benbois’s posterous

Today is the migration day for the netbook of my wife, Alice. After a long time with pleasure and  some annoying things , we've decided to migrate the eeePC 901 from Xandros to Ubuntu Remix.
And to be honest, it hasn't been really painful to achieve this job.

Find here the steps to do the same with your netbook:

1- download the last release from the Ubuntu server:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.04/ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img

2- install ImageWriter:
sudo apt-get install usb-imagewriter

3- use ImageWriter to put ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img in the USB key (need a mini. 1Gb usb stick)

4- insert the usb key to the eeePC, start the PC and tape on ESC touch to view the boot menu. Select the USB key in the list.

5- in the boot menu, choose the right language (F2) and the right keyboard map (F3) and Enter
You'll start the live distribution.

6- when the system is ready, click on the Install shorcut.

7- after the firsts easy steps, you arrive to the screen of partitioning. Here, you have some choices to make. I chose to make 3 partitions: 1 partition on the first SSD (root "/"), 2 on the second SSD (10Gb for"/usr" and ~5Gb for "/home") all with the new format Ext4 (better results than Ext3).
You have noticed that I didn't add swap partition, why? First of all, because the netbook has 2Gb of RAM and secondly because after some reads, the writings in the swap seems bad for the life of the SSD (not all people are agree with that but I had to take a decision).

8- after this important step, the installer copies the OS on the netbook.

9- reboot when it's asked (don't forget to remove the usb key).

As you can see, the boot is quite quick, under 40 seconds to go to the desktop with the wifi connexion.

Alice uses her eeePC for 4 main usages:
- to stay in touch with our family (in Spain, France, ),
- in the kitchen as a (luxury) webradio
- to make videos of our children or take a picture during cookery.
- to record her voice for her French lessons.

So, I had to install some softs:
- for the video, wxCam (sudo apt-get install wxcam). It has better perfomances than Cheese in video recording mode.
- for the webradio, Rhythmbox with a customized list of French webradios.
- for the webphone, Skype for linux (works better than on Xandros even the webcam). You must specify the sound device to get sound. Go to Options / Sound Devices and choose in the 3 lists, "HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0)", then Apply.
- finally, nothing to do for the voice, Sound Recorder is already installed on Ubuntu Remix.

To finish the job:
- remove unused stuff like Evolution
- add plugins like Flash (nonfree), Jre (SUN).
You can do this job with the Synaptic Package Manager (in Administration tab).
- remove unused applications started with the system: go to Preferences tab / Startup Applications and unselect "Bluetooth Manager", "Check for new hardware drivers", "Remove Desktop", "Visual Assistance". Of course it depends of your specifi hardware or preferences.
- add shortcuts in the Favourites tab: simply selecting the shortcut (from its tab for example, Internet) and to glide it into the Favourites tab.

Here you can see the result.

Update (2009.06.13):
Wifi WPA authentication is impossible with the current rt2860 driver. To solve this problem, we have to downgrade the driver.

1) Get the driver from http://www.array.org/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/eeepc/binary-i386/rt2860-dkms_1.7.1.1_all.deb

wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/eeepc/binary-i386/rt2860-dkms_1.7.1.1_all.deb

2) Go to terminal, and move the pre-installed driver so it won't get loaded.

cd /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/kernel/drivers/staging/rt2860/
sudo mv rt2860sta.ko rt2860sta.bak

3) Install rt2860-dkms_1.7.1.1_all.deb. It will also install dependencies needed to compile the driver.

sudo dpkg -i rt2860-dkms_1.7.1.1_all.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

If it doesn't retrieve the right packages, makesure "build-essential", "linux-header-generic" and "dkms" is installed. Let it run and it should complete without a problem.

4) Restart. The new driver should work automatically.

Well, a strange thing appears sometimes after a simple update (but I don't know exactly when).
Some icons disappear and then it looks impossible to start them!

After a long investigation, I found that the problem was in the configuration file of the simple interface.
This file, called simpleui.rc includes all informations of the simple interface (easy isn't it?).
The problem is that ASUS changed the way to run some applications ("Webcam" -> "ucview" app or "Sound Recorder" -> "krecord" app).
Before this change, the simpleui.rc called a shell launcher script  (/usr/bin/launch-ucview for example).
But this launcher doesn't exist any more and the configuration tries to use it again.

So, the solution is to change the way to run applications in the simpleui.rc file.

- Open a console window Ctrl+Alt+t
- First of all, we'll create a symbolic link to the configuration file., run this lines:
- sudo mkdir /home/user/.AsusLauncher
- sudo ln -s /var/lib/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc
- Now, we'll modified the configuration file, run this lines:
- sudo  nano /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc
- in Nano, push Ctrl+w (search) and enter "launch-"   Enter
- replace "/usr/bin/launch-ucview" by "/usr/bin/ucview"
- do the same with "/usr/bin/launch-krecord" -> "/usr/bin/record"
- save the change with Ctrl+o
- and quit Nano: Ctrl+x
- To finish, restart Windows Manager with Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace

Here you can find the original simpleui.rc file from 901: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/list:901_simpleui.rc?s=simpleui

(Updated: 2009.02.06, thanks to Hugo)

Trying to fix an annoying problem with the eeepc 901 today.
Its wifi connection stops to work each time I'm starting to use it.
After some searches on the web, I found that I'm not alone in this case (with all eeepc models).
Apparently, the problem is linked with the WEP protection (encryption).
I decided to setup a new wifi with a WPA protection..
and it looks to work, good to know isn't it?

Know a lot of things on the eeepc family, go there: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/