Migrating to Linux pt.1: The basics

Image via Wikipedia

I have been using Linux for many years. I have tried many flavours, many distributions and I have written some of my experiences down, in this very blog. I am especially proud about managing to run my Intel Classmate on Linux, I have installed Mint on my eeePC and Peppermint on a VIA Epia ML, mini itx motherboard. However, my main PC would always run on Windows. Most of my work and pleasure (i.e. games and porn) would be under Windows and I have been somewhat sceptical about switching. Many years ago, I had tried the dual boot approach, but as it usually happens, one gets to constantly boot on Windows and soon the Linux installation becomes nothing more than wasted space on the HD.

Since my PC needed either some serious clean up and maintenance or a format for some time now, the thought of moving on to Linux was on my mind, but I guess I needed something to push me the right way. That something was a new machine that found it’s way to my house. Nothing out of the ordinary, an Intel E7400 sitting on a Foxconn motherboard. Still, it was a bit better than what I’ve been using, an Athlon XP 3800+, so I immediately decided I would be using the newcomer. Without much thought, I did a quick installation of Windows 7 and then I downloaded and installed Linux Mint 11. I know what you are thinking, I do have two OS’s on my PC, but this time, Linux boots first.

Reasons I still need Windows: I like games. I would not call my self a hardcore gamer, I get dizzy while playing an FPS, but I do like to play. I really like RPGs and one of my all time favourites was Baldur’s Gate. So, not being able to enjoy a good game was not an option. I have also purchased games from Steam and while I have read some articles about using Steam with Wine on Linux, I chose to keep it on Windows. I also do some video editing from time to time. Not professionally but still. I have heard about Linux solutions, such as Cinefx and I do intent to try that, but just to be safe I want to have something I know how to work with.

Despite the fact that I have installed Linux many many times, many different distributions on a number of machines, I still don’t call myself an advanced user. There are many things I have not encountered, things that to some of you might seem like a piece of cake, but none the less I decided to document my progress on using Linux for every day work here, hoping that I might be able to offer some help to those who face similar problems. Leaving all this mumbling aside, let’s see what was the first problem I had to solve:

The Printer. When you are a Windows user, things are quite simple. After finishing the OS installation, you are to install all drivers for the devices you have. Graphic cards, printers, scanners, in most cases, you just have to pop in the CD that came with the device and you are good to go. I had no idea how things were with Linux, since I never had to use a printer while on Linux. So when I turned my HP Laserjet 1020 on and a pop up message informed me that it was successfully installed and configured, I was more than happy.

That is until I tried to print something and although everything seemed normal, nothing would come out of the printer. No noise, no lights flashing, nothing. I imagined that the printer was not properly installed, so I started searching on line for help. I read a lot of things, mostly on how to go to HP’s website and download Linux drivers, but the problem was solved quite easily. I just opened a terminal window and typed:

sudo apt-get install hp-plugin

That downloaded and installed the print head firmware and my PC was able to communicate properly with the printer. So, in case you are facing something similar with an HP printer, give this a shot. Next time I will tell you how I set up my 5.1 surround sound.

Windows 7 Media Center vs Linux Mint Media Center.

Image via Wikipedia

Some years ago, it wasn’t but a handful of people who tried to connect their PCs with a TV set and turn them into “Entertainment Systems”. Where most were OK with a descent DVD player, that could also support music and pictures, others wanted to be able to watch movies and surf the web from the comfort of their sofa. Recently however, the initials HTPC are part of many people’s lives and there’s a whole branch of the industry dealing with “Media Centers”.

My own interpretation of a Media Center, has always been a spare PC next to or under my TV. Because of my line of work, I often come across pieces of hardware, so having a box or two laying around is really no bιg deal and through the years, a number of systems found their way to my TV. The latest incarnation of “Largo” is a system with the following specs:

Intel Dual Core @ 1,8GHz

2GB RAM
ATI RADEON x1950

Not exactly top notch, but I thought I did not really need anything more than that. When I first acquired this box, I chose to install Windows 7 and use XBMC as my media center software. I am a huge fan of XBMC and I always regretted not having an XBoX to play with. My motherboard features the Intel HDA sound chip, which means it should be able to handle 7.1 digital and analog sound. At first, I would not care about that,

since I used my TV for sound, having no receiver or speakers.

