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Posted by:
retro
Date:
31/05/2009
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Linux and Open Source
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A few months ago I purchased an Eee PC 901A. At the time I decided to keep the default Xandros installation. However, after getting fed up with many of the distribution's little "quirks" I decided to give Ubuntu's Netbook Remix a try.
I have always been a fan of openSUSE and as such have never used any flavour of Ubuntu. When I got the Eee PC I resisted the urge to install openSUSE and the full KDE desktop as I wanted to keep the machine as quick as possible.
In all honesty I only really bought the netbook out of curiosity and it has spent most of its time sitting on a shelf in my office. However, recently I have had a number of server/network installations to do at remote sites and have found the Eee PC a very useful tool due to its small size.
Whilst the standard Xandros installation seemed to be very quick at first, the netbook seemed to be processing much slower after just a few months of moderate use. Some annoying quirks like resetting my menus (home screen, favourites etc.) every time I installed an update and the inflexibility of the UI tempted me to try something else.
Looking at the hardware support page for UNR looked promising (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks) so I decided to give it a try.
Installation was easy. First just download the img file from the Ubuntu site (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-netbook). You will need to install from a USB flash drive/disk. One thing worth pointing out is to use a good quality flash drive. I tried several times to install using a "no name" USB stick and the Eee PC failed to load the UNR setup. In the end I opted for a good quality Kingston Data Traveller USB stick and it did the trick (needs to be at least 1GB in size).
Details instructions on how to write the img file to a USB device can be seen at (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles)
As I was using a Windows machine at the time I opted to use the flashnul command line utility.
I did have problems using both Win32 Disk Imager and Flashnul on a Vista machine. In the end I just used an XP box to write the image.
Once done, boot up your Eee PC, press Esc during bootup to show boot options and select to boot from your USB device.
Setup was pretty simple. I chose to let Ubuntu manage the partitioning of the drive since I wasnt worried about losing the default recovery partition or wanting to dual boot.
Once installed UNR booted up in no time at all (actually seemed to be quicker than Xandros). All my devices were detected. Wireless, microphone, web cam, sound card all appear fine.
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Overall I am very impressed with Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It was easy to install, has a very responsive and intuitive netbook interface, yet does not restrict you like the default Xandros one (and you can also switch to normal mode if you like). The bundled software is up to date and will meet most peoples requirements - and if you do need to install any new software, at least UNR has a decent package manager - which is more than I can say for the one that shipped with the Eee PC.
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