No half measures

As you may be aware, I've done a lot of tinkering with various distributions of Linux on my Eee 901 netbook over the past few months (mainly due to the evangelism of my mate Rich). I've tried Mandriva, Eeebuntu, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint and Fedora - all with varying degrees of success.

I've either been running these distros as live versions from a USB stick, or (if they work reasonably well) installing them to the Eee's SD card. This has had the benefit of leaving the default Windows XP installation untouched, allowing me to choose which OS to boot on startup. The downside has been that trying to run an OS from an SD card hasn't exactly provided the smoothest or quickest experience.

So, to that end, I decided the other day to go the whole hog and remove XP and install Ubuntu (my preferred flavour) onto the main solid-state drive of the Eee. I'm pleased to report that this was a very simple process - I just went with all the default options, rather than having to mess about with partitions and boot loaders and the like.

As I've previously reported, Ubuntu 9.04 works with all the Eee hardware - wifi, audio, bluetooth, webcam etc - out of the box so there were no issues with any of that.

Pleasingly, running Ubuntu as the main OS from the SSD has provided an exceptionally quick user interface. Power on to login screen takes just 19 seconds, and from logging in to fully running desktop with active wifi connection takes just another 15 seconds after that. Compared to the minute and a half that XP was taking to perform the same actions, that's quite an achievement. Of course, the real benefit of Linux ownership comes from the refreshingly bloat-free nature of the OS - no extraneous rubbish running in the background to slow everything down, no need for virus checkers, no "helper" applications annoying you in the system tray.

And of course, like Ubuntu itself, all the  installed software is free and open source - OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP - and with a quick trip to the Skype homepage that's been painlessly installed too.

All in all, a very successful and simple transition.

I'm not even remotely tempted to go back to XP after seeing how nicely Ubuntu works on the Eee - it's an ideal OS for a netbook. I may start tinkering again when Moblin gets properly established though!

Ubuntu 9.04 on the Eee PC 901 - U, K or X?

So you'll no doubt be aware that a while back I wrestled with trying to get a fully-functional version of Ubuntu onto my Asus EeePC 901, and had to jump through some fairly complicated hoops to get it all working. Then Canonical went and released their beta version of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope and all my problems were solved - all the Eee hardware working out of the box. Superb.

So, with the arrival of the official release of 9.04 Jaunty, I decided I'd try out the three main distros of Ubuntu - plain GNOME-based Ubuntu, KDE-based Kubuntu and the stripped down XFCE-based Xubuntu. In addition, I also thought I'd give the official Netbook Remix of Ubuntu a spin as well, just for the sake of completeness. For all four distros, I downloaded the ISO, and set up a 2GB USB flash drive using Unetbootin to run a live version, and then used this to install to an 8GB SD card in the Eee 901's card slot.

I have to say, I'm surprised by the performance differences between these four versions - because they are quite marked. Good old vanilla Ubuntu runs just fine and dandy. The only thing wrong as far as I can tell is that it's a bit sluggish running from SD, but I guess that's to be expected. The package is well-rounded and it includes most things that you'd need, apart from maybe Skype (but that's a doddle to install).

I tested the Netbook Remix (NBR) version next. Now undoubtedly this cosmetic tweak makes things a bit easier to navigate on the small 9-inch screen of the Eee, but I really noticed a performance hit. It showed a remarkable amount of slowdown over ordinary Ubuntu, and changing between the tabs was quite painful - about a second between clicking and it actually changing. The general sluggishness meant that I couldn't put up with it, so it had to go.

Then I tried Kubuntu, with it's all-singing-all-dancing KDE 4 interface that I've been hearing so many good things about. Now I'm sure if I was installing it on a fully-fledged desktop machine it'd fly along, but running off the SD card was - again - just too slow to be usable. In addition, the interface isn't at all suitable for the tiny Eee screen, as the top and bottom of each window were not visible. Also, no Firefox as standard is a black mark against it as far as I'm concerned.

So onto Xubuntu. The whole idea of the XCFE interface is that it's designed for lower-spec machines. As such, on the Eee it positively flies along! Admittedly it's not quite the slick, full package that ordinary Ubuntu is, but it still has everything I need, particularly on a netbook which really only uses Firefox in anger. I quick trip onto the interweb to install Skype and I'm as happy as Larry. I reckon this will be the distro that's staying on my Eee, at least until I feel the urge to start tinkering again.

Just to clarify - my comments above are my personal experiences of running these distros from an SD card on an Eee PC. This is NOT the ideal means of running these distributions, and if you're up for it you'd be far better installing to the primary SSD instead, and you'd be even better off installing to a proper desktop machine. However, for my purposes, Xubuntu is the one for me.

Cancel my last - just do it the jaunty way

Feel free to ignore everything I've written up to now about installing Linux on the EeePC. It has become officially irrelevant.

If you want a fully working install of Ubuntu without all the buggering about, then just get yourself the beta version of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. It's had some significant tweakery since 8.10 Intrepid and now handles all the Eee hardware straight OOTB. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because the latest Mandriva 2009 can do it so Ubuntu would be lagging behind if they didn't implement it as well.

Not only that, it runs beautifully on my desktop machine too, which Intrepid Ibex point blank refused to do.

So there you have it - all your Ubuntu issues sorted. Should have tried it sooner.

It's still a beta - but it seems pretty stable to me. If you're concerned about running a beta, then the official release is on 23rd April, so not long to wait.