Sometime ago, I came across a set of 5.1 active speakers (meant to be used with a PC), so you understand I wanted to have surround sound. For some reason that would not work at all. Feeling an urge to experiment, I decided to try out Linux for my media center.

First of all, I installed Mint, my favorite (so far) flavor of Linux. Installation was problem free and as soon as it was finished, it prompted me to install the proprietary drivers for my ATI card, which of course I did. I then did a system update to be sure I have the latest whatever. Next thing was XMBC for Linux.

According to the XBMC Wiki, all I had to do was the following four steps:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc
sudo apt-get update

Simple stuff, no? A few minutes later, I was finished and I eagerly sat down to try m

y new Media Center out.  At first I tested it with an SD Avi file and everything was OK. But as soon as I tried to play HD content, it all went down hill. Even at 720p, playback was choppy and of course I did not have 5.1 sound.

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to fix surround. I read a lot of tutorials, I tried a lot of solutions, but I could not seem to make it work. At some point, I even managed to break stereo sound!

I was beginning to feel very frustrated. If it was some other time, perhaps I would bust my ass off to try and fix it. I mean others have had no problems with machines similar to mine, so I figure if I had insisted, I might have made it. But now, I just wanted to be able to watch my movies and series on my TV, so I went to plan B:

First of all, I installed again Windows 7. There were no missing drivers, so I just installed all the recent updates. Then I followed this guide. Basically, what Kris did, was to install CoreAVC, Haali’s Media Splitter and AC3 Filter. In my case, Haali’s was installed together with CoreAVC, so I only had to download and install AC3 Filter.

If you follow Kris’s guide, you will see he’s doing some registry mambo jumbo at some point. The reason for that, is that Microsoft tried to hi-jack  multimedia playback, by introducing Media Foundation. Among other things, Media Foundation locks media playback to use Microsoft’s native decoders, which in our case means that video will not be played through CoreAVC and we have a reason for installing it don’t we?

At this point, I have not yet performed the registry hack and 1080p playback is smooth. This probably means that I’m using Microsoft decoders, or the developers of CoreAVC finally found a way to circumvent Media Foundation. I am not sure which one is it, so I will have to run some tests. Finally, I no longer use XBMC, but switched to Windows Media Center, at least until I figure out a way to fix multichannel analog sound in XBMC.

Bottom line: I am able to play HD video and have sound in all 5.1 channels and I am very very pleased. I would suggest you give the Linux/XBMC solution a try, because after all, we are talking about free open source software. I will get back to it, as soon as I get my hands on a more powerful machine.

A lot of projects, A little time…

Lately, all over WordPress, there are these nice identical summaries of the most successful posts for 2010, which the helper monkeys were kind enough to send each blog owner. Don’t get me wrong, I like this idea and I implemented it on this blog too. It is a good chance to browse through your old posts, check the statistics and get a general idea about where you’re heading.

What I came to realize, is that I do not post often. Not as often as I would consider ideal at least. According to every pro writing tip out there, keeping a steady flow of new material, is one of the key points that will determine the success of your blog. Not the only one, not even the most important one, but a key point none the less. As you probably noticed, I don’t do that. Before you classify this as another “I wish I wrote more often whining“, let me say that the one and only reason I am not a more frequent writer, is because I am.

See, for the past few years, I’ve been a regular author at a Greek comic site, Comicdom, where (you guessed it) I write posts about comics. This blog on the other side, has seen a couple of reboots and the last time this happened, I decided I wanted to keep it a bit more “technical” and talk about my various encounters with technology and those weird machines called “computers”. I sometimes do write about other things, sure, but I would like to stay on the “information highway” for the most part.

