Gav's World

Eee 901 Software Mods (Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope)

This release is far friendlier to the humble Eee PC than any previous ones - out of the box, WiFi now works, along with the hotkeys for screen brightness & volume. I've not Tried the VGA port yet for external display though.

Merge the 2 default partitions (sda1 & sda2)

This can be either done from the Ubuntu CD once it has booted up as a "live" CD and launching gparted, or using a gparted live CD:

• Remove all other media (SD cards / USB drives) just in case.
• Burn a gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) CD or USB drive and boot with it.
• Delete partition sda2.
• Extend partition sda1 into the free space.
• Apply changes.

I'd keep the 3rd and 4th partitions just in case you want to update the BIOS with them, although there are other methods available.

Install Ubuntu 9.04 from CD or USB drive

Make sure that all on-board peripherals are turned on first : WiFi / Bluetooth / camera

I'd go with the following partition layout:

• /dev/sda1 on /
• /dev/sdb1 on /home
• /dev/sdb2 as swap (make it 2 times bigger than physical RAM)

If you wish to hibernate the Eee 901, then create a swap partition on the user drive. If you don't, then just use the whole drive as /home. It's quite a slow process as the user SSD is a lot slower than the primary SSD, but at least it gives you the option.

After installation, plug in an Ethernet cable or connecto to your WiFi and install all updates and reboot since there will be a new kernel installed.

Change the rootfs options

This will stop a lot of writes to the SSD with access time updates. See "Post Install."

There are also some more tweaks that can be done to optimise the SSD performance and longevity.

Install eee-control

This allows you to turn on/off the peripherals and set the CPU speed.

I'ts not currently available in the main feeds, so download the deb package from the creator Greg and take it from there.

Move Right Shift Key etc.

(* if you've physically shifted the keys)
This swaps the up/PgUp key with right shift and the down/PgDn with right/End key. However, best way is to put all of the "xmodmap" statements into /etc/rc.local.

Install all of the nice multimedia stuff and libdvdcss

Install the likes of mp3 codecs etc. Just select the right distribution.

Install Adobe Flash Player & more codecs

Now that the Medibuntu repository has been set up, it's easy to install other things: gstreamer good, bad and ugly codes plus a few others to get digital TV working.

Install Skype

This package is also in the Medibuntu repository and provides VOIP services (although it's not proper SIP protocol, but a proprietary one).

Set up Channels for TV

If you have a TV card and want to use "Media Player" (Totem) for viewing. I'm not going to go into the details for setting up your specific card.

• Download w_scan
• Compile w_scan
• run w_scan with:

Those options explained:

• -X : put the file into "xine" format
• -E0 : ignore all pay channels
• -R0 : ignore all radio channels

Then you simply fire up "Movie Player" and watch away!

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[ Page last updated Fri 6th Nov 2020 | viewed 1935 times ]