Tweaking the eee pc 900

With it's size and weight, the Asus eee pc is a wonderful Linux mobile computer. Plus it's Xandros system runs KDE, which means I can transfer my kmail settings. You get OpenOffice too, and you can install Gimp and Kalzium (in an old version unfortunately).

History

My first eeePC was model 701 – the one with the 7" screen and a 4 GB SDD. It came with Xandros Linux and I followed the instructions on the Net to remove Unionfs, use the full 4G, and added an 8GB SD card mounted as /home/user/Documents.

Of course I enabled Full Desktop and installed a few more programs (like Gimp).

Later I decided not to buy the 900 and wait for the 901. So I purchased a 901 from a Ricardo seller, selling an « eeepc 901 with Swiss keyboard »... and XP (but anyway, retailers had told me Asus would not sell the Linux version in Switzerland).

Well, the seller was either dishonest (possible), or stupid (probable), because the machine I received was a 900, with a German keyboard (the man had certified it was a Swiss keyboard after seeing a picture!). When I complained, he said he agreed to give me my money back... in a few month, because he had used it to pay his debts... Well, anyway I kept the 900.

Setup

I did try Windows once, just to see – as expected, it behaved like... Windows, starting pop ups to tell me the anti-virus was to old, I was not connected, I did not have enough virtual memory – so I wiped it and only retained the license for use with some virtual appliance. I then transfered the Swiss keyboard from the 701 to the 900.

The next step was to install Linux. I have tried several distributions (SuSE, Mandriva 2008, eeebuntu, gOS,...) but none was satisfying, either not installing completely or missing drivers. So in the end I used a copy of the German Xandros (I think it was the one provided with the 900, or perhaps a 900a) – anyway it installs a 1.6 version.

Xandros/eeepc creates 4 partitions on the 4GB SDD, two ext2 and two small partitions probably used for booting, I did not check. I did not fiddle with the install this time, as there is a second 8GB SDD. It seems Xandros is installed on the second partition ReadOnly (probably for F9 recovery) and uses the first partition (sda1) as root. The second SDD is mounted « à la Windows » on /home/user/My Documents 2 – a stupid Windows lookalike that is poison for the linux command line, but we can get rid if it.

Full Desktop

The first thing after a quick function control was to enable full desktop. This is relatively easy:

• Open a terminal from easy mode (ctrl-alt-T)

• enable root user (sudo passwd root and enter password)

note: you can use sudo of course, I like to have the superuser enabled

Xandros includes nano as a very easy editor, so we use it to edit sources.list:

• nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the 701 repositories, as the required packages are not on the 900 repositories:

deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/1.6 common main

deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/1.6 p701 main

deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/ p701 main

deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main

Note: you should disable the “701” repositories after this section. You'll find lots of other repositories on th web. Remember most of them contain updates that my break your system, so do back up before trying (see at the end)

Then:

• apt-get install ksmserver kicker

Once these are installed, you get the choice to change for the full desktop on exit. f you want to enable Full Desktop on boot, you can set this up in « settings - personalization » (easy mode).

Configuration

Now that we have Full Desktop, there are still a few things to configure to have a comfortable desktop:

Stop the system from recreating a new desktop at every boot

This seems to be a bug in a Xandros script, not that easy to find where to correct because you have to edit the /usr/bin/startsimple.sh script (although you are setting up full desktop). Actually the info is on the wiki (http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:getkde) but the fact that it cures this behaviour is not mentioned. Open the script with an editor (as root) and modify the section as shown here:

**************************************************************

sudo /usr/bin/sessreg -a -l :0.0 -u /var/run/utmp user

#if [ -d /home/user/Desktop ]; then

# if [ -d /home/user/.Desktop.bak ]; then

# rm -rf /home/user/.Desktop.bak

# fi

# if [ -d /home/user/.Desktop ]; then

# mv /home/user/.Desktop /home/user/.Desktop.bak

# fi

# mv /home/user/Desktop /home/user/.Desktop

#fi

if [ -f /home/user/.easysession ]; then

sudo rm -f /home/user/.kdesession #added

# we are switching from full to easy mode

for i in /sys/block/s[dr]?/uevent ; do

sudo /bin/sh -c "echo add > $i"

done

fi

**************************************************************

You can of course delete the commented lines if you want. Make a backup copy of startsimple.sh before editing. The added line deletes .kdesession files that get created every time you change into easy mode otherwise.