Last time I saw WordPress’ editor, I was writing about a VIA Epia and my plans for it. I said, I wanted to set it up as a torrent client and an FTP server and I would post more on the subject. Well, I did set up an FTP Server and I did document the procedure, but I chose to do it on Instructables instead of here. I apologize for referring you to another site, but I have my reasons. You see I’ve been a member on Instructables, which I think is a wonderful site, all this time, I have borrowed ideas and techniques from other members and have not contributed even the slightest to the community. At least, I am proud for dealing with a subject not already covered, and for writing a detailed How-To and it has a good 400 views so far, so I guess I was a bit helpful to someone.

I wanted to post this here too, so there would be a conclusion to the previous post and keep things tidy in my head. I even got to setting up rtottent (a command line torrent client), but I really don’t think that this is something post-worthy.

Right now, there are a number of things waiting to happen, I don’t know how many (or if any) will be realized, therefore I will not make any announcements what so ever. Just like the title says: Little time..

What To Do With A VIA EPIA ML.

For quite some time, I have been the proud owner (sic) of a VIA EPIA ML, mini ITX motherboard. I bought it almost in a whim, when a colleague of mine wanted to get one for himself and at the time when the purchase took place, it seemed like a fantastic idea. The theory was, that I would build me a machine that would stay up 24/7. Of course, it had to be as quiet as possible and as low consuming as possible, even if it meant sacrificing features and performance. “What was the intended use?” I hear you ask. Well, since I am out of the house many hours a day, which means that no one is using the internet at that time, it would make a very nice “Download Server”. I was also thinking I could set up a Web Server and/or and FTP Server on it too, mainly to experiment. There were some thoughts in the back of my head, about turning it into a file server, but that would be an added bonus to what I was planning. Let’s say that my main concern was to be able to download noise free.

The model I got was the EPIA-ML6000EAG. With a 667MHz cpu and 1GB maximum RAM, it seems as a poor choice, but hey, I was on a tight budget! At about 60$ it was almost the only choice for a fanless system I intended to build. Since I could spare no extra expenses, I used a memory chip I had laying around, an old 200W ATX power supply and put the whole bunch inside a cardboard box! No, that’s not a typo, I really had a PC inside a cardboard box! Oh, come on! Give me some slack! I am not the first one to do that, you know… Style was not my main concern, plus, it would be hidden away below my router.

Supposedly, it was designed to work well with Windows, so I installed WinXP, uTorrent, FileZilla, Apache and a couple of other little programs and then took some time to marvel at what I had achieved. Not much that is… No doubt it would run, but that would be slow as hell. It didn’t bother me though. Remember, I was planning to leave it running all day, so slow or not, it would do what it was supposed to do. And it served me well, for more than a year. But recently, it had become a pain to work with and since I’ve been mistreating netbooks by installing all kinds of Linux on them, I thought about getting my hands on the EPIA as well.

The first distro I tried, was Mint. Having installed Mint on the eeePC, made me think that it would somehow be ideal for what I wanted. The installation was brief and problem free, but the results were far worse than I anticipated. Gnome was terribly slow and no matter how much I tried to tweak the settings, it would still be uncomfortably slow. I know, I know… With only 667 Mhz what could one expect? Anyway, after many installations and dare I say much frustration, I ended up installing Peppermint, which seems to be a lighter version of Mint. I cannot say much about the GUI, because apart from the initial boot, I have not seen it :). I chose to boot it straight to console, so I would not waste any resources. This can easily be done by editing the /etc/default/grub configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub.

Locate the line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”
and change it to                  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash text”

When you are finished, don’t forget to update GRUB

sudo update-grub

Reboot and you’re seeing a nice console!

