OK. Given may (predictably) rapid dissolusion with XP on my EeePC - I love the way the OS is just so easy, hate the way that it's fat and uncontrollable (in my experience), I thought I'd just try Vista and see if it was actually possible and try and establish what does or doesn't work ... on my way to switching back to Linux.
I installed Windows Vista Business from a retail DVD ROM, via a USB DVD RAM Drive that has proven itself to be very useful.
The install itself takes about 2.5 hours and seems to go dead at a couple of points for period of up to about 20 minutes while the disk spins, but neither drive light comes on or the progress percentage increments. Stick with it. It will get there eventually.
Install to the 16GB partitioin and you'll end up with about 7 GB of OS installation on there.
Native screen rez is supported as are the hot keys etc. I needed to use the XP drivers for the LAN and ACPI hardware - go to device manager, choose the undignosed hardware and install the drivers by hand. This was sucessful and I was able to get the LAN and power sorted out quite quickly. I'll come to the WIFI in a moment.
A quick note about speed - not really any slower than XP. Overall the boot speed is about the same which given the fact that you end up installing onto a theoretically slower partition is quite impressive, and time to login-prompt is pretty well equal. After that, vista logs in faster but goes through starting all the services so you are looking at more-or-less similar time before you can actually get the start menu to respond or start an application.
OK. Wifi. Doesn't work. I've tried any native drivers (there don't seem to be any and the hardware isn't identified) an the XP drivers will install - if you diable the Wifi with the function key combination - but don't actually work or find any networks. I did some superficial research into this and there are other reports of people with similar experiences, and the only posted solutions are along the lines of 'use the XP drivers'.
Since the EeePC is a netbook, in my opinion it's mobility and therefore things like wireless are key to its usability. Without it, not so useful.
So all in all, impressed with the fact that Vista installs at all, pity that the lack of one driver is going to make it unusable and therefore rapidly replaced and quite suprised that speed wasn't a reason for uninstalling - this is an EeePC 900 don't forget ... thats a 900MHz celeron so processor power was always in short supply.
Showing posts with label EeePC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EeePC. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Uninstall != inv(install)
EeePC. Running Windows XP and need an easy solution for burning CDs. I have a USB DVD RAM drive so go to install CD Burner XP (which I have used happily many times before) and dicover that this oarticular piece of software relies on the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5.
No great problem - lets install that too.
It's as the install completes that the low disk warning pops up. Installing the .Net Framework takes a staggering 55oMB of disk space and on a 4GB partition, that's more-or-less unworkable.
So the plan is to uninstall it and try Deep Burner.
Uninstalling the .NET Framework only gives you back about 50MB of disk space. So where did the rest of it go? No idea. All I know is that 'uninstall' is not the inverse of 'install'.
Combing through the Windows folder has freed up another 100MB, but I'm now faced with a windows install operating with less than 250MB of free space in a 4GB partition.
I'm loathed to say it, but it may be time to rethink this whole MS Windows experience thing. To complete the trial I should investigate putting Windows Vista on here ... I wonder is that even possible?
By the way - Deep Burner installs just fine without needing the .Net framework.
No great problem - lets install that too.
It's as the install completes that the low disk warning pops up. Installing the .Net Framework takes a staggering 55oMB of disk space and on a 4GB partition, that's more-or-less unworkable.
So the plan is to uninstall it and try Deep Burner.
Uninstalling the .NET Framework only gives you back about 50MB of disk space. So where did the rest of it go? No idea. All I know is that 'uninstall' is not the inverse of 'install'.
Combing through the Windows folder has freed up another 100MB, but I'm now faced with a windows install operating with less than 250MB of free space in a 4GB partition.
I'm loathed to say it, but it may be time to rethink this whole MS Windows experience thing. To complete the trial I should investigate putting Windows Vista on here ... I wonder is that even possible?
By the way - Deep Burner installs just fine without needing the .Net framework.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
EeePC + Window XP SP3 .... Going back to MS
This is an annoying post to be writing in some senses. I love the open source ideal. I love the speed and robustness of Linux. I love the automated application installation, the safety, the security, the choice of distributions and window systems.
So why does putting Windows XP in this netbook seem so very, very easy?
