It has been some time since I have had a functioning ubuntu laptop. I had an EEE 701 with ubuntu on it but I traded up to the 1000. I duel booted Xandros and WinXp for awhile, but now at last I have ubuntu.
I loaded the latest Ibex release and the array.org kernal, then I installed the eee control center and added CPU frequency scaling to the toolbar. This was a painless install and now I am so freaking happy. The performance is awesome and I have not run into any problems yet, and I’m getting about 6hrs of battery life. Not bad considering the lack of undervolting. If you want the complete step by step just drop me a line, but I think the information you need can be found on the array.org site.
Michael has put up a post on how to dual boot your 901 or 1000, so as a form of quality control I followed his instructions. He has the 901 and I have the 1000, which has a larger hard drive, so I wanted to try something different. I wanted to put the Xandros system partition on the 8GB SSD which is /dev/sda, and a 20GB~ish Xandros user partition on the 30GB SSD as /dev/sdb1 and an 8GB WinXP partition on the end of the drive as /dev/sdb2. Well it didn’t work. I used Michael’s instructions and successfully backed up my WinXP partition, but no matter what I tried, I could not get it to boot from /dev/sdb2. I tried rebuilding and reinstalling GRUB. I tried Super Grub Disk. I tried installing Ubuntu, which allowed me to see the Windows partition, but it still would not boot. I might add that Xandros would boot the whole time. So my solution: I moved Windows to the second hard drive with its Master Boot Record and expanded it to take up the entire drive, so when it boots I hit escape and boot from the second drive. It works, WOOT. I then reinstalled Xandros using the disk that came with my computer. The only thing you have to do to keep it from overwriting the second drive is when it says /dev/sdb1 is currently formatted …blah..blah JUST SAY NO. It will finish setting up Xandros just on the first drive and you are good to go. If anyone knows how I can get XP to boot from /dev/sdb2 I would be very happy to hear from you.
Something I have been wanting recently in Ubuntu for laptops and specifically my Eee PC is the ability to control the CPU frequency easily. With Asus’s unwillingness to provide their “Super Hybrid Machine” for Ubuntu and the several times I can run applications that push the frequency to its limit, my Eee PC can get a little toasty in the lap. Many thanks go to The Ubuntu Labrador for the instructions.
The first step to be able to adjust the CPU frequency in Ubuntu is to add the “CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor” to a panel in Gnome. Do this by right-clicking in an open area on a panel and choosing “Add to panel.” Next, choose the monitor from the list. This will show the frequency your CPU is running at during that exact moment. If on an Eee PC with an Intel Atom processor, it will show 800MHz when idle and jump to 1.6GHz when running applications.
In order to enable manual control of the CPU frequency, a command must be executed to configure the applet. Start by opening a Terminal window and enter the following command:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets
This will show a text-based GUI informing that a component can be added to the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor with the SUID bit set. Select “OK” and it will prompt you to confirm that you want to install the component. Select “Yes” and you should be returned to the terminal. Close the terminal and yoou should now have control by left-clicking on the monitor in the panel. You automatically receive varying frequencies and pre-defined modes of frequency management!
With the release of the new Eee PCs has come larger solid state hard drives. Previously it was unfeasible to dual boot these UMPCs due to the lack of space, but now it is possible for the Eee 901 & 1000. Unfortunately, these models have two solid state disks (one small & fast for the system, one larger & slower for the user data), so the process can be confusing.
I prefer Linux over Windows XP, so I prefer to have Linux on the faster disk even though it is smaller. I have also found that I can install everything I need for the Linux system in 4GB if I keep my data elsewhere (the Eee 1000 has an 8GB system disk, so this is not an issue). With this in mind, I decided to use the 4G system disk, formatted as Ext2, for Ubuntu and the 12GB data disk, formatted as FAT32, for Windows XP and my user data storage. I am also using a 16GB SDHC card for additional storage.
