MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-05-16 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] eee and Linux and Me
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2 Comments My Asus Eee PC’s Linux Journey by Jason Kichen
This previous Christmas, I asked for and was given a brand new Eee PC
(701). When I opened it, the comments around the room came quickly,
“That’s a computer?†and “It’s so small†and “What a
neat toy.†Well, that Toy has been on quite a Linux journey in recent
months. And I’m now running eeeXbuntu on the Eee PC. Here’s how I
arrived at that operating system, along with some clues about where I
may go next.
When I first received the Eee PC, it took about ten minutes of charging
to get it to boot up, and my pleasure with my Eee was almost immediate.
Before I could even get comfortable on the floor it had booted up and
was waiting for my input. “Simple†mode was exactly that- even as a
power user, I could very much appreciate the design of the simple Xandros
desktop. The tabs, the icons, the speed at which I was connected to some
random wireless network in the neighborhood: this was incredible. If
I didn’t know anything about computers or operating systems, I could
turn this thing on and send email or start typing a document in minutes.
After about a day of simple mode, a simple .conf edit and a click and
I was able to start up in “advanced†mode. While more advanced than
simple mode, advanced mode was really just a standard KDE desktop (even
a Windows user would recognize the elements of a KDE desktop). This was
my first time with Xandros, and so far I was impressed. Minus a security
vulnerability in the SAMBA configuration identified in the months after
its release (and easily fixable), the Xandros implementation was done
well.
But I wanted something a bit more challenging, something I could learn
more from. So I decided to try a different Linux flavor. I moved over to
the Eee user site and checked out the forums, where I found many options
for operating systems. Time to Backtrack
My first choice was Backtrack 3 Beta (a Slackware and SLAX based security
distribution). I wanted to learn more about security and penetration
testing, and Backtrack 3 Beta was the way to go. Using information on
the Backtrack forum, I was able to easily create a bootable SD card
for Backtrack. Now I was able to play around with my new OS without
disturbing the Xandros installation on my SSD.
But after a few weeks of not touching the SSD, I decided to take the
plunge and wipe Xandros off and install Backtrack on the SSD as my sole
operating system. This went surprisingly well. But while I really liked
the Backtrack 3 Beta, it simply wasn’t the right choice for my prime
OS. I kept the bootable SD card so I could still use it when needed, but I
wanted to put something different on the eee’s SSD. EeeDora and Red Hat
Back to Google in search of more alternatives, and I quickly found
eeeDora. eeeDora is a Fedora 8-based distribution, which of course
is ultimately a spin-off of Red Hat. I didn’t have much experience
with Red Hat/Fedora, so I figured I would give it a try. Downloading
and installing to another SD card was super easy, and as promised,
pretty much everything worked upon booting: networking, video, sound,
etc, all seemed to work out of the box. This was now my third different
Linux OS on my eee PC, and I thought I might have found a winner.
But it was only two weeks later that I was again unhappy. The distribution
itself was wonderfully stable and functional…but I simply found it
boring. Please don’t misread this as a slight against the developer. I
think eeeDora did an incredible job with out-of-the-box functionality
and simplicity. It just didn’t suit my taste. Time to Work With U
Finally, I came back to Ubuntu. Again on the Eee user site, I decided
on eeeXbuntu (Ubuntu with XCFE). Once again, download and install was
incredibly easy. I installed it directly to my SSD (removing eeeDora). It
boots up a bit slower than my previous OSes.
Once up and running, like eeeDora, everything works out of the box. I was
happy to get back to the Debian environment as I am much more comfortable
there than I am in a Red Hat/Fedora environment. I feel like I lost a
little bit of stability (programs took longer to start and longer to
shutdown, plus some hangs and crashes along the way), but gained the
familiarity of Ubuntu.
Today, eeeXbuntu remains on my eee’s SSD. But…I think I am going to
switch it up in the next week. My options now, as I see it, are Ubuntu
8.04 and SuSE 10/11. I know there are many others well-suited for the
Eee (Puppy, Arch, Mint, etc), but right now I am sticking with the big
guns. But hopefully I will be able to later download all of those other
options onto bootable SD cards to see how they fare on my Eee PC.
-- http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff http://www.nylxs.com -
Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like
Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world -
RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS -
RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers
to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in
our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be
damned.< You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and
technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in
Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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