I recently wrote about my frustrations with the 901 model of the Asus eee PC. I think the problems are specific to this and perhaps similar models and will hopefully be fixed before too long. However, I have no idea if Asus is even aware of the problems as calls to tech support are less than informative. I like the simple Xandros OS and would gladly use it if it wasn’t a bit borked.
My solution, at least for now, is to load Ubuntu, and I have done so. Here is a not-so-brief rundown of what I did, what issues still exist, and my general impressions of Ubuntu on a device like this.
Installing Ubuntu:
This is pretty straightforward. Ubuntu has always been quite easy to install. I used UNetbootin to put the live CD on a flash drive. Press escape at boot and select the flash drive. Install is just like any other Ubuntu install.
I did manually partition the system. I used the entire 4GB SSD for the root operating system and formatted it to ext3 file system. 15GB of the remaining 16GB SSD was formatted as ext2 for /home. I did this because I have read there may be some concern over the amount of drive access of a journaling file system and how that might affect the life of the cheaper storage SSD. The final 1GB was used as swap. I put the swap on the 16GB drive as I thought I might want the full 4GB on the main OS drive for applications. Current base install plus custom kernel and a few codes leaves 1.3 GB free on the 4GB drive.
Running updates (need to fix networking first) after the install was rather slow. Downloading the 100+ update was about as fast as on my desktop but the installation of the updates took well over 30min. That may reflect the slower processor or the slower SSD or a bit of both.
Post Install:
Quite a few things are broken with Ubuntu on the 901, and a bit of work is needed to fix them. I have not addressed them all them all yet, but my eee 901 with Ubuntu is currently working fine. The big problem with Ubuntu at the moment is that at install BOTH wired and wireless networking don’t work, but the fix is surprisingly easy. Download the custom kernel from http://array.org/ubuntu/setup901.html and save it to a flash drive. Once you have installed and rebooted just install the new kernel as described on the Array site, reboot and networking now works just fine.
An external USB drive won’t mount unless you do so manually or remove or comment out the cdrom line from /etc/fstab as it seems to cause a conflict. Once done external drives work fine.
Playing videos and mp3 presents the same issues it does with any Ubuntu install. You just need to install the appropriate codecs. Often you will be prompted to search for appropriate codecs as I was when I tried to play mp4 videos. I am now able to watch videos and play mp3 files.
Sound works just fine as does the headphone jack. I haven’t tried the mic but this fix suggests it will need tweaking. The webcam works after re-enabling it in the bios. For some reason it gets disabled.
Copying over USB is very slow but this could be more a hardware issue with respect to the SSD used. For example, it took over 30min to copy 3GB of music. Transfer speeds started at 20MB/sec and steadily dropped to about 1.5MB/sec over the course of the transfer.
One plus is that I haven’t noticed any real heat issues. My experience with Ubuntu on laptops is that they tend to get a bit hotter than what is perhaps normal. On the eee the temps seem to stay quite low. After an hour of mild to moderate use the bottom is not all that warm and the fan only seems to kick on when run CPU intensive apps and even then it’s not that warm or loud. Watching videos does seem to use a lot of juice but I suppose that is to be expected. I have not watched an entire movie so I’m not sure how hot it could get.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix:
Despite its flaws, I really liked the Xandros tabbed interface. It made a lot of sense on a device like this. The Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a good attempt at a similar UI. While not yet finished, it is not too hard to install. It does have some quirks but nothing I can’t live with.
To install it, see https://edge.launchpad.net/netbook-remix. The instructions don’t explicitly say so but you will need to do the following after adding the netbook repository
There is a warning about installing ume-config-netbook if you don’t have a dimondville processor. I believe the Atom CPU in the eee 901 is dimondville so I installed it as well. Not sure what it does but it didn’t seem to cause anything to break.
I deleted the bottom panel and set the top one to auto-hide. I also didn’t activate the maximus app. This makes all apps auto maximize and also seems to remove the title bar from windows. I didn’t like that as it looked odd and didn’t allow me to minimize or maximize windows. Instead, I used auto-hide on the top panel and can min or max windows as I see fit. Not all windows look good maximized so this works better in my opinion.
What’s Working and What Isn’t:
While I haven’t tested everything, here is a list of things that seem to be working fine and those that are not or that I haven’t checked.
One odd thing I noted about sleep is that the load seemed really high when waking. Right after waking I opened a terminal and checked uptime. It reported
which is odd because 6 of the 10 hours were in sleep and I’ve never seen a load of 9. On a second try a bit latter the load was 11. Perhaps it’s just the waking action but even the 15 min average is high for sleep. Shouldn’t the CPU be basically off during sleep? I’m not sure if that hints at a problem or just a quirk.
Overall Impressions:
While I’ve only been using Ubuntu and the netbook remix for a couple days, I have to say I like it better than the Xandros OS. Assuming everything can be got to work in the near future, I would think Ubuntu with or without the netbook remix would be a good alternaive to Xandros. Given the popularity of Ubuntu this would seem a wise move on the part of Asus to increase sales. They would also benefit from all the hard work of the large Ubuntu community - who, incedentally, seem to have done most of the work for them already.
For more info on installing Ubuntu on the eee pc see http://ubuntu-eee.com/. I did not install this version of Ubuntu so I’m not sure what is different compared to generic Ubuntu but the site contains a lot of useful information.
Screenshots:
Here are a few obligitory desktop shots.
Tags: Asus eee, installing, ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Xandros
I had Ubuntu running great on the older 701 model… sadly the CPU went on that the other day. I am thinking about getting the newer model, and I defintaly will be putting Ubuntu straight back onto it 
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