Next thing I wanted to do, is set up an SSH server, so I could connect to EPIA remotely and perform whatever tasks I wanted. If you are planning to follow any directions I post here, keep in mind that I am talking console only! Forget Gnome, KDE, or any other window manager. I don’t like it very much myself, I admit, but trust me, that was the only way I could achieve satisfactory results. Moreover it is a very good chance to learn a thing or two about the command line, right? With Windows, all you have to do, is enable remote desktop on your computer, forward port 3389 on your router and you’re done. In Linux however, remote desktop is not so simple, especially when you don’t have another Linux box to connect to your PC… SSH on the other hand is simple as it can be, minus the lack of pretty graphics. In order to install the OpenSSH Server you need to type:

sudo apt-get install ssh

You now have an SSH server up and running and you can test it right away by typing:

ssh localhost

If it asks for your confirmation to allow the connection, you’ve installed it correctly and technically you can start connecting to your PC from anywhere you want. There are plenty of settings for you to mess with, but I have not yet gotten down to that. As soon as I make any progress on the subject I will post right away.

The basic set up is completed, the box is working finer than fine and I am able to access it from anywhere in the world. In Windows, I use Putty as my SSH client and I highly recommend it, since it is light, quick and delivers. What I need to do now, is set up an FTP Server, maybe a web server as well and of course find a torrent client that runs from the command line. Stay tuned for more…

Installing Linux on an Intel Classmate pt.3

So far, if you’ve been following this series of posts, you’ve managed (hopefully) to setup your wireless card and make the touch screen work on your Intel Classmate. What else could I possibly have to say that would justify a third post?

The Aftermath.

In the last few days, I’ve been severely mistreated my Classmate, format upon format, installation upon installation, with half a dozen of different linux distros, to be able to put together the last two posts. In fact as you are reading these lines, Classmate’s HDD contains a fucked up installation of Windows 7, an equally fucked up installation of Mint and it’s waiting in the corner for yet another test. The question I expect from you at this point, is: “Was it worth it?”

Success wise, not that much. I mean I made it work, yes, but not work good enough. While it works as a tablet, more than often the pointer gets lost and you end up tapping where you shouldn’t. At first I thought that this happened due to the fact that we’re talking about a low cost netbook. But when I installed on a whim, Windows 7 and (almost) everything was working as it should, I was left with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

Sure I learned a lot,  during all this, sure I was more than happy that I managed to do all of what I did, but I would very much like to have an adequately rewarding result as well.

For the record, while Windows 7 starter was terribly slow as I already said, Windows 7 Ultimate was lightning fast and no, I have no explanation about this.

What I intend to do now, is set up a proper Windows 7 installation, and then start testing more Linux distros. Maybe I will give Debian a try, or Archlinux. You are probably going to hear about this again…

Installing Linux on an Intel Classmate pt.2

Image via wikipedia

In the first part of this post, we managed to get the wireless up and running (at least I hope we did). I wanted to get that out of the way, so we can deal with the real challenge: Getting the touchscreen to work properly.

Let me explain that a bit better. The touch screen did work right out of the box. What did not work however, was the tablet function. As most such devices, the Classmate features two accelerometers that detect the screen orientation and rotate the image accordingly. Not only that, the input controls have to be reversed also, or you would end up tapping on the left side of the screen and the cursor would stay on the right side.

My first priority was to get the screen to rotate properly. I thought that even if I could not get the accelerometers to work, I could rotate the screen manually, which would be extra work for sure, but at least I could operate it as a tablet.

At the end of the previous post, I gave a link to Kay’s site, where he proposed an alternative way to fix the wireless. My solution is based on Kay’s instructions with some minor modifications. I had been searching for a solution all over the internets, and Kay’s was the only thing I found that helped me. For some of you, Kay’s instructions should be sufficient and you shouldn’t need me for anything, provided you have installed Debian with the FVWM window manager. At some point, I would like to try out Debian, but as it is, I think I am better off with something more “out of the box”.

Disclaimer: Always keep in mind that I was trying things as they came, on a machine I did not mind formatting over and over. That means I had no problem following whatever I stumbled upon on the internet and I did not complain when something went bad (and trust me, many things went bad). Furthermore, ignorant as I am, I cannot exclude the possibility that many of the things I did were not necessary, that there weren’t other more sufficient approaches etc etc. I am just going to describe the steps I followed that had a result.

Alright then, now that we got the unpleasant part where I warned you about loss of equipment and sanity, we are good to go.