It's the interface and the support. Dammit. I'd much rather be using Gnome, but the hardware isn't quite supported, doesn't integrate quite as well. With Windows XP, I downloaded about 12 dirver packs from the Asus website, installed XP SP 2, ran the installers for the packs and I have everything working. And I mean everything. The hot keys. The audio and webcam, wireless and lan, touchpad in cluding 2 finger scrolling and a fast set of graphics drivers.
Boot times? No more than a few seconds slower.
Now, I'm fairly sure of a couple of things here. This installation will, like all windows installations, seem to slow down over time as the cruft builds up. But right at this moment this is about as easy an installation as I've done on this - and I've installed something like a dozen different Linux distributions on here over the 10 months I've had it.
I'll keep you posted, but I'm now going to push my luck and install some developer tools on here.
Oh .... and the thing I like best that I never got working under linux? I have a desktop set to 1280x768, and the display pans as I move the mouse at the edge of the screen to show the area of the display that is off the edge of the physical display. I find this much more use than having 4 desktops (as with Gnome or KDE) since I can run an application that needs a lot of display-realestate and be able to work, rather than being left with too little document space once all the tool palettes are on-screen.
This is all about user experience, and I hate to say it, but XP is coming out rather well....
So why does putting Windows XP in this netbook seem so very, very easy?
It's the interface and the support. Dammit. I'd much rather be using Gnome, but the hardware isn't quite supported, doesn't integrate quite as well. With Windows XP, I downloaded about 12 dirver packs from the Asus website, installed XP SP 2, ran the installers for the packs and I have everything working. And I mean everything. The hot keys. The audio and webcam, wireless and lan, touchpad in cluding 2 finger scrolling and a fast set of graphics drivers.
Boot times? No more than a few seconds slower.
Now, I'm fairly sure of a couple of things here. This installation will, like all windows installations, seem to slow down over time as the cruft builds up. But right at this moment this is about as easy an installation as I've done on this - and I've installed something like a dozen different Linux distributions on here over the 10 months I've had it.
I'll keep you posted, but I'm now going to push my luck and install some developer tools on here.
Oh .... and the thing I like best that I never got working under linux? I have a desktop set to 1280x768, and the display pans as I move the mouse at the edge of the screen to show the area of the display that is off the edge of the physical display. I find this much more use than having 4 desktops (as with Gnome or KDE) since I can run an application that needs a lot of display-realestate and be able to work, rather than being left with too little document space once all the tool palettes are on-screen.
This is all about user experience, and I hate to say it, but XP is coming out rather well....
Sunday, 1 March 2009
OpenSuse 11.1 on EeePC 900 - How-to and mini-review
Prompted by Mandriva nuking its wifi configuration,I decided it was time to try out the new OpenSuse and see how easy it was to install and configure on my Asus EeePC 900.
The install itself was very easy. Easier than with 10.3 or 11.0. The only remotely complexe part of it was setting up custom partitioning (I used the while of the 4GB SSD as one partition mounted at /, and mounted the whole 16GB SSD as /home, didn't create a swap partition and formatted them both as EXT2).
Running OpenSuSe 11.1 is very easy - everything just works. I'll post more about the tweaks that I make as I go. There's only one issue that I have at the moment and that is finding a working repository for Wine Doors (a utility to manage package installations for Wine, the MS Windows compatibility library for Linux) and for some reason ... I can't find one ....
The install itself was very easy. Easier than with 10.3 or 11.0. The only remotely complexe part of it was setting up custom partitioning (I used the while of the 4GB SSD as one partition mounted at /, and mounted the whole 16GB SSD as /home, didn't create a swap partition and formatted them both as EXT2).
Running OpenSuSe 11.1 is very easy - everything just works. I'll post more about the tweaks that I make as I go. There's only one issue that I have at the moment and that is finding a working repository for Wine Doors (a utility to manage package installations for Wine, the MS Windows compatibility library for Linux) and for some reason ... I can't find one ....
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Mandriva Linux and my Asus EeePC 900 - A follow-up review
Having now run my EeePC 900 with Mandriva Linux for something like 4 months, I thought it was time to do a follow-up review and let you know how it was going as a long term choice.
And to get right down to the headline: nothing to report.