Rearrange kicker (the panel) and change the big and ugly start button

Rearranging kicker is a personal matter of course. Anyway, I push the start button on the right (just after the virtual desktops chooser) because I only use it to run little used programs, and I delete th taskbar. I need all the space for my program icons, so this big blue ugly button hurts.

You can modify this by editing the pictures in /usr/share/kicker/pixmaps (keep a copy of the originals. In my experience, the new icons only showed when I directly edited the original png icons)

Change the windows decorations

This is also a matter of taste. I use the « laptop » scheme and put the close button on the left.

Get the system to run in English & Get the trashcan back

These two can be tweaked by editing /etc/kde3/kdeglobals

Trash can: look for the section starting with: #We use a non-standard trash path on ASUS, and modify the path to say: Trash = $Home/Desktop/Trash/

This will bring back the trash can on your desktop, with full functionality.

Then get down to the end of the file to find the line with « Language = ». Set it to en_US if you want English, or to whatever language you want (if it is supported). You can correct the decimal symbol and thousand separator as well if you want.

Correct the « my Documents 2 » path & Prevent the system from turning Wireless on at boot

These two are modified in the /usr/sbin/services.sh file.

If you go to the middle of the file, you find a section starting with: #always enable wireless (in case it was disabled)

It seems some people complained the wireless was not enabled at start (the Fn-F2 key combination actually turns wireless off in BIOS). Anyway, I don't connect all the time and the wireless drains the battery, so I want to start with wireless OFF. adding # in front of the next line does the trick (#echo > /proc/acpi/asus/wlan).

4 sections lower is a block starting with if. In it you find the ugly « my Documents 2 » path. Just correct it (simply transformed it to Documents ») and of course create a directory as mount point. Note that all files in Documents are made property of user an private group user at start (chown user:user). As my other users (on other computers) all belong to the group « users », I changed that too (chown user:users).

**************************************************************

# Always enable wireless (in case it was disabled)

#echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/wlan

(...)

if [ `cat /sys/block/sdb/device/vendor` = "ATA" ]; then

if [ ! -d "/home/user/Documents" ]; then

mkdir -p "/home/user/Documents"

fi

mount /dev/sdb1 "/home/user/Documents"

chown user:users "/home/user/Documents"

fi

**************************************************************

Set a boot password

This is done in the BIOS. The KDE password setting only works in easy mode.

Get back some Xandros Easy Mode utilities

One of the reasons I chose to keep Xandros is that they wrote nice tools to connect to the network. You can setup different networks complete with their DNS settings, like on MacOS, an create a new one every time you need to connect to a new network (wireless or wired). But these apps only show in Easy Mode, so you have to create links to them on the full desktop.

The two apps I missed are:

The Network Monitor: sudo -H /usr/bin/xandrosncs-proxy --launch-manage-tool

The wireless finder: create a link to an application with the command: sudo /usr/bin/xncswirelessapfinder

While you are at it, you can also get Konqueror back as a file manager, by creating two links:

konqueror –profile filemanagement Gives you konqui as user FM

Add selecting « Run as different user - root » and you have it as super user.

Now, if you want to use konqueror as you default file manager, edit the KDE menu to add konqueror as a program, then modify the mime type association in the KDE Control Center under File Association – inode – directory. Keep the Xandros File Manager, as it has some features Xandros disabled from Konqueror (extract from archive, for example)

As most readers love screen shots, here are a few more:

Back ups

With the system all setup on the 4GB SDD, the eee pc is easy to back up. You can use DD (I do it after loading pupeee from an external CD ROM or USb key). I prefer running Paragon's Partition Manager (also from CD). Unfortunately Paragon's Linux does not see the eee pc's eth0, but I can backup to an external HDD. Recovery is very fast, so you can feel free to try any dangerous updates if you feel like it.

Thanks

Most of the tweaks I used I found on the net, specialy on the wiki and it's forums. This is a must read. Some other things I found myself while tweaking other elements. Thanks go to the eee pc community and the Linux community for the help provided, and to Asus for making the eee pc. NO THANKS goes to Asus for marketing the eee pc with Windows only now that Microsoft got the Windows prices down for netbooks, or to Xandros for it's bad eee pc distribution support and lack of upgrading