The first thing I did, was to install the driver (link to a zip file) for the touch screen. Although it might not be necessary, if you upgrade your kernel, at that point I was still with the old kernel, so I cannot verify that you can omit this step. However, you are free to perform an upgrade first (see below) and see what happens. In any case I was forced to upgrade my kernel, so I guess it could come first. If you are lucky, this will leave you with a working wireless, so go ahead and try it.

Once you download and unzip the driver, you will find a readme file with installation instructions. You will notice right away that you have to modify a file called xorg.conf and you are most likely to find out that you do not have such a file. The version of X server that you got with Ubuntu, no longer uses an xorg.conf. However if you create one you will force X to use it. Reboot into recovery mode and from the available options choose “Root console”. You are now logged in as root, joy! Type:

sudo Xorg -configure

Now, if you look in the root directory, you will find a file called xorg.conf.new which is what you are looking for. In the rare case it is not created in the root directory, you can try to locate it by typing:

find / -name xorg.conf.new

All you need to do, is put this file in its’ place and you’re set:

cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etx/X11/xorg.conf.bak

Yeah, you got that right. The last one is a backup we keep in case something goes wrong and you are also right, we still have the .new file we created but one can never be too cautious. What I haven’t tried is what happens if you erase the xorg.conf file. I guess it will revert back to auto configuring X but haven’t tried it. You can follow now the driver installation instructions, just fine. I believe it should be easy enough. I you have any problem, drop me a comment and I will try to help with that. Below I have included the parts of the file that you need to add. At the “ServerLayout” section you have to add a line:

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier     “X.org Configured”
Screen      0  “Screen0” 0 0
InputDevice    “Mouse0” “CorePointer”
InputDevice    “Keyboard0” “CoreKeyboard”
InputDevice    “HID TOUCH” “SendCoreEvents”
EndSection

And then you have to create a Device section:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier  “HID TOUCH”
Driver      “xfhiddrv”
Option      “Device” “/dev/usb/hiddev0”
Option      “ScreenNo” “0”
Option      “Rotation” “0”
Option      “swapY” “0”
Option      “UpSound” “0”
Option      “DownSound” “0”
Option      “Parameters” “/var/touch.conf”
EndSection

Do you see the “Parameters” line? You are probably wondering why is that line there, when the instructions do not mention something. At the point of modifying my xorg.conf file, I was following this guy’s instructions and he had created a touch.conf file that he put  in the /var directory with the following contents:

#Touch Screen Settings file rotation, DbClick_Delay, DbClick_Area
0
460 30

Don’t forget to chmod to 666 to the file. I will be completely honest with you, I have no idea what this file does and if there should be another way to configure the touch screen. However, without this, I couldn’t get it to work. Remember, that if you upgrade your kernel, you might not need this.

The next thing we have to fix, is the rotation of the touch screen. Kay, does that using two scripts. One for the rotation and one that handles the accelerometers. The rotation script works, but it also restarts the window manager Kay uses, which is not needed in our case. Either download his script and  change it, or get mine. (Worpress would not let me upload a .sh file so I changed the extension to .doc).

If you try to execute accel.py it might generate errors and refuse to run. This happens because it tries to find a joystick device (bear with me please) and cannot find one. The system treats accelerometer inputs  like joystick inputs for some reason that eludes me. Now, it does not mean that you don’t have a joystick driver installed, just that where the script is looking for one there isn’t. Go to /dev/input and search for a js0 device. In my case there wasn’t one. This is where I needed to upgrade the kernel.

Go here and download the following files:

linux-headers-2.6.35-02063503-generic_2.6.35-02063503.201008211321_i386.deb

linux-headers-2.6.35-02063503_2.6.35-02063503.201008211321_all.deb

linux-image-2.6.35-02063503-generic_2.6.35-02063503.201008211321_i386.deb

Note that these files are for version 2.6.35 and that is the version I upgraded to. You can go one version further and get the files for 2.6.36, it’s up to you. You install these packages normally and on the next reboot you will see at Grub the new kernel version. You will also have a /dev/input/js0 device, which means Kay’s script now works perfectly.

