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 got from a musician friend a new track to listen but the format was wma… well… ubuntueee does play this (vlc at least does), but I would prefer mp3 anyway.

so how would I convert wma to mp3 in ubuntueee?

a little bit of google helped me (yes, google is also a verb)

SoundConverter is the easy answer…

it is a nice gui based program (gnome) and does the task well.

installation as usual: sudo apt-get install soundconverter

and the icon for the program appeared under Sound $ Video Tab…

unfortunately it does need one more component for converting to mp3, but the dependency installation was automatically performed when I started the program the first time… it was a gstreamer plugin.

adding wma, selecting mp3 as output, setting bitrate, hit start…

done…

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…

it is just way too convenient not to use it, so why not access it from ubuntueee as well… luckily it is quite easy to setup and use.

after some google search, I found a tutorial, and yes, it is simple to setup.

Just simply start the File Browser and under File there is a connect to Server menu point…

We need to use the service called WebDAV and enter the information:

Server: idisk.mac.com
Port: 80
Folder: user name (without @mac.com)
User Name: (leave blank)

after clicking on Connect, the username (again without @mac bit) and the password is required and voilá, we are browsing our very own iDisk from the File Manager…

even better, on the right hand site of the ubuntueee desktop, where the local folders are there is an icon created (if the WedDAV server was bookmarked)

PS. the idisk web interface is unfortunatelly not supported (well, one can push continue of course) from ubuntueee…

anyway…

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-plugin

after restarting firefox it works… easy… but could be easier…

since nothing is different from hardware point of view, it must be some powersaving options with ubuntueee, which prevents saving battery life.

after some googleing I found an old (2005) post, which helped anyway.

sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils

cpufreq-info

I could see that now cpu is working at 800MHz (which is good, since the max is 1.6 GHz)

after enabling cpu throttling, the next task was to get the applet in the ubuntueee, gnome taskbar.

unfortunately by default, the ubuntuee taskbar is locked for adding new applets (simply there is no empty area where one can right click and select “add panel”).

the solution is to “move” on of the applets a bit to create some empty space, hence right click and adding a new applet is possible.

so, the new panel looks like this:

not only the cpus (one cpu, but due to hyperthreating it seems like two), but I also added the temperature applet to monitor the temp of the processor.

looks much better and now it is estimated to reach around 5 hrs…

the only question remains, why it does not come as default on the ubuntueee distro?

(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…

since ubuntu is a nice and uptodate Linux distro, it was worth to try… and ubuntueee installed flawless on the EeePC 900.

a more in-depth installation instruction will follow, however the main reason for the little challenge was to see how KDevelop runs on the EeePC 900.

well… I need to test ubuntueee and Kdevelop, but it might even turn out that I will keep ubuntueee as the primary (or only) OS on the 900.