As posted some time ago, this device works excellent with any derivative of ubuntu, so I expected a fast setup.

Well… following the good old How-To posted at www.pharscape.org did not disappoint me… quickly…

After the install procedure the S101 connected to the net but after some minutes unexpectedly the machine was hard locked… no mouse, keyboard, whatsoever…

Looked like a nasty module, which froze the tiny EeePC… and it was easy to guess that something was wrong with the hso.ko module, which supposed to make the Option icon225 modem talk to the internet…

After some google homework I found out the stock ubuntu 8.10 does already contain the hso.ko module (apparently version 1.2) and I installed v 1.6

Something was dead wrong…

I discovered, that for some funny reason the original hso.ko module was in

…/kernel/drivers/net/usb/

while the newly compiled and installed v 1.6 was put into:

…/kernel/drivers/net/wwan/

Interesting… and the v 1.2 loaded and locked down the machine… So I removed the old one and run depmod… started again the HSOconnect program and waited some minutes… No lockup…

The good: the new HSOconnect does include already Hungarian localization…

Since I got rid of my 1000H, and the only EeePC left in the house is my trustworthy 901, I “deeecided” to get the new EeePC S101, the black version. It came with Windows preinstalled, but MS did not survive long in my house. After unpacking, I connected my external DVD drive and soon enough ubuntu 8.10 installation screen  was welcoming me from the lcd.

I’ve read the Linux install experiences on the web, so I expected that it will be an cool ride, but man… this process was the easiest in my life… Simply plug and play… Really…

Everything works just out of the box. No need to install additional drivers, tweaking the software whatsoever.

Wifi, bluetooth, sleep and resume, wide screen… all work just fine… amazing… Seems that the good engineers at Asus put together a very Linux friendly hardware. Big thanks boys! Excellent work!

So not much really to talk about the ubuntu installation procedure…

Otherwise the little machine performs excellent. Around 4 hrs battery life (which is excellent taking into account that it has a quite tiny 4 cell battery).

All in all, it make a wonderful little ubuntu laptop… or netbook… or whatever it is called these days… Perhaps a little wonder is the best to describe..

Get one! Now!

I very seldom need to read CDs or DVDs with a laptop, and even more rarely to write any, but still it is a nice option to have it at hand.

after a careful search I came to the conclusion (recommended by a few people at eeeuser.com forums), that the LG GSAE50L is the one I am looking for.

apart from the fact that it is a damn sexy piece of device, it also has all the features I might ever need on the road.

- DVD+R/RW, DVD+R DL, DVD-R/RW, DVD-R DL, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW

- Double Layer DVD+R (8.5GB) and dual layer DVD-R (8.5GB) recording supported

- and… lightscribe…

well… lightscribe seems the most unnecessary feature for a CD/DVD burner, true, but it isn’t it nice to have a fancy picture on your freshly burnt DVD?

the device itself just work fine as expected under ubuntueee (EeePC) if you install the necessary packages for disk burning support.

sudo apt-get install brasero
sudo apt-get install gnomebaker

this will install two CD/DVD writer application, Brasero and GnomeBaker, whichever you prefer.

both of the programs work as expected, choosing between them is really just a matter of preference for the graphical interface.

so back to lighscribe…

Linux IS supported… nice… from the download page we need the system software and a program to create and “print” the labels to the CD/DVD.

searching a little bit more in depth for ubuntu support I found the files needed specifically for ubuntu (hence ubuntueee as well)…

everything is clearly explaned in the README file, so do not hesitate to read it…

the installation is very straightforward…

sudo dkpg -i lightscribe-1.10.13.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
sudo dpkg -i lightscribeApplications-1.10.13.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
sudo dpkg -i 4l_1.0-r6_i386.deb

the first one is the supporting system software, while the later two are different labeler programs (my personal preference goes to the 4L from Lacie).