That’s about it. You should now have a proper working touch screen on your Classmate. If you need any further explanation on any of the steps, drop me a line and I will do my best to help out. I really need to say one more time that the procedure I described above, was merely what I did to get my touch screen to work. By no means do I claim expertise on anything. In fact, if it weren’t for Kay, I don’t think I would have made it. So, I and you who are reading this, should thank Kay and if any of you follows these instructions and makes something of them, don’t forget to credit Kay too.

I decided I will put a third part up, with the conclusion I reached through out this whole process. Stay tuned.

Installing Linux on an Intel Classmate pt.1

Since my eeePC is now minty fresh, it deserves a little piece of mind, doesn’t it? Mint is so far the fastest OS I’ve installed on the eee (and trust me I’ve tried quite a few),  so I decided to stop messing with it for a while and let it rest. But the gods of Technology decided that although the eee earned some time off, I hadn’t, so they sent another toy my way, one more wicked and more difficult to handle than the eee:  The infamous Intel Classmate!

Image Source: Netbook Laptop Reviews

The above image is not of my own Classmate. I “borrowed” it from Netbook Laptop Reviews. So do me a favor and click on it to go there and read their review.

Now, the Intel Classmate has an interesting story. Just like the One Laptop Per Child initiative, it was an effort to equip students with a computer, that would be cheap, durable and able to become a valuable companion to the school’s curriculum. If you are interested in the story, click on the above link to read the OLPC entry in Wikipedia, and you might also be interested in the Classmate PC entry too.

History aside, a third generation Intel Classmate was given to me and of course I had to tinker with it, right? Right? In this post, you will find out what I did to get the wireless to working properly (which is actually no big deal but it could save you a lot of time looking around). In the following part(s) I will address a more interesting but less serious problem: How to make the touch screen work properly.

For a list of features, just go to the wiki entry above and read about the third generation Classmates. The only difference between what you’re going to read there and mine, was that mine came with Windows 7 starter, instead of Windows XP.

Since it has an Atom 1.6GHz cpu, I decided to leave Windows because although it is terribly slow, you can take some pills and work for a while if needed (nothing like the eeePC with Windows 7). I wanted to install Linux on it and dual boot and because it functions as a tablet, I thought Ubuntu Netbook Edition would be a good choice. The installation was a breeze. I don’t think there will be any kind of problem there. After the installation was finished however…

…I found out that I had no wireless! To be exact, network manager would see the wireless module, but it would not pick up any networks. This proves to be a known bug (see Bug #460323) and can be easily fixed. Open a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

I know there are people already laughing at me, but you know what? I don’t care… I like gedit and I am not going to pretend I like VI just to be one of the cool guys! Piss off!

You need to open the blacklist.conf file as root, hence the sudo in the beginning. Once you open it, add this line:

blacklist rt2800usb

The reason why we’re doing this, is because by default Ubuntu tries to load two wireless modules at the same time. So we blacklist one of the two and the other loads properly and yes, you have wireless up and running. Supposedly, if you upgrade your kernel the problem will be fixed without the need of this workaround. The one I downloaded, came with kernel version 2.6.32 and I should have tried to upgrade to version 2.6.34 or later before blacklisting the module, but I tried this solution first and since it worked I did not look into it any further.

A word of caution though: Since we are the kinds of lame people who use graphical text editors in comparison to the manlier vi, we need to be careful because not all editors work. I tried the same thing with kwrite (the equivalent of gedit for KDE) and it fucked up my file. So always keep a backup of what you’re messing with, okay?

An example of how you can keep a copy of blacklist.conf:

sudo cp /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.old

There are some people that mentioned the above solution did not work for them. The Classmate I have features a wireless card by Ralink Technology Corp. I have pretty good reasons to suspect that all the third generation models have the same wireless card. Unfortunately, Ralink does not offer drivers for another OS than Windows, so there’s not much you can do there. My suggestion is to upgrade to the latest kernel, in the hope that this problem is fixed. Right now, the latest available kernel is 2.6.36. Another thing you could try, is what Kay suggests in this excellent article. I cannot verify if it works, since the blacklisting solution worked for me just fine, but since I followed the rest of that article (see part 2) I can tell you that he knows his business.

