Sean Reiser

I've spent some time today ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on an eeePC 901. All the information on how to do it is out there but scattered across a number of websites so I'm putting together a quick howto. The ubuntu site has a lot of information on 700 and 900 but not a lot on 901. As the hardware is mostly the same for the 1000, I suspect that a good deal of this will work on that unit, but I have no practical experience with the 1000. I am assuming that you have some linux knowledge and are relatively comfortable in a terminal.

There are a number of ways of doing this. The eee doesn't have a CD/DVD drive and I didn't have a USB drive handy so I did the install off a USB Stick.

Of course, you should read through this before doing anything, so you know what you're in for.

Standard disclaimer, You do this at your own risk. Where I have done my best to vet these directions, I am not responsible if they don't work, they ruin your eeePC, if they cause you to lose your girlfriend, or ED. Void where prohibited. Only 1 offer per family. May contain peanuts.

What you need

• A working Windows or Linux PC
• USB Thumbdrive, at least 1 GB formatted FAT16 (most are by default)
• Ubuntu 8.04 Hard Heron Live CD - desktop Edition, Standard Personal Computer
• unetbootin - grab the version appropriate version for the architecture of you PC above
• linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-21-eeepc and linux-image-2.6.24-21-eeepc - the current kernel image and modules optimized for the eeePC. Version linux-image-2.6.24-21 or greater is required for the 901 (previous versions don't support the wireless and NIC in the 901)

Installing the Ubuntu Image onto the USB Stick

1. Boot up the working PC
2. Download the files above.
3. Copy (for windows) or install the unetbootin package onto that machine
4. Run unetbootin
5. Select ubuntu, Disk Image is the Ubuntu Live CD you downloaded, and select USB Drive and the Stick as the type
6. Click OK and wait a few mins, while it works.
7. Create a directory on the USB called eeePCKernel and place the kernel image and modules into it (Not required but this saves going back and forth between the machines).

Booting Off the USB Stick

1. Insert the USB Stick into the eee
2. Power on the eee
3. Hit F2 to go into bios setup
4. Cursor over to boot
5. Select Hard Disk Drives
6. Select the USB stick for the First Drive (Mine was listed as a "Sony Storage", yours will be different based on manufacturer)
7. F10 and let it boot off the stick
8. Select "Install Ubuntu"

Installing Ubuntu

• I feel the ubuntu install is self-explanatory follow the standard prompts until you get to the prepare disk screen.

Partitioning The Disk (preparing disk space screen)

You need to make some decisions here. Some Information about the eee:

• /dev/sda is the 4GB onboard SSD
• /dev/sdb is the internal removable SSD (8GB windows, 16GB Linux)
• /dev/sdc is the SDHC/SD/MMC card if you have one in there
• /dev/sdd is your USB Stick (if the SD slot is empty it's /dev/sdc)

I manually partitioned the eee. Here is the partition scheme I used:

• /dev/sda1 is the entire 4GB section. I am mounting it as "/" and using ext2
• /dev/sdb1 is 15002 MB of sdb. I am mounting it as "/home" and using ext2
• /dev/sdb2 is the remaining 1135MB of sdb and is swap space. The swap space is large to allow for hibernation.

I am using ext2 to allow to lessen the number of writes to the SSD. Of course using a journaled files system is generally better,

Continuing the install

1. Again all self-explanatory (name, login name, password, machine name)
2. Sitback while the installer performs it's magic (it takes a few mins... play some portal)
3. Hit Restart Now and let it eee Reboot
4. For some reason the eee doesn't always reboot and just hangs, if so hold down the power button for fix sec to power down remove the USB and then power back on
5. Hit F2 from the BIOS screen
6. Boot -> Hard Disk Drives Make sure that the "SS-Asus" is the first drive
7. Login... you now have a mostly functioning linux system (networking, webcam, etc aren't up yet)

Some Fixes for the eee's disk usage

1. open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal)
2. edit fstab (sudo nano /etc/fstab)
3. Comment out the /dev/sdd1 line (place a # to the left of it)
4. change the relatime to noatime on / and /home
5. Add the following lines to fstab these will write log files in ram instead of to the SSD:
   tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults 0 0
   tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
   tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
   tmpfs /var/log/apt tmpfs defaults 0 0
6. Save fstab
7. edit sysctl.conf (sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf)
8. add the line vm.swappiness=0 this turns off the swapfile as VM (the swap region we created will only be use for hibernation)

Installing a kernel with modules of the eee hardware

1. Insert the USB Stick it should mount as /media/disk
2. In terminal cd /media/disk/eeePCKernel
3. in terminal sudo dpkg -i linux-image*.deb linux-ubuntu-modules*.deb
4. let the magic happen
5. reboot
6. at the grub screen hit escape and make sure your booting from the eeepc kernel
7. after you log in your wireless, ethernet an webcam should be working
8. get online however appropriate...
9. open a terminal
10. update the apt-get's sources list to include the repository with the eeepc kernel:
    wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array.list
    sudo mv -v array.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
11. Install array.org's key
    wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-apt-key.asc
    sudo apt-key add array-apt-key.asc
12. Update your apt cache
    sudo apt-get update
13. install any missing components of the kernel
    sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc linux-headers-eeepc

Updating Software

The disk is out of date so upgrade whatever you can...

1. sudo apt-get upgrade
2. reboot

You now should have Ubuntu up to date and running on the eee

Optional Interface Tweeks

• Setting smaller font sizes
  gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_font --type string "Sans 8"
  gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/document_font_name --type string "Sans 8"
  gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/font_name --type string "Sans 8"
  gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font --type string "Sans Bold 8"
  gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/monospace_font_name --type string "Monospace 8"
• All applications can go full-screen using F11
  gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/window_keybindings/toggle_fullscreen --type string "<Alt>F11"
• Smaller toolbars using icons only
  gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style --type string "icons"

Sources

• Ubuntu's Installation From USBStick
• Array.org's Install Guide
• Ubuntu EeePC's Comunity's Using & Tweaking Ubuntu - extra tips and optimizations