Since Windows XP does not allow installation to a secondary hard disk without writing to the first disk, a few additional (sometimes lengthy) steps must be taken to optimize the dual boot setup. So, the general steps to dual boot the system are as follows:
- Format both drives
- Install Windows XP to the first drive
- Image a duplicate of the first drive to the second drive
- Expand the second drive partition to full potential
- Format first drive
- Install Linux to the first drive
Installing Windows
To start, insert the Windows XP installation disc into an external CD drive attached to the Eee PC. The Eee PC can boot from an external drive by pressing ESC during the ASUS splash screen. When the Windows XP installation menu has started, provided a backup of any user data is made, all partitions should be erased and a new partition on the first hard disk should be made. This partition should be the full size of the first disk. Instruct the installation of Windows XP onto that partition and indicate it should be formatted with FAT32 (quick). Follow the instructions to complete the installation of Windows XP.
Move Windows Installation
Once the Windows XP installation is complete, insert a copy of Ubuntu-Eee into the external CD drive. Boot from this disc into a live session to perform the move of Windows XP. For this process, I chose to use the “dd” command included in Linux for imaging the drive. There are several other methods available, but this is a simple method for the size of the drive. With a few commands, the master boot record (MBR) and the Windows XP partition can be duplicated to the second drive. This duplication method is an exact duplicate of the entire partition, so the process can take a long time (approximately 50 minutes).
Start by opening a terminal from “Applications > Accessories > Terminal.” The first command executed will take just a couple seconds to duplicate the MBR. Provided a backup of all essential data on the second disk has been made, issue this command in the terminal:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
This command will duplicate the MBR from the first disk to the second, which includes the Windows bootloader and the partition size. For safe measure, I formatted the partition created on the second disk with FAT32 using the Partition Editor in “System > Administration.” In order to format that partition, select “/dev/sdb” from the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner. Next, right-click on the partition labeled “/dev/sdb1″ and choose “Format to > fat32.”
Now, the long process of duplicating the partition with Windows must be completed. Issue the following command, in terminal, to do that:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1
Once that command has completed, it is a good idea to format the first disk to Ext2 in the Partition Editor. I have 2GB of RAM in my Eee 901, so I chose to not establish a swap partition.
Installing Ubuntu-Eee
To complete the dual boot configuration, start the install of Ubuntu-Eee. When prompted to partition the disks, I always choose to manually configure. From there, edit the partition on /dev/sda to use the Ext2 partition type, formatted, and mounted at “/” Next, I editted the partition on /dev/sdb to use the fat32 partition type, not formatted, and mounted at “/media/winxp”
Once the installation of Ubuntu has completed, upon restart, the option to boot into Windows XP or Ubuntu should be given by the GRUB menu. Congratulations, the Eee PC is now dual booted.
Currently, Ubuntu-Eee does not work 100% upon install on the Eee 901, but there are a few work-arounds. I have tested these and will be posting my findings on these soon.
My new Eee 1000 is here and it is sweet. The larger screen and keyboard are just what I needed, not to mention the 40gb SSD. So now that I have it Hmmm….. what to do? Eee Ubuntu does not have a compatible version yet but I want a full desktop. It seems that the 901s and the 1000 don’t have that as an option in the repositories, well I know that the two packages that were need to get full desktop on the 701 were ksmserver and kicker, so why not try them. so here are the steps I took to get it working, and it seems to be working fine. Disclaimer, try these are your own risk. I assume that these steps will work with the 901s also, but Michael is not interested in trying it on his.
How to set up Advanced Desktop or Full Desktop on an Eee PC 1000
- Press Ctrl & Alt and T at the same time to get to the terminal.
- Type sudo synaptic
- Click settings and then repositories
- Click add in the bottom left corner
- Put http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ in the URl:
- Put p701 in the distribution
- Put main etch in the sections
- You have just added the 701 repositories
- Now close the repository window and click reload in synaptic
- Next search for ksmserver and then kicker right click on each one and mark install
- Click apply at the top of the page and wait for synaptic to finish
- Close synaptic and the terminal window
- You should now have a full desktop option in you shutdown options.
I hope that you will find this useful, I will keep you up to date when we get eee-Ubuntu running on the 901 and the 1000