If you have trouble upgrading, be patient for the second part, where I will cover this procedure, as it was needed for another problem I had. Till then, Google is your friend.

UPDATE: Earlier today, I tried to connect to a wireless network and it would disconnect a couple of seconds later. At some point the network was lost from the network manager. I know there can be nothing wrong with the wireless network because other devices were connected and had absolutely no problems. Being a Windows user, I did what I am used to doing in such cases (reboot) and it worked fine. I’ve been working flawlessly for some days now and this is the first time I had such problems. I will keep an eye on it and report back if anything happens.

My eeePc is minty fresh!

If you happened to catch me on Twitter (or looked at the right side of this blog), you probably know that I was itching to change the OS of my trusted eeePc 900. For those of you who did not catch me on Twitter here’s a short re-cap with my eeedventures:

• I upgraded it’s bios
• I tried OpenSuse but that did not work well, so I installed Easy Peasy
• I went to Eeebuntu and stayed there for a while.
• I even installed Windows 7 (but that was only for experimental reasons)

After the not so successful experiment with Win7 which was to be expected of course, I returned to eeebuntu.  I had grown to like it. Trustworthy, fast, and would cover all my NetBook needs. I was on version 3 and there was talk about a version 4, which eventually became known as Aurora. They dropped the eeebuntu project and they promised huge innovations in style and functionality. Since there was no ETA, I decided to stick with version 3, until Aurora came out.

Yesterday, I went over to Aurora’s site to see if any news were out, but nothing more than “Coming Soon”. In a whim, I downloaded the EB 4 beta version, which was supposed to be something between eeebuntu and Aurora. Once the ISO was downloaded, I followed the standard procedure with UNebootin to transfer the image onto a USB thumb-drive. I don’t know if it was the drive, UNebootin or the image (I tried re-downloading a couple of times) but it refused to work. I tried using Linux Live USB Creator, which by the way is a very nice although terribly slow little program, and voila! I had myself a live version of EB 4 beta. I booted with the USB drive and started installing it on disk. Alas, at 96% of the installation, it would give me a fatal error and believe me I tried it more than once. Always at 96%…

Although I could have sent an error report, tried to fiddle a little more with it, I really wanted to have a working net-book, so I went for the next best thing: Forget EB 4 beta and either go back to eeebuntu 3.0 or try another distro. Well, you can easily guess which way I went…

A colleague had handy a Mint 9.0 Isadora live DVD (the GNOME version, already on a USB) so I grabbed it and started installing. Had I downloaded an ISO myself, perhaps I would have also tried the LXDE version, at least for a peek, but hey, GNOME’s nice so I did not complain. The installation was flawless, quick and problem free. I was a bit concerned if I would have to find and install drivers for the WiFi, or other hardware, but to my amazement, everything worked out of the box!

The only thing that did not work, was two finger scrolling on the touchpad, but that is no big deal. I haven’t tried to find a solution for this yet and I am not sure I will try to.

The only additional feature I installed so far, was Gnome-Do. Do, is a launcher that has some very interesting capabilities. You see, eeebuntu offered a very nice mac looking dock-bar, and I was getting used to it. Mint on the other hand had none such feature pre-installed and while I was searching for a dock-bar, I stumbled on Do. Hitting the [Win] key and [Space] will bring up the Do interface and all you have to do, is start typing the name of the application you want to execute. For example, if I were to type “fire”, it would show me FireFox’s icon and if I pressed [Enter], FireFox would start. That simple! The only catch is, that you have to know what you are looking for. Do also offers a lot of plug-ins, from file searching to history searching to Twitter updates, but I haven’t explored all of that yet.

So far, Mint seems (if that is ever possible) much faster than eeebuntu. Less boot up time, faster application launching (even Gimp) and quicker shutdown. Minty fresh!

