Kubuntu 8.10 on the ASUS EeePC 901

So, ASUS announced that 2009 would bring an end to the Linux based EeePC variants, and all those versions with screens smaller than 10 inches. Well, I love my 701, and have used it a huge amount in the year that I've had it, but I did want the advantage of a larger screen, a bit more processing power and mainly more disk space. So I've got a 901 (in black of course) and within a few minutes realised how user friendly Ubuntu/Kubuntu are compared with the Xandros installed by default.

So, a Kubuntu install was required, mainly I just did a default install to start with, a few things to note though:

1. You need to select "Install Kubuntu" not the live version because starting the full desktop mounts the swap partition preventing you from using the 4GB drive (at least I assume this is what happened, I couldn't use the 4GB drive when I tried installing from the live environment.)

2. The 901 has 2 drives. One is the system drive (4GB on all versions, and rumoured to be faster) and the home/documents drive (16GB on the Linux 20GB version and 8GB on the Windows variant). So you need to allocate partitions across both to effectively use the space.

I have found on my 701 that 4GB for the system is a little small (I've been keeping all my data on the SD card so all the 4GB was system files). So, on the new system I allocated a 1GB swap partition, a 3GB root partition and a 4GB partition on the second drive mapped to /usr which I found on my old one occupied approximately half of the space. The rest of the large drive (12GB in my case) has been allocated as /home.

Once installed I was pleased to find that the wired network is working correctly, two finger scrolling, sound etc. were all working. Wireless was not, as expected, and after a little investigation I found the http://www.array.org/ubuntu [dead link] eeepc kernel was probably the way to go. Follow their excellent instructions and you should have wi-fi working in no time. Just note that the way things stand right now if you don't do that before doing the updates, and remove the generic kernel, then when you update it will default back to the generic kernel without wireless drivers.

Other than that I uninstalled the gtk-qt engine and selected Clearlooks manually in the .gtkrc-2.0-kde4 file, and set the fonts to force to 96dpi.

Section:

Computing

Tags:

linux,

eeepc,

Ubuntu,

intrepid,

901

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