Ubuntu 8.04 on the Asus Eee PC 701
A few months ago, I bought myself an Asus Eee PC 701 4G. (The new Eee PC 900 is out now.) The small laptop has a 4GB solid-state drive (SSD, no hard drive), 512MB of RAM, a small 800x480 LCD screen, a webcam, and a few other things. The operating system installed is Xandros Linux, although it’s possible to install any distribution of Linux and even Windows XP.
The drive has two partitions by default, one with the system files and the other with your personal files. They are both mounted as one file system using unionfs, with the changes of the later overwriting the former. The advantage is if you mess up your OS and want to reset it back to factory defaults, you only need to restart the laptop, hold F9 for the GRUB boot list, and select “Restore,” which will basically wipe your user partition. This will make your laptop good as new again.
However, I got a bit tired of Xandros. I’ve always been a fan of Ubuntu and Fedora and I wanted one of them to be on my laptop instead. Thankfully, installing Ubuntu 8.04 was really easy thanks to the Ubuntu Eee distro, available at ubuntu-eee.com.
I had a 1GB USB memory stick laying around, which was perfect for the installation of Ubuntu Eee. I couldn’t get the UNetbootin utility to work on my Xandros Linux as described, but using another computer, I was able to download the Ubuntu Eee ISO and transfer it to my memory stick, and make it bootable. All I had to do after was to restart my computer, hit Esc at the “Asus Eee” logo (before the OS loads), and select my memory stick at the boot menu. After starting with the live Ubuntu image on my memory stick, I was able to install it the complete version of Ubuntu Eee on my computer.
I wiped everything on the SSD, including the original system partition, but this is fine, since it can still be restored using a memory stick and the restore CD provided by Asus in the Eee PC box. Besides, with storage as small as 4GB, every byte counts!
Mostly everything is running smoothly with Ubuntu Eee PC. I like its functionality and the look. A few things have been adapted for the Eee PC, including the smaller font size. But, there are a few things not working perfectly after the installation, like some function keys. Fortunately, the Wiki of Ubuntu Eee provides useful documentation on how to fix some of those issues, including a problem which will not turn off your computer after you shut down from Ubuntu. There is also a Facebook page about Ubuntu Eee where you can share your experience with others, even the maintainer of the distribution. EeeUser.com also has a page about how to make Ubuntu 8.04 work perfectly on the Eee PC; it’s written for the original Ubuntu and not the slightly-modified version provided by Ubuntu Eee, but can still be useful.
A few more advantages Ubuntu Eee provides are features that were not supported by the default Xandros installation. I was able to use a VPN, set up a firewall, and upgrade my RAM to 2GB!
Generally, I love Ubuntu Eee and I should have installed it a long time ago. (Ubuntu Eee 8.04 has only been available since last month, however.)