Eeebuntu vs Easy Peasy

[Guitaraholic]

FYI


We are releasing a new version of Eeebuntu hopefuly friday 15th May. For teaster shots and info regarding the launch please visit http://forums.eeebuntu.org

[maestrobwh1]

i would have liked to put regular eeebuntu on mine, but the 2G surf is just too small to put a regular distro on. but i'm happy with my cli install. it has on it only what i want and no more. wicd, firefox, terminal, leafpad, vlc, and 3 games.

I assume the Surf has an SD card slot? You can install eeebuntu or easy peasy there as I have then follow this thread to make it faster:
http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=48

[Sef]

Moved to Recurring Discussions.

[luca.cappelletta]

Hi

at this development stage, which is the distro would you suggest ?
easypeasy, Eeebuntu or UNR ?

any experience using eeepc 1201HA ?


cheers

[Guitaraholic]

well eeebuntu is changing : http://eeebuntu.org

[formaldehyde_spoon]

I tried to install Eeebuntu on my 1005PE but it wouldn't play nice during install, so I installed vanilla 10.04 - very happy with it after a bunch of power saving tweaks.

[ohooligan]

Some posts from people who have actually tried both would be helpful.

I've had an ASUS eee 900 for over 2 years. I found the supplied OS (Xandros) to be very frustrating, especially its treatment of wireless networks. Which surprised me, I'd imagined that the primary purpose of the thing was to connect to wifi in different places with ease, but on my travels - and even at home - I found it tedious and sometimes just plain impossible to get online. I finally decided to Do Something about it, and went searching for an alternative OS (Dec 2010).

I found eeebuntu being rebranded as Aurora, and ubuntu eee rebranded as EasyPeasy.

I tried both, downloading on a desktop computer, and making a bootable USB stick.

eeebuntu/Aurora latest version seems to be eeebuntu-3.0.1-nbr (I chose the NBR variant for no good reason, except it seemed like it should be better tailored for a netbook).

Ubuntu eee/EasyPeasy latest version seems to be EasyPeasy-1.6

First I tried eeebuntu. Booting from USB worked fine, but the desktop was surprisingly slow, visibly lagging behind on mouse movements and clicks. I connected to LAN (wired) and tried Firefox, that worked. I didn't try wireless as there was no available
wifi network.

I couldn't find the webcam, at least no application that would let me test it. Sound worked, but when I ran Skype I couldn't do a test call because it failed to find the sound device (sorry, don't recall exact message). I found this in one of the logs:

process 'skype.real' is using obsolete setsockopt SO_BSDCOMPAT

That concluded my trial of eeebuntu. Skype not working "out of the box" is for me a fatal error.

Next up, Easy Peasy. Same deal to make a bootable USB and boot it up. Much better desktop, no problems with lag. This time I was in range of my home wifi network, and I connected with remarkable ease, and launched Firefox to verify that I really was on the Internet. Then I found an app that let me play with the webcam. Then I tried Skype, and successfully made a test call, everything worked exactly as it should. Lastly I made a real Skype video-call, which worked just fine, including fullscreen.

That concluded my trial of EasyPeasy, and I went ahead and installed it, overwriting the previous OS and accepting the default partitioning it offered. Rebooted and set up a user account for my wife, shut it down and left it for her to try. Later I found her watching something on YouTube, completely unaware of any issues (like, connecting to wifi). She found it just as easy to use as her MacBook.

Verdict: EasyPeasy good, eeebuntu bad (based on the versions I tried).

I should qualify that a little, though: What happened was I very quickly found a fatal flaw in eeebuntu (Skype). Fatal for my needs, that is. EasyPeasy may also have a fatal flaw, I just haven't hit it yet. Also, I made no attempt to find out if there was a fix to the Skype problem, because I'm not that interested - I have nothing invested in eeebuntu except for the short evaluation session. Finding no such obvious problem with EasyPeasy means I'm going to be investing a lot more time in it, and no doubt I'll be more willing to hunt for fixes to any problems that I do find.

I've added this comment because I see there are eeebuntu developers on this forum, and I don't want to be offensive. It's not pleasant to have your best efforts dismissed out-of-hand, probably due to something trivial that you could fix in a minute, had you noticed it yourselves. Unfortunately, since computers became consumer appliances, the end user (me included) has very little tolerance for things that don't Just Work.

[Plumtreed]

Thanks for the 'review', timely for me since I have recently bought a 'new' eeePC 700. I have Peppermint ICE running on a USB drive/stick and it runs very well....suits me because I lean heavily on Cloud for accounting and documents...suggest you look at Peppermint One or the ICE varient.

I will try 'Easy Peasy' when I get home from my travels....downloading is too difficult via shaky USB Broadband.

Erm..what about Ubuntu Netbook Version??