UPDATE: If you go to Preferences : Mouse, you can activate or deactivate 2-finger scrolling… It was THAT simple….

LXDEL

Windows 7 on eeePC 900

Yes I did! I installed Windows 7 on the eeePC. Yeah I know, I am not the first person doing it, I just thought it would be nice to try, so I found this excellent post and followed the instructions to the letter (well, not exactly but who does anyway?). The reason? Well, why not? No seriously, I was dying to find out how well (or not) it would perform.

I used an external DVD drive, so I cannot verify whether you can port Win7 on a thumbdrive or not, but I have no reason to doubt that. Be careful to install the vga drivers (click on the above link for more info) with compatibility for windows XP. I chose Windows XP Service Pack 2 from the available options and it worked fine.

So, how was it, I hear you ask. Suffice to say that I returned to eeeBuntu. Although Win 7 are supposed to offer support for SSD hard disks, my experience was slow and painful. I am not sure, since I kept 7 for about half an hour before I re-installed eeeBuntu, but I think that the user experience was worse than XP (and that makes sense). I tried to bring all graphics down, disable indexing, play around with some settings, but that didn’t change much.

It seems that vLite can be used on Windows 7 but I did not feel brave enough to try. So if anyone reading this, manages to do better than me, give me a hint in the comments ok?

Easy Peasy on eeePc 900. Maybe not so easy

Until very recently, my eee900 was running on Suse Linux.  I was more than happy with it, I liked the look and feel of it, I liked the fact that it was waaaay faster than windows and generally I thought we two were going to stick together for a long time. I did not know of one little detail though:

Vpn connection. I needed to be able to connect to my workplace through PPTP, since we are using windows machines there, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t make it work. Network manager, had support for vpn, but not pptp tunneling, so I resorted to Google and spent a whole day trying all kinds of remedies to no avail. My colleague, the one who talked me into installing Suse in the first place, had pptp up and running on his own machine and that only frustrated me more. It only meant that there was a way to make it work, I just hadn’t found it yet. When I asked him how he had done it, he said he could not remember (of course) but he could use Norton Ghost to bring his own image onto my machine. I agreed and gave him my eee, because I thought that having vpn was better than having to re-fine-tune suse. Due to a *slight* mistake on his side, I ended up booting in Windows home again (he had used the wrong image to restore on my eee), which solved me one problem (I now had vpn), but created a whole lot more (speed, hiccups, poor performance) .

The dilemma: Keep windows and try to speed them up, or re-install suse?

The windows user in me was screaming for the first option and I quickly found my self  browsing through this thread and installing nLite. For the record, I believe the instructions on the thread above are fantastic and to my knowledge they work like a charm, but something did not go well with nLite, so I wasn’t able to complete them. In the past, I have tried some of the tips mentioned in there though and they really make a difference, but still nothing compared to my experience with suse.

The fact that I failed tweaking XP (or sabotaged my self sub-consciously) meant only one thing: Back to Linux! But should I move back to suse, or maybe try something new. While searching for a linux distro that works well with netbooks, I stumbled on Easy Peasy. The scree-shots were nice, it is based on Ubuntu (ie user friendly). So off with the installation!

The OS installation was easier than easy, you only have to follow the instructions given here. One word of advise though: Use an MD5 checker with your download! It will save you a lot of frustration later ;).  I had to download the iso 3 times to finally get it right but it worked like a charm in the end. Almost like a charm…

The very first thing I tried to do was to set up a vpn connection and – what a surprise – I couldn’t. From what I understood, reading countless web sites, was that pptp is not directly supported in linux, and it’s usually used only for windows vpns. I found some great instructions here, but they are great for everybody else, except me, since I could not install network-manager-pptp. For some reason that I cannot understand, the specific package was not available in any of the repositories that were configured in Easy Peasy. There is however an application, similar to Windows “Add Remove Programs” and when I tried that one, it found a pptp client and let me install it. Be sure to select “All Open Source Applications” from the drop down list!

Now, I need to do some extensive testing, but so far I love it.