Personal Media Player

One thing I really like about using my Eee PC as a Personal Media Player (PMP) as opposed to what I’d erstwhile been using, my 5th-gen iPod with video, is that I no longer have to use iSquint (a tremendous piece of software, don’t get me wrong) to convert each and every one of my DivX files to mpeg-4 or h.264, the only video formats that the 5G iPod understands.

With VLC installed on my Eee PC, I can view pretty much any video format ever devised.

Having no limitations on what video formats will work on my PMP?

I could get used to this.

Life With Eee PC, Day Five: Settling In

Today I watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles season 1 episode 8 over my lunch break on the Eee PC, courtesy of hulu.com.The Eee PC is integrating into my daily life, which I consider a good thing, a sign that it can grow into a proper tool rather than just the latest gadget in a never-ending parade of gadgets.

Speaking of gadgets, my co-worker just told me that since he’s got an iPhone, he no longer has any use for his Palm Tungsten, and is willing to give the whole kit to me for nothing. Hey, I’ll pay that price anytime! One can never have too many gadgets, am I right?

I’ve got Flock 1.1 beta installed under EeeXubuntu, and I have to say that it is much improved over v. 1.0 on the Eee PC. The previous veresion felt too cramped on the 7-inch display. The new Flock feels normaal and natural. In fact, I’m using its blog editor to make this entry right now. Good stuff.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Terminator, hulu, Eee PC, EeeXubuntu, Xubuntu, iPhone, Palm, Tungsten, Flock

Life With My Eee PC, Day Four: Stabilization

Day Four was all about expanding current capabilities, becoming more familiar, and tweaking EeeXubuntu for better operation and compatibiity.

Expanding capabilities: because I followed these instructions to enable Direct Rendering, I was able to download and install Google Earth, which runs amazingly well on this tiny laptop. Also today, my application for membership into the hulu private beta was approved, and during my lunch break I verified that I can watch hulu shows under EeeXubuntu.

Becoming more familiar came as a natural by-product of all the tweaking I’ve been doing, courtesy of this page. Major tweaks I’ve done include installing the LittleFox add-on for Firefox to maximize available browser real estate — on a 7-inch screen, every little bit counts! I’ve also tweaked the system to greatly minimize writes to the internal SSD.

For a longtime Mac user like me, the Eee PC isn’t just a different choice of computer, it’s a radical change in my entire life (since so much of my life revolves around computers). It means exploring and using new tools. It’s quite an adventure into the unknown.

Life With My Eee PC, Day Three: Success

Several happy things happened yesterday and today with my Eee PC.

First, after seven (yes, seven) tries, I finally got EeeXubuntu installed on the Eee PC.  You’ll recall that I was having a miserable time installing it on my SDHC card. Turns out this was because the card had failed. I’ve already requested an RMA from NewEgg to have it replaced forthwith. This time I decided to delete the default Xandros OS and install Xubuntu on the internal 4GB SSD. Also, instead of using my crappy external USB DVD drive, I followed the instructions to create a Xubuntu installer on a USB flash drive. In the end, that’s the method that succeeded in installing Xubuntu on the Eee PC.

The next happy event was that I got to use the Eee PC for some actual work. I typed my RMA request letter in AbiWord, made a wireless connection to my networked HP laser printer, and printed out my NewEgg RMA paperwork using the Eee PC. The entire process proceeded smoothly.

Next, I followed these intructions to enable Compiz Desktop Effects, which is pretty cool and works fluidly even with just 512MB RAM. I was really impressed after I enabled Direct Draw which speeded up 3D performance by over 400 percent.

Finally, I’ve got VLC installed and I used it to watch my customary TV episode over lunch today. The vide playback was much sharper and smoother than under the default Xandros OS.

EeeXubuntu on Eee PC, Update

After five tries, I finally got EeeXubuntu up and running on my Eee PC.

It then asked me to update its software, which I did.

It then asked me to restart the Eee PC, which I did.

Upon restart, boot failure.

I’m giving up on EeeXubuntu, I’m back on Xandros now.

I feel like today was wasted.

Blogged with Flock

Life With My Eee PC, Day Two: EeeXubuntu Installation

So I’ve spent several hours today installing and reinstalling EeeXubuntu. I’m now on my fifth attempt. The first attempt failed from the get-go because the external USB DVD drive from which I am installing is a cheap piece of crap. By that I mean that instead of spending money on a proper external USB DVD drive, I connected a USB 2.0 to IDE cable that I bought on a bargain basement deal from Meritline for a measly ten bucks to an internal IDE DVD drive that I pulled from an ancient Pentium 2 that I have lying around. This setup is fine, except that every so often the DVD drive skips while reading the installation DVD, and needs several tries before the install continues. You get the installation experience you pay for.

