Ubuntu Eee Goes Gold 89
bjcarne writes in to commend Jon Ramvi and his team, who have delivered their first stable release of Ubuntu Eee, an Ubuntu version customized for the Asus Eee PC. "In December Ubuntu Eee started as a one man project, but [over] the last months several people have joined in on the development. We're trying to achieve something which [hasn't] been successful for any other Linux distribution yet: a OS targeting a single computer which includes the best applications available. This means people can buy this really cheap computer and easily get a great OS on it for free. Ubuntu Eee is just for the Asus Eee. Ubuntu Eee is smaller, faster and we're bringing people the cutting edge of technology (while being stable and free of course)."
Re:Ubuntu is bloated; what does Ubuntu EEE offerme (Score:5, Informative)
That said, I've got one sitting on my desk, and the default Xandros isn't bad; but it is markedly less "normal" than I had expected it to be.
Re:What manager? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Choises are always good.... (Score:5, Informative)
In all seriousness, is there a chance that there is an access point, router, or gateway somewhere that has inadvertently been activated as a DHCP server? Can you bring another laptop in to see if it behaves the same way?
Re:Ubuntu is bloated; what does Ubuntu EEE offerme (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What manager? (Score:4, Informative)
You've got to keep in mind, though, that the resolution of the screens are 800x480 for the 7 inchers and 1024x600 for the 9 inch model. At such a very low resolution it seems to run Compiz, GNOME, XFCE, and KDE without any major problems. There are plenty of videos on Youtube demonstrating as much.
Re:Choises are always good.... (Score:5, Informative)
You should have a second machine sniff packets in promiscuous mode while your EEE attaches to the network to figure out what is going on.
Re:What manager? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Two questions (Score:3, Informative)
As for KDE, well you could just apt-get install it...
Re:Choises are always good.... (Score:3, Informative)
Ubuntu on my HP laptop bogs down too much when running indexing programs. It is naturally a very heavy distribution, so I am sceptical about the eee specific build.
Re:OLPC? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the XO-1 is already [laptop.org] capable [visser.name] of running Ubuntu with a GNOME desktop.
Next up, you could load it up with, say, Ubuntu Netbook Remix [launchpad.net] (I'm guessing that would be a bit choppy as the XO-1 doesn't have OpenGL acceleration), or Ubuntu Mobile Edition [eclecti.cc], and you have a nice mini interface that's perfect for its small screen.
Re:Ubuntu is bloated; what does Ubuntu EEE offerme (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why would you replace Xandros with Ubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
1) Ubuntu will have much more software, and it will be much newer. With Xandros, you may find yourself looking for 'backports' and other specially-packaged versions of software that is otherwise commonly available under Debian and Ubuntu.
2) Xandros' integration with Samba really works, whereas the K/Ubuntu integration has never worked for me. I later learned that NFS is far better/easier for sharing so this became irrelevant.
3) Ubuntu has more drivers owing to the newer kernel and other packages, but the hardware that Xandros does support tends to get configured somewhat better. Advantage here goes to Ubuntu because now that the distro is tailored for the Eee PC in particular: USB add-ons will be better suported than with the pre-installed OS.
4) Xandros updates the OS extremely infrequently. You could wait a year or more for ANY security updates to come through.
5) Xandros' File Manager app is very nice but got increasingly flaky and slow over the years.
6) Xandros Inc. said they were switching their focus to servers a couple years ago.
The final straw for me which insured I'll never go back to Xandros is that they signed a Novell-like dreaded deal with Microsoft. Xandros thinks that by using Linux (not just their distro) you are using Microsoft's 'intellectual property'. Worse still, when GPL3 came out it was specifically worded to grandfather-in only the Novell deal, sticking it to the little "me-too" distros that sold out (i.e. Xandros and one or two others): Xandros will be on increasingly shaky licensing ground as the years progress.
Personally I would avoid lining the pockets of a company like Xandros or Novell by purchasing their systems either bundled or directly.
Re:Choises are always good.... (Score:1, Informative)
Basically it is able to negotiate ip address local to the lan segment (mdns), resolve hostnames and lookup up local services (dns-sd).
The service responsible for this is called Avahi.
Debian runs fine on eeePC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ubuntu is bloated; what does Ubuntu EEE offerme (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What manager? (Score:3, Informative)
Gnome is modified. Check out MArk Shuttleworth's blog for some screenshots. They made the window title appear in the top bar for instance, so they understand the spacing issue and are trying to maximize it.