UPDATE (19/10/2008). update for the system software from lightscribe.com

unfortunatelly you need to start the labeler software from a terminal (or create a desktop link or menu entry, if you wish)

sudo GL-gui

(this needs to be started as root)

works… that’s all…

I started web browsing (with wifi and bluetooth) enabled but after one hour I got bored and fired up VLC to watch a DVD - obviously from  the hard disk, since the EeePC doe not have a built in DVD drive.

the movie, IronMan, is over 2 hrs long, so I could expect some serious battery charge drop, watching it with medium brightness.

well… after the movie finished (a good one, btw, 8,1/10 on IMDB.com) the uptime was a bit more than 3 hrs, and according to the indicator there was still around two hours left… nice…

usually watching a movie consumes the battery much better than casual surfing, so I was happy.

after all I got round 5 hours from the new 8800 mAh battery on the 1000H, which is one hour better than the stock EeePC 6600 battery. taking into account that it was the first charge and watching a film is not really a casual using pattern, I would expect around 5-5.5 hrs with surfing and wordprocessing (and wifi on).

UPDATE (06 October 2008): After the second charge I got 5 hrs and 20 minutes…

(under the default EeePC OS v1.6 the icon225 works and plays nice by default, but under ubuntueee there are a number of options, one is the novamedia launch2net - not free - or manually set it up as I did earlier)

luckily this manual tweaking is not needed anymore, because the good guys over at Pharscape.org developed not only a backend module, but also a nice gui for devices, like the icon225.

there is a brilliant how-to posted there to setup both the module and the gui interface as well. since the instructions are for ubuntu, it works fine on ubuntueee.

the only needed prerequisit is to install development environment, so the module will compile fine.

sudo apt-get install build-essential

after that it is just a matter of following the instructions (with the exception that at the time of this post, the latest version of the module (v1.5) could be found here, while the how-to offers to download v1.2) and an icon will appear on the Internet Tab in ubuntueee.

ok. since I am Hungarian, I also downloaded the hungarian language pack, and installed it into /usr/share/HSOconnect/languages

Edit: as of 24/Sept/2008, HSO driver v 1.6 is out…

it was an easy task to replace, straightforward, 3 minutes job.

after the physical replacement, the remaining issue was to reconfigure the X windows manager (sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf)

“us” needs to be changed to “hu”

save the file and quit vim

the windows manager needs to be restarted (either Ctrl Alt Backspace or reboot the EeePC if you like)

and voilá… the famous Hungarian sentence, which contains all accented characters:

thats it!

it was not too difficult to setup under 900 either, but with the 901… well… easy as it should be on any modern operating system…

the 901 has a nice graphical interface for bluetooth configuration

it finds the BT mouse (which is discoverable)

and recognize it as a HID device (Emberi Interfész), lets click on the little blue icon and connect to the mouse…

…and thats it…

the little icon turns green as it is connected and the mouse is ready to be used, and there is a even a little blue icon on the task bar (next to the 3G).

this entire procedure is so simple that it does not even deserve a description or a how-to… the only reason I posted about it to show, how easy it became compared to the one on the 900. Very easy.

The Logitech V470 Cordless Laser Mouse for Bluetooth is a piece of beautiful design.. It is specially made for notebooks (so it is small), and goes well with the EeePC (with the white one anyway)…

Setting it up was a piece of cake, really…

Bluetooth dongle inserted

Had to modify /etc/default/bluetooth and change the line to

HIDD_Enabled=1

then execute, sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

sudo hciconfig hci0 up

sudo hidd –search

and the mouse (discoverable) was already connected… nice and easy…

all information could be found in the eeeuser wiki.

According to the press release (in Hungarian only) the EeePC is now officially available in Hungary… I already the local stores (namely Electro World and some smaller ones), and they are indeed selling (the XP version only).

During the short period I was wondering around, two people bought the machine. Happy buyers…

The ugly:

1. this is only the 701 version (both Linux and XP)

2. support comes from 3rd party, not ASUS directly

come on… the 900 machine is already out in Europe since a couple of weeks and it is a far superior machine over the 701 series.

The good:

1. it comes with localized (Hungarian) keyboard

I already sent a support letter, if the keyboard is available as a replacement part for my English 701 and Taiwanese 900.

Not much difference on the overall performance, but nevertheless, Linux is an OS, which likes as much memory as available… so it has the max (2 GB) now…

Nice surprise that the default kernel of the 900 does recognize the 2 MB (unless the 701), so nothing further is required.