That's it, right there. It just works, to the level that its essentially transparent as an OS and so far the limit of my required administration has been to type in my password to install any updates.
Perfect.
My EeePC is a daily companion the provides email, web, graphic design (photoshop under wine, gimp, blender and inkscape), web development (dreamweaver and flash under wine) and remote desktop. So it isn't getting off lightly just because its a netbook.
Unlike with my experiences of Ubuntu and OpenSuse, in another few months and I am confident that I'll still have nothing to report.
And to get right down to the headline: nothing to report.
That's it, right there. It just works, to the level that its essentially transparent as an OS and so far the limit of my required administration has been to type in my password to install any updates.
Perfect.
My EeePC is a daily companion the provides email, web, graphic design (photoshop under wine, gimp, blender and inkscape), web development (dreamweaver and flash under wine) and remote desktop. So it isn't getting off lightly just because its a netbook.
Unlike with my experiences of Ubuntu and OpenSuse, in another few months and I am confident that I'll still have nothing to report.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Mandriva Linux on EeePC 900
I've been quite vocal about my appreciation of OpenSuSE 11.0 and how well it works (after a lot of fiddling) on my EeePC 900.
Well, the few bits that didn't work started to annoy me, along with the fact that it didn't take advantage of the faster FSB and effectively ran the access to the memory slower than the hardware was actually capable of.
So I had an idle look on www.distrowatch.com and then did a little surfing for EeePC out-of-the-box compatible distros. I saw that Mandriva have just released their 2009 version and it's supposed to be 100% compatible.
Long story short: it is.
Downloaded the .iso file and burned a DVD ROM (external usb DVD drive - very useful) this morning, and after only about 3 hours of effort, most of that waiting for things to copy, here I am blogging this, from flock, on my EeePC 900, over wireless ... you get the picture. It all just worked.
I've even gone as far as getting Compiz working fine, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Second Life client is in the full sources set of the repositories. Installing that was quite telling: it runs a good deal faster on Mandriva than on OpenSuSE.
That's it. I'm sold. Faster AND easier? Perfect.
Well, the few bits that didn't work started to annoy me, along with the fact that it didn't take advantage of the faster FSB and effectively ran the access to the memory slower than the hardware was actually capable of.
So I had an idle look on www.distrowatch.com and then did a little surfing for EeePC out-of-the-box compatible distros. I saw that Mandriva have just released their 2009 version and it's supposed to be 100% compatible.
Long story short: it is.
Downloaded the .iso file and burned a DVD ROM (external usb DVD drive - very useful) this morning, and after only about 3 hours of effort, most of that waiting for things to copy, here I am blogging this, from flock, on my EeePC 900, over wireless ... you get the picture. It all just worked.
I've even gone as far as getting Compiz working fine, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Second Life client is in the full sources set of the repositories. Installing that was quite telling: it runs a good deal faster on Mandriva than on OpenSuSE.
That's it. I'm sold. Faster AND easier? Perfect.
Monday, 6 October 2008
Now, that's a whole 'nother channel right there....
I contacted the people at OpenSuse with a fairly mundane request: do you have any stickers to fit on the lid of my EeePC? You know what us geeks are like about stickers. Turns out that this is an item that they just don't have.
This got me thinking about how important it is when planning the small tactics of your marketing campaign to be able to get a good fit with your existing as well as potential customers. It's your existing customers that will preach on your behalf and tell all their contacts about the quality of your product or service, and providing the right tools for them to be able to do this is key.
Whether it's providing a brochure showing the details of your clients new project, so that they can show ot off in the office, or stickers for geeks with laptops, you'll only benefit by helping your customers to sell your products for you.
Let's face it: I think OpenSuse is a superb OS. My EeePC is on my lap on a packed train for 2.5 hours a day and ends up in a good mix of meetings ... having your logo on the lid of my EeePC will give you quite wide a range of people. Now, that's a whole 'nother channel right there...
This got me thinking about how important it is when planning the small tactics of your marketing campaign to be able to get a good fit with your existing as well as potential customers. It's your existing customers that will preach on your behalf and tell all their contacts about the quality of your product or service, and providing the right tools for them to be able to do this is key.
Whether it's providing a brochure showing the details of your clients new project, so that they can show ot off in the office, or stickers for geeks with laptops, you'll only benefit by helping your customers to sell your products for you.
