Este post foi agregado pelo meu lifelog. É possível que eu não seja o autor.
I get mail. Usually I don't answer it in public, but I figure this one might contain useful information, so (with slight editing) here it is:
Hello, I am a member of SFWA. One of my fans pointed me this way and said you had been talking about Linux and EeePCs and what version of Linux you loaded on your machine.
I have a 900A with Linux (as well as a 701 and a 1000HD with XtraPrissy) that I am slowly conquering (yes, I am one of those slaves to Windows OS who has worked her way up from DOS 3.5 to Vista and will admit to loving CE, even thought I understand it really stands for "crippled edition," and gotten very disheartened along the way, and upon learning that Windows was planning to rule the world with Cloud Computing) and starting to fall in love with. So I have decided that Linux might be the way to go — assuming I can learn its ins and outs.
At any rate, I would be interested in learning about which Linux you chose to install (I am finding Xandros for Eee PC unchallenging, and it's advance mode has sent the wordprocessor into crashing regularly), so if you could point me to something on the web that would enlighten me, I would most appreciated it.I'm going to start by heartily seconding the comment about Xandros on the Eee. Xandros is a commercial derivative of the main "purist" free software distribution, Debian. Debian isn't very newbie friendly — its userbase consists mostly of engineer/sysadmin/CS student folks who tend to roll their sleeves up and take the engine apart. Xandros didn't so much tame the beast as lobotomize it and give it a Mickey Mouse hat to conceal the bandages. While they've planted a brightly coloured user interface on top, and cunningly contrived to make it very difficult for meddling idiots to render their machine non-bootable, they've also stuck it with a number of obsolete versions of key programs that you need to get real work done.
To cut a long story short: for an Eee, I'd recommend a version of Ubuntu, tailored to support the Eee hardware. Ubuntu is another Debian derivative, but this time vastly smoother and more polished than Xandros — and developing rapidly, with a huge user base and active updates to the latest applications. I'd also recommend the Ubuntu Netbook Remix user interface — an application launcher and desktop that does much the same as the Xandros desktop, but is actually useful. This isn't part of the standard Ubuntu distribution, and for full hardware support on the Eee (for example, to ensure wifi, ethernet, and sound work properly) you'd normally need to install some extra drivers. However, the Eee is so popular that there are a couple of sub-distributions out there especially tailored for it.
These are (in no particular order): EeeBuntu, and Easy Peasy (formerly Ubuntu-Eee)
Both of these distros do much the same: they take Ubuntu (typically trailing the current release by a minor version number), add Eee support, and package it for installation on an Eee. EeeBuntu also provides two variants — one with the Netbook interface, and one with the regular Ubuntu desktop. (Note: I can't get to www.eeebuntu.org right now, probably due to a blocked interwebtube thingy.)
To install them: well, you'll either need an external USB CDROM drive, or a 1Gb or larger USB memory stick. You follow the standard Ubuntu installation instructions — but use one of the Eee-specific distributions rather than the standard Ubuntu disk image. Note that before doing this, I'd double-check that I knew where my Xandros emergency restore DVD disk is! Installing Ubuntu will nuke the pre-existing Xandros installation completely, and if you want it back you'll need to reinstall it from the DVD. (For this reason I recommend that Eee owners get themselves a cheap USB CD or DVD drive. Mine, a slimline USB-powered DVD-RW with no external power brick and a colour scheme matching my Eee 1000, cost about £35 from Hong Kong via eBay, but you can find cheaper ones if you're less fussy.)
Note that Ubuntu tends to assume that you want to use a standard set of applications: OpenOffice for office documents, Firefox as a web browser, and Evolution as an email client.
I don't use Evolution (I use Thunderbird, because I can haul my profile between Linux and Mac, or even Windows), so the first thing I did on installing Ubuntu was to yank in Thunderbird (and a few other useful odds and ends). The tool you use to install and remove software on Ubuntu is called Synaptic, and that link leads to a basic user guide. Don't be surprised if, when you request it to install one program, it warns you that it's going to install a bunch of other stuff — Synaptic's back end, apt, is designed to keep track of what's on your system and make sure that if you install something, all the prerequisites it needs to work are also installed at the same time.
One gotcha relates to OpenOffice: Ubuntu 8.10 (the official current release) provides OpenOffice 2.4. The current OOo release is 3.01; this should show up in Ubuntu 9.04, due out in April 2009. However, the Easy Peasy distribution (which is based on Ubuntu 8.10) adds in OpenOffice 3.0 and Firefox 3. This is slightly unexpected (these tailored distributions usually lag behind the mainstream), and if you're planning to schlep documents between an Easy Peasy based Eee and an Eee running Xandros — which is still stuck on OOo 2.0 — you'll need to keep an eye on the file format you're saving documents in.
Final caveat: I'm not using either of these distributions on my Eee 1000. I'm using stock Ubuntu 8.10 with a patched kernel and a set of packages that provided the Netbook remix interface separately. On the other hand, Easy Peasy and EeeBuntu weren't available when I set this machine up. I think they'll do what it says on the tin, but I haven't verified this.
Anyone got anything to add on this topic? (Suggestions that my correspondent should upgrade to (Vista | OS/X | FreeBSD) or buy a real computer will be mocked, mercilessly.)
