[NCLUG] Re: Eee PC Xandros

[bwood at beww.org]

On Wednesday 26 November 2008 10:34:41 Dan Fink wrote:
> I also have an Eee PC, and love it. With a 16 or 32 gig SD card in the
> slot, there's lots of storage for my highly mobile uses---camping trips
> to remote areas for photography, RAW photo editing on site, tethered
> shooting, contact with my servers whilst in strange places.
>
> beww, hopefully you have installed the full Eee Xandros from
> eeeuser.com? The 'simplified' version that comes installed is really
> bad. There are software packages in it that are not even accessible.
> (WTF???)

Like (ctrl-alt-T) to get a terminal? Boy that's intuitive :-)

The installed OS is pretty lame. Since it was described as "Linux" I expected 
a lot more. The manual did not even mention a more advanced version. 

The method mentioned in the manual to get the "advanced" interface (KDE) did 
not even work. I found instructions on the net to get KDE up, but it seemed 
needlessly complex.

Apparently the integrated camera is not even supported, selling a  machine 
with integrated hardware not supported seems pretty odd to me, not that I  
need a camera anyway.

When the SD card came up as "D" it became obvious that the included OS was 
aimed at Windows users, not Linux users.

I read that the netbooks have a return rate 4 times that of standard laptops. 
Probably because the OS would disappoint Windows users, as well as Linux 
users.
>
> After the addition of new skins for Thunderbird and Firefox that are
> designed for the small screen on the Eee, it's quite usable.

I'll have to find those skins I guess.

>
> Ubuntu should be no problem, there is a special Eee edition of Ubuntu.
> When I get a break in my schedule here soon, I'm going to try it out.

I installed the Eee version of Ubuntu yesterday and so far I am well 
impressed. Everything seems to work, and it seems significantly faster than 
the included Xandros.

>
> The Eeeuser.com forums are one of the best and largest online
> communities I've ever seen. Amazing the hacks people have done to these
> little machines. Its quite easy, for example, to have multiple bootable
> SD cards so you can pick your O/S -- including Windows.
> DAN FINK

I noticed a large portion of the manual was devoted to how to install Windows. 
It seems Windows drivers for the hardware are included on one of the disks.

I have no desire to run Windows on this machine. I have an Acer Aspire One 
that runs XP. I bought the Eee because I wanted a Linux machine.

The support for large (HC) SD cards does seem to open up a lot of 
possibilities.

I'm wondering is I can obtain an SDD that uses dynamic RAM (not flash), this 
should make a significant increase in disk speed.

I tried a 2GB SODIMM of RAM, apparently the machine (BIOS) does not support 
it. Too bad, it would have been a good improvement I think.

I'll check out the forums, thanks for the pointer. You're right: the machine 
would seem to be a hacker's dream.

-- 
beww
beww at beww.org