Let's face it: I think OpenSuse is a superb OS. My EeePC is on my lap on a packed train for 2.5 hours a day and ends up in a good mix of meetings ... having your logo on the lid of my EeePC will give you quite wide a range of people. Now, that's a whole 'nother channel right there...
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Installing OpenSUSE 11 on an EeePC 900
I've made a few posts over the few weeks about my EeePC 900 and my experiences choosing an OS to run on it.
Xandros didn't last more than a few days, and after a fair amount of trying various things out, I've settled (and been running for a few weeks now) OpenSUSE 11.0.
This is the process that I used to install it.
Before you get started, you need to download and burn to disk the OpenSUSE 11 live CD from here
You also need to put two installers required to make the Wireless networking operate on to a USB memory stick. The files you need are:
madwifi-kmp-default-ng_r3366+ar5007_2.6.25.5_1.1-1.4.i586.rpm
madwifi-ng_r3366+ar5007-1.4.i586.rpm
which can be downloaded from the Appleonkel repository here
1. Install from the OpenSUSE 11 live CD (using a USB external CD-ROM drive). The installer is very easy to use and the only things that I specifically did was to set the partitions up so that there was only a system partition on the 4GB SSD and to mount the 16GB SSD into /home. All relatively easy to do with the partitioning tool that's built into the OpenSUSE installer. Make sure you remove the swap partition - it'll help your SSD last longer (although how much longer no-one really knows).
2. Modify xorg.conf in line with the changes listed in OpenSUSE on the EeePC - openSUSE
If you (like me) have a 900, you'll need to modify the 1024x768 entries in xorg.conf to read 1024x600. You will also need to run yast from a root commandline and modify the system >> sysconfig editor >> desktop >> display manager >> displaymanager_randr_mode_auto value and change it to:
1024X600_60 48.96 1024 1064 1168 1312 600 601 604 622 -hsync -vsync
There may be another way to change this value but this is the only method I have found that works.
If you're planning to use Second Life on your EeePC, remember to turn 3D acceleration on and set to 24bit colour depth.
3. Use the USB stick with the Madwifi / Drivers RPMs and install them with the package installer. You should then be able to configure your wireless and things get easier at this point. I have to make one point here though: lock these two packages in the installer and stop them being updated. For some reason the updates break the wireless and you'll need to uninstall / reinstall with the original Appleonkel versions. Anyone knows why, then please let me know!
4. Add the Appleonkel, Seife, Schmolle 1980 and Rusjako repositories as detailed in the 10.3 wiki entry (linked above - see step 2). I also added a few others at this point: packman, vlc, mozilla, gnome stable, wine - but that's personal preference.
5. Add the eeepc packages and you should find you have a working system after the reboot.
I think a full install takes about 1.5 hours to get to this point and worked quite well. The only thing I don't have working yet is the webcam, but I'll keep you posted if I find an answer.
Xandros didn't last more than a few days, and after a fair amount of trying various things out, I've settled (and been running for a few weeks now) OpenSUSE 11.0.
This is the process that I used to install it.
Before you get started, you need to download and burn to disk the OpenSUSE 11 live CD from here
You also need to put two installers required to make the Wireless networking operate on to a USB memory stick. The files you need are:
madwifi-kmp-default-ng_r3366+ar5007_2.6.25.5_1.1-1.4.i586.rpm
madwifi-ng_r3366+ar5007-1.4.i586.rpm
which can be downloaded from the Appleonkel repository here
1. Install from the OpenSUSE 11 live CD (using a USB external CD-ROM drive). The installer is very easy to use and the only things that I specifically did was to set the partitions up so that there was only a system partition on the 4GB SSD and to mount the 16GB SSD into /home. All relatively easy to do with the partitioning tool that's built into the OpenSUSE installer. Make sure you remove the swap partition - it'll help your SSD last longer (although how much longer no-one really knows).
2. Modify xorg.conf in line with the changes listed in OpenSUSE on the EeePC - openSUSE
If you (like me) have a 900, you'll need to modify the 1024x768 entries in xorg.conf to read 1024x600. You will also need to run yast from a root commandline and modify the system >> sysconfig editor >> desktop >> display manager >> displaymanager_randr_mode_auto value and change it to:
1024X600_60 48.96 1024 1064 1168 1312 600 601 604 622 -hsync -vsync
There may be another way to change this value but this is the only method I have found that works.
