Adventures with the eeeeeeeee and Linux

[triskellian]

I have discovered that the eeeeeee with its default installation of Xandros won't work with Eduroam (the wireless system used by universities). No problem, I am assured, it works fine with Ubuntu, and there's an eeeee-specific version with handholdy instructions

Comments

[_kent]

What model of Eee is it? I'd be surprised if an old install of eeeXubuntu was really what you needed there. I don't think they've been officially updating that in over a year.

[smiorgan]

Good point - although once triskellian can connect to the interweb she can do an update over the net to the latest stable version. Not so good if you can't connect via wireless, but the eee does have an ethernet port I believe

[_kent]

My suggestion would be to start with straight vanilla Ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04 Beta. I installed 9.04 Beta the other day, and that genuinely did work straight out of the box. I also tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but found that the swishy animations of the netbook specific launcher crawled on my older Eee (it's on of the older 900s before they started using Atom processor.) The basic Ubuntu 9.04 install works great.

[smiorgan]

Interesting - I was about to point at eeebuntu.org for the NBR, because of the FAQ:

Couldn't I Just Install Ubuntu?

Absolutely. However there are several important parts of the kernel which won't work if you install Ubuntu yourself (wifi, networking, function keys etc) and several important fixes that will prevent you from enjoying the full Ubuntu experience on your EeePC - in order to get those things working, you would need to install a custom kernel and make several changes to the configuration. Eeebuntu has all of those changes made by default. It works out of the box.

But if a base install of Ubuntu works, so much the better.

[triskellian]

It's a 901 (ie with Atom). I got to eeeXubuntu from the work wireless support pages - if all else is equal, I'll choose a distro that I know will be familiar to the people who might end up troubleshooting the wireless connection. But I'll check out vanilla Ubuntu too, thanks.

[knirirr]

You may also wish to try OS X; dyddgu's Ravelry projects contain pictures of a similar installation.

[triskellian]

I've seen hers on Rav, yes :-) And it is pretty tempting, especially since the page you link suggests that speed isn't a problem, which would have been my first concern. But I'd rather get the free option working than either pay for or pirate MacOS (although, hmmm, must investigate student discounts...)

[knirirr]

I don't think there's a student discount for the OS, so it's either pay or pirate. There is a "family pack" discount that allows 5 installations in your household, though (IIRC).

[knirirr]

By the way, she said that she found the Ubuntu installation on the Mini 9 fine for general use, but wanted some specific software and features from OS X.

[triskellian]

I've just checked and it's a poxy £10 discount. And my other puter is a Macbook, so I've got access to OS X anyway. And I rather like the idea of playing with Linux a bit - I never have before ;-)

[knirirr]

Playing with Linux is certainly good, although for the maximum fun I would recommend Gentoo. ;-)