Using Easy Peasy Linux on my Netbook.
Jan 15
With a few minutes to spare before I have to be on my first appointment for the day, its perfect timing to test my latest toy. Of course i’ve had my Acer Aspire one for quite a while, but yesterday I blew away the old Ubuntu 8.04 / XP dual boot situation on the machine, and went for a fresh install. Googling around a little bit had brought be well written out answers of what one needed to do to get Ubuntu Intrepid working without a glitch on the Acer Aspire One. Most of the things would work out of the box while others needed extra tinkering (read Copy-pasting from the howto into the command line and praying one knew what one was doing.) But being in an exceptionally lazy mood I thought I was not going to go down that path tonight. Too much of my time is spent reinstalling operating systems or tinkering with Linux to get it “working right” and for once, I was looking for an “out of the box fix”
This fix came in the form if “Easy Peasy” Linux, (formally called EEEbuntu but re branded for issues of … well legal stuff). Easy peasy linux said to offer the ability to install a pre-packed version of Ubuntu 8.10, supporting the major netbooks out there. Who was I to pass up on the offer of testing a new OS with the convenience of being able to have once netbook installed out-of-the-box. So I downloaded the ISO from their website and went looking for the application ‘unetbootin’ enabling you to take an ISO, write it to a usb stick and boot it from there. Just a little tinkering (i had to make the script “executable” to get it to work) and before I knew it I was running the whole shebang of my big-ass memory stick. (for you Windows bunnies out there : there is also a Unetbootin application for windows) It does make me wonder if I could make a bootable version of an XP install Cd or another version of Linux using this app. Hmm.. must test this.
Back to business. Easy Peasy boots up as a live cd, offering you the full netbook shwagg ( With the simple “Optimus” launcher etc) and starts the installer automatically. ” Next Next Next ” is the answer to most of the questions (unless you have forgotten in what country you live, in that case you need to get out more). Just the question of partitioning had me intervene with the presented option. Since i’m running it on an SSD drive and I was told extensive swapping is bad for the soul (erm .. Drive that is) I disabled the swap partition , hoping that the 1.5 gig of system ram would do it for me.
After the installation EVERYTHING worked ! Wireless, sound , network, even the flash plug-ins and restricted extra’s came out of the box. Sure I had some tweaking to do (disabling the “auto setup” from the sessions menu and getting rid of the “optimus menu” cause I don’t like it) but for the rest of the matter : this was a well written distro. Albeit alittle slow on the wifi side (must be the driver) but for the rest ? love it !
So this is for me how Ubuntu should be packaged. Yes you purists, its not a “pure Ubuntu” Some of you Stallmann fans might be shouting “foul and non free is your soul you sinner” but since my stuff worked right out of the box you can go stuff yourselves. While you compile your puritan ways from source, I am done for the day and am of to go and make passionate love with a real girl up in my bedroom. Eat that nerds.
So : Easy Peasy ? Supah Simple ! Mucho Bueno ! Get it HERE.