If you're planning to use Second Life on your EeePC, remember to turn 3D acceleration on and set to 24bit colour depth.
3. Use the USB stick with the Madwifi / Drivers RPMs and install them with the package installer. You should then be able to configure your wireless and things get easier at this point. I have to make one point here though: lock these two packages in the installer and stop them being updated. For some reason the updates break the wireless and you'll need to uninstall / reinstall with the original Appleonkel versions. Anyone knows why, then please let me know!
4. Add the Appleonkel, Seife, Schmolle 1980 and Rusjako repositories as detailed in the 10.3 wiki entry (linked above - see step 2). I also added a few others at this point: packman, vlc, mozilla, gnome stable, wine - but that's personal preference.
5. Add the eeepc packages and you should find you have a working system after the reboot.
I think a full install takes about 1.5 hours to get to this point and worked quite well. The only thing I don't have working yet is the webcam, but I'll keep you posted if I find an answer.
Friday, 6 June 2008
EeePC 900
I don't have a huge amount of luck with laptops. I spend easily 6 hours a day (sometime much more) using mine and I guess I expect quite a lot from it - high performance, long battery life light weight small footprint. You know. The things you pay an absolute fortune for. Only I refuse to pay and absolute fortune for a laptop. I guess £800 is about my maximum. Let's face it, if I go and buy a £2000 laptop and around about half-way through my third day of ownership, I'll drop it.
So that's why I chose my HP Pavillion DV2000. 14.1 inch, 3 hours battery, powerful enough, looked nice. Two years happy computing later and the hard drive finally dies, which was only to be expected really as I commute for between 3 and 4 hours every day, which means may laptop gets thoroughly shaken about.
New hard drive, take the plunge with Linux (Ubunbtu then OpenSuSE) and all is good. Then last Thursday I turn my trusty laptop on to the sound of random crackles from the speakers and nothing else, no bios messages, nothing. OK. Time to do two things: replace my laptop with something temporary, repair my old laptop.
A number of people I know have bought (and are universally happy with) eeePC 701s. Given my recent switch away from MS Windows and onto Linux the idea of a small Linux based laptop is very attractive. The screen was a bit of a sticking point though. A little small. But not on the 900 series. The other fact that sold me on this was the solid state disk - 20GB, no moving parts (so less prone to breaking).
One shopping trip later, and for the quite reasonable price of £329 I'm the owner of an EeePC 900, Linux, 20GB.
The initial OS runs in tabbed 'wizard' mode. I have to say this was a little uncomfortable as it makes the eeePC as easy to use and accessible as mobile phone, but makes it hard to get beyond the default set of applications. A quick search of web gives a number of pages that provide access to relatively (assuming you know a little about Linux) easy methods for switching to a standard KDE window manager referred to as 'advanced desktop'.
One thing that I did try was installing an alternative Linux distribution. Installing OpenSuSE 10.3 went rather easily, and worked exactly as you would expect it to. Drivers were easily available for just about everything, and the experience and Gnome (my preference over KDE) worked fine.
One reason has made me reinstall the default OS and use the KDE advanced desktop: speed.
A boot under OpenSuSE was taking nearly 2 minutes. I've just timed a boot and it's taking only 28 seconds to get to the point where the OS has finished loading and is offering me a dialogue asking me how I want to open the 4GB SD card I have in at the moment. That kind of speed difference seems to be consistent across all the applications starting up. I don't know anywhere near enough about Linux to be able to say why that might be, but it is enough to make the eeePC easy to use for the 1 thing I want to look up quickly, rather than waiting an age for it to boot. If I wanted to wait, I'd go back to MS Windows!
My one issue exists because I installed OpenSuSE. The 20GB solid state disk appears to be made up of a 4GB onboard unit supported by a 16GB secondary disk. I have no issue about the fact that the two are separate. My problem is that the recovery disk provided with the eeePC doesn't reconfigure this disk for you. As it stands, I have only the 4GB internal drive configured. The solution to this problem is trickier than I expected - I have created a partition, used fstab to say what it is and can now use mount /dev/sdb1 to mount it. But these doesn't seem to be any way to get it to automount. Even setting two linux gurus that I know onto the problem hasn't yielded a solution. I'll post one when / if I find one.