The second attempt stalled at the 82 percent mark (searching mirrors) and refused to budge for about an hour, so I force restarted the Eee PC and began to reinstall EeeXubuntu from the top, leading to…

…the third attempt, which also stalled at 82 percent. At that point I figured that perhaps the installer needed an internet connection to continue, but when I clicked icon to configure the internet connection, the DVD drive let out a series of grinding clicks and the entire system froze. That’s when…

…I tried installing a fourth time, and this time got all the way through to the end, but when I rebooted the Eee PC, all it did was show me a blank screen with the terse message: “No operating system found.” Great. Just great. Four hours of my life spent just to get to “No operating system found.” However, this turned out to be operator error, because since I had installed EeeXubuntu on my 8GB SDHC card rather than the internal 4GB SSD, I naturally figured that I needed to change the boot volume in BIOS from the internal SSD to the SDHC card. Turns out that this was an unnecessary extra step, because EeeXubuntu installs the GRUB bootloader which allows you to choose the system from which to boot the Eee PC at startup time. Oops. Moral of the story (this phase of the story, at least): don’t overthink the process, sometimes you don’t have to do too much to make something work.

So there I was, happily exploring my brand new EeeXubuntu Desktop on my Eee PC, when I tried to hibernate the unit. Big mistake, as it turned out, because after that the unit froze with a black screen, forcing me to shut it off by holding down the power button. Upon reboot, EeeXubuntu would kernel panic before fully loading, forcing me to…

…this moment in time, where I am writing this blog entry as I wait patiently for my 5th EeeXubuntu install attempt to finish. It’s currently at 54 percent, and the entire process takes about 30-45 minutes to complete.

Here are some tips I’ve gathered from this whole, ongoing experience for those of you intent upon installing alternative OSes on your Eee PC:

1. Don’t be a cheapskate like me, spring for a proper external USB DVD drive if you can afford it. Otherwise, I hope you’re a glutton for punishment.

2. If the EeeXubuntu install process stalls at 82 percent, just wait for it to move on, it will eventually.

3. If you install to a removable device, there’s no need to change the default boot volume on your Eee PC’s BIOS; the EeeXubuntu installer is smart enough to handle this for you via the GRUB bootloader.

4. Whatever you do, for God’s sake don’t use the Hibernate command!

With any luck, by some point tonight I’ll once again have a working EeeXubuntu installation on my Eee PC. I’ll post more then.

Update: I found out why all of my previous install attempts were locking up at the 82 percent mark. It seems that the Eee PC was not properly connected to the Internet. If you manually configure a valid internet connection before starting the installation process, then the installer proceeds smoothly through the 82 percent mark. My 5th install attempt is now at 94 percent and climbing fast. Woo-hoo!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: EeePC, EeeXubuntu, portable, ultramobile, installation, OS, operating system, alternative

Installing EeeXubuntu on Asus Eee PC

I’m currently in the process of installing EeeXubuntu on my Asus Eee PC, and I got stuck very early in the process because the “Forward,” “Back,” and “Cancel” buttons at the bottom of each installation screen were located below the viewable edge of the display (thanks to the Eee PC’s strange 800×480 display). I had been limping along by blindly pressing Tab to move the selection to what I had to imagine was the “Forward” button to move my installation along, but this method stopped working right after the partitioner portion of the Xubuntu installation process — no matter how I tabbed, I could not select the button to move to the next screen. I thought I was dead in the water until I read this tip on the Ubuntu forums: hold down the Alt key to click and drag a window around the screen. This nifty little tip allowed me to proceed with my EeeXubuntu installation – the installer is currently copying system files to the 8Gb SDHC card inserted into my Asus Eee PC. Coolness!

Added Flock To Eee PC

I successfully added Flock to the Internet tab of Xandros Easy mode on my Asus Eee PC using these instructions. Now Flock is my default browser. W00t!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Flock, Eee PC, Xandros, web, browser, internet, Asus

My Life With My Asus Eee PC: Day One

Today was my first full day with my new Asus Eee PC (4Gb Galaxy Black, without the webcam, stock 512MB RAM, with an 8GB SDHC card and a 4GB flash drive). It was actually delivered yesterday, but I had to work until 7:00 pm and so didn’t get to unbox and start playing with it until around 9:00 pm.

Let me just get this out of the way right now: I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. I haven’t been this excited about a new computer in a long, long time.

The first challenge was getting it to recognize my wireless network at home. I have two: one 802.11b network with no password protection (for guests), and another 802.11g network with WPA security enabled (for my machines). For some reason, the Eee PC repeatedly failed to connect to the WPA-protected network last night, so I was forced to use my slower unsecured network. Tonight, however, the Eee PC is inexplicably connecting to my WPA-protected network with no problem. Weird, but I’m not complaining. Continued after the jump.