Full Circle Magazine FR

Install 12.10 Onto An EEE PC As some may remember, the Asus eeePC model 701 was one of the forerunners of the netbook movement. However, it was not known for speed even when it came out in 2007: a Celeron 900 MHz processor (under-clocked down to 600 MHz), 512 MB or 1 GB RAM, and 4 GB internal flash-based hard drive were by no means impressive specifications. The 7” screen was tiny for a laptop by any standard, and even more so nowadays when many tablets offer more screen real estate. Battery life, at about 2 hours when new, could also be an issue. Even so, it seems a shame to throw away such a nice piece of kit, especially when it is physically tougher than many other netbooks thanks to a hard plastic outer shell and a hard drive with no moving parts. But, can it use a recent version of our favorite operating system at credible speed? The short answer is a definite “yes!” - though installing it does need some (light) tweaking. For the longer answer, read on. Since the eeePC has no optical drive, we need to use either a USB pendrive or an external CD unit to install Ubuntu, the pendrive being the better option for speed. The Escape key gives us access to the boot media menu, where most external USB units are readily recognized by the computer's BIOS. The Ubuntu installer boots up nicely, either in live CD mode or just the installer itself. The live CD mode is actually best for our use, since we will need access to a terminal at some point.

Installer la 12.10 sur un EEE PC

Comme certains s'en souviennent peut-être, le modèle eeePC 701 d'Asus

First hurdle: the 4 GB hard disk is small! The first difficulty we will encounter is the installer complaining about the hard drive: it thinks 4 GB is just too small, and will not continue. Naturally, this is not at all true since a standard install of the Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit version takes up just about 2.5 GB. So it does fit, though not much space will be left for user documents. This quirk of the installer can easily be circumvented: just plug in an external hard disk during installation, with enough free space on it to satisfy the installer. It does not seem to notice that Ubuntu is being installed on the internal 4 GB unit, while the free space is actually on another drive. In fact, if our pendrive is large enough, we shall not even need the external hard drive to convince the installer that enough free space is available. Please do take note of drive identifications, though, if you try this. The internal 4 GB hard drive should be /dev/sda, while the pendrive or CD you are booting from is /dev/sdb, and a further external hard drive (if present) would be /dev/sdc. Ensure yourself you are installing to /dev/sda, and the bootloader is also placed on that same drive. The external drive can be removed along with the pendrive when installation is complete.

Setting up some swap While I am lucky enough to own the 1 GB RAM version, other owners may be stuck with 512MB. This is not enough to run the system installer, so a bit of swap space comes in handy. We will set it up right away when the Live CD environment starts up, before firing up the installer. First of all, we can use either a terminal or the gnome-disks graphical command to partition /dev/sda. Reserving about 3.5 GB for /dev/sda1 (partition type 0x83, Linux) and the remaining 320 MB for /dev/sda2 (partition type 0x82, Linux swap) seems a reasonable choice. And yes, 4 GB is a merely theoretical capacity that is considerably reduced in practice. Once /dev/sda is partitioned, we can start up swap inside a terminal using the following commands: sudo mkswap /dev/sda2 sudo swapon /dev/sda2 Now, remaining in terminal-mode, we can issue the command: free -m which shows us both the amount of physical RAM (the line starting with “Mem:”), and the amount of virtual memory (starting with “Swap:”). If swap is correctly activated, this last line should indicate about 314 MB is available. We can now proceed to start up the installer.

Small screen needs more real estate Once we start the installation process, we will notice straight away that the buttons at the bottom of the installer window are not in view. The eeePC's screen is simply too small, at 800×480 pixels. In most steps, this is not a problem, simply hitting Enter is enough to continue to the next stage. However, for some screens, we may need to actually see those elusive buttons. So, when we need to move the installer window to a different position on screen, we can hold down the Alt key while we use the mouse to drag the window, holding it by any point - not just the window bar at the top. Another possibility would be to plug in an external monitor just for installation, though things can get a bit awkward if you are not used to handling multihead setups. 800×480 pixels is what we will have during normal use, so we might as well get used to it, and moving windows around.

What about usability? Once the installer finishes up, we reboot (removing the pendrive and eventual external hard drive as we go), and start up afresh. Boot-up times could have been considerably reduced if the constructor had used a different internal hard drive and connection. The particular flash controller chip included in the eeePC (a Siliconmotion SM223AC) is connected to the motherboard's parallel ATA interface, and configured with a rather slow UDMA/66 connection. According to the manufacturer, this flash-based hard drive sustains 50 to 55 MB/s read speed - rather less than the 100 MB/s (laptop) or 140 MB/s (desktop) typical of modern platter hard disks, or the more than 300 MB/s read speed sustained by most recent solid state drives. So, all things being considered, the boot-up procedure is not too lengthy under Ubuntu 12.10 with a 65s wait until a usable desktop is ready. Also on the bright side, graphics performance proves more than satisfactory. The integrated Intel 915 controller is very well supported under Linux, and the screen itself has a nice, crisp image. The matte screen finish does no harm, either. In any case, Unity's visual effects (dash lenses, changing workspaces …) all work quite well, though, as could be expected, a tad more slowly than on a desktop with a dedicated graphics card. As before, real estate is lacking on the 7” screen and some dash elements may not be visible. Luckily, the more important bits are at the top left and readily accessible, so kudos to the Unity team for this one.

Now, onwards to the less rosy side of things. The weak CPU can be a bit of a bother. Some latency between clicking on an icon and it actually doing something is the norm, especially when the computer is rather loaded with various applications all running at the same time. In such situations, you should also be prepared to hear a continuous whine coming from the (small) internal fan. This being said, most light browsing or presentation work can be done with zero problems - and stability is as good as could be expected from our favorite distribution. Wireless connectivity is not the eeePC's most outstanding quality, to say the least. Short antennae in a convoluted position within the case probably don't help in acquiring a strong signal, so reception may at times be a matter of holding up the unit at arms length and assuming interesting positions while hunting for the best reception - which is invariably slow and choppy. However, if you are in the immediate vicinity of an access point, you can hope to browse the web with some fluidity. The F11 key may be useful to expand the browser window to occupy the whole screen. If wireless is a must for you, you may be more comfortable using an external (USB) wireless dongle. In that case, it is best to avoid loading the internal Atheros card's drivers at boot, to make sure Network Manager does not get confused about which card to use. To do so, acting as root or using the sudo command, add a file called /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-custom.conf to your configuration, with the following content: blacklist ath blacklist ath5k You will then need to reboot. This file can always be removed if or when you should wish to re-enable internal WiFi.

All in all, using this netbook as a production machine is not a complete fail. All hardware is recognized and correctly configured straight from the gate, no need to fiddle around with drivers. The screen is easier on the eyes than could be expected from its size, and the machine is generally responsive enough to actually do some work on it. Even typing at some length - the kind of use I tend to avoid on a touchscreen tablet of the same size - is possible, though the keys are a shade small for comfort. What is impressive is the fact that a five-year-old netbook, designed with all the compromises of speed and other characteristics that were both acceptable and necessary at that time, is still very much capable of running Ubuntu's latest and greatest. I think this speaks volumes both about the machine itself, and about the operating system. And, if all this means one less computer ends up in a landfill before its time is truly over, then so much the better. Alan teaches computer science at Escola Andorrana de Batxillerat (high-school). He has given GNU/Linux courses at the University of Andorra and currently teaches GNU/Linux systems administration at the Open University of Catalunya (UOC).