The eeePC offers a good enough screen and enough performance that I can do the image, layout and web based work I always have done. The screen is a little small but at 1024x600 pixels is just large enough to be usable. Gimp and Scribus work fine (if a little cramped). Even the Second Life client runs fast enough to be usable when all the settings are turned down. Thunderbird and Skype are already installed and Flock works well and is easy to install.
Oh, and battery life is over 2 and a half hours. Long enough, and longer using less taxing applications.
My next task is to find out if my HP can be repaired and how much / how long that will take. In the mean-time, I'm happy and productive with my eeePC.
Alan
So that's why I chose my HP Pavillion DV2000. 14.1 inch, 3 hours battery, powerful enough, looked nice. Two years happy computing later and the hard drive finally dies, which was only to be expected really as I commute for between 3 and 4 hours every day, which means may laptop gets thoroughly shaken about.
New hard drive, take the plunge with Linux (Ubunbtu then OpenSuSE) and all is good. Then last Thursday I turn my trusty laptop on to the sound of random crackles from the speakers and nothing else, no bios messages, nothing. OK. Time to do two things: replace my laptop with something temporary, repair my old laptop.
A number of people I know have bought (and are universally happy with) eeePC 701s. Given my recent switch away from MS Windows and onto Linux the idea of a small Linux based laptop is very attractive. The screen was a bit of a sticking point though. A little small. But not on the 900 series. The other fact that sold me on this was the solid state disk - 20GB, no moving parts (so less prone to breaking).
One shopping trip later, and for the quite reasonable price of £329 I'm the owner of an EeePC 900, Linux, 20GB.
The initial OS runs in tabbed 'wizard' mode. I have to say this was a little uncomfortable as it makes the eeePC as easy to use and accessible as mobile phone, but makes it hard to get beyond the default set of applications. A quick search of web gives a number of pages that provide access to relatively (assuming you know a little about Linux) easy methods for switching to a standard KDE window manager referred to as 'advanced desktop'.
One thing that I did try was installing an alternative Linux distribution. Installing OpenSuSE 10.3 went rather easily, and worked exactly as you would expect it to. Drivers were easily available for just about everything, and the experience and Gnome (my preference over KDE) worked fine.
One reason has made me reinstall the default OS and use the KDE advanced desktop: speed.
A boot under OpenSuSE was taking nearly 2 minutes. I've just timed a boot and it's taking only 28 seconds to get to the point where the OS has finished loading and is offering me a dialogue asking me how I want to open the 4GB SD card I have in at the moment. That kind of speed difference seems to be consistent across all the applications starting up. I don't know anywhere near enough about Linux to be able to say why that might be, but it is enough to make the eeePC easy to use for the 1 thing I want to look up quickly, rather than waiting an age for it to boot. If I wanted to wait, I'd go back to MS Windows!
My one issue exists because I installed OpenSuSE. The 20GB solid state disk appears to be made up of a 4GB onboard unit supported by a 16GB secondary disk. I have no issue about the fact that the two are separate. My problem is that the recovery disk provided with the eeePC doesn't reconfigure this disk for you. As it stands, I have only the 4GB internal drive configured. The solution to this problem is trickier than I expected - I have created a partition, used fstab to say what it is and can now use mount /dev/sdb1 to mount it. But these doesn't seem to be any way to get it to automount. Even setting two linux gurus that I know onto the problem hasn't yielded a solution. I'll post one when / if I find one.
The eeePC offers a good enough screen and enough performance that I can do the image, layout and web based work I always have done. The screen is a little small but at 1024x600 pixels is just large enough to be usable. Gimp and Scribus work fine (if a little cramped). Even the Second Life client runs fast enough to be usable when all the settings are turned down. Thunderbird and Skype are already installed and Flock works well and is easy to install.
Oh, and battery life is over 2 and a half hours. Long enough, and longer using less taxing applications.
My next task is to find out if my HP can be repaired and how much / how long that will take. In the mean-time, I'm happy and productive with my eeePC.
Alan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
