Lubuntu and Eeepc

[kurt18947]

This may be an expensive option compared to the value to the eeepc but is it possible to install a larger SSD? In other words, is it a standard SATA drive or integral to the machine? The price of smaller SSDs, 32 GB or so, have come down quite a bit recently. The other option I was considering before I killed my eeepc a larger capacity class10 SDHC card to load an OS on. I learned that higher class #=faster read/write so that might be an interesting experiment. See how fast it is or isn't.

[zhogan85]

I know. I was talking about the manufacture company

My apologies then, sir (or ma'am).

[amjjawad]

My apologies then, sir (or ma'am).

No need to apologize at all and I'm a "He" not "She"

[Linuxisfast]

The usb install bug is related to our ASUS netbook BIOS, on my Vaio it installs fine via USB. Unity Ubuntu 11.10 works brilliant on my small 1015-B with 2GB.

[tartalo]

I had one of these, I fell OP's pain. I used to remove Cups and everything related printing (Do you print from this netbook?), Compiz, Ubuntu Docs, games, Evolution, Pulseaudio ...

It was never enough, and there are too many huge packages that are stupidly marked as dependency instead of recommendation (You can't uninstall the weather applet without uninstalling all the Gnome applets? really?)

This dependency madness has gotten worse with every new Ubuntu release.

zhogan85's recomendation makes a lot of sense. Avoid Gnome and go for a small DE (LXDE was good enough for me).

Another distro as Puppy Linux might be a solution too, I didn't try it myself though.

EDIT: Ah, you are already using LXDE.

[niteman]

This may be an expensive option compared to the value to the eeepc but is it possible to install a larger SSD? In other words, is it a standard SATA drive or integral to the machine? The price of smaller SSDs, 32 GB or so, have come down quite a bit recently. The other option I was considering before I killed my eeepc a larger capacity class10 SDHC card to load an OS on. I learned that higher class #=faster read/write so that might be an interesting experiment. See how fast it is or isn't.

I know this thread is a little old, but thought I may chime in. I too have a 900a, and still use it. It works quite well actually. It is possible to replace the horridly small SSD. I picked up a 16g Runcore on Ebay for just shy of $50. Works beautifully.

I actually only decided to replace the 4g SSD because it started acting wonky. Prior to replacement I had run Crunchbang 9.04 for a long time with 1.4g of space left. I eventually ran vanilla Ubuntu 9.10 and stayed with that until I replaced SSD. Now, with 16g to play with, I could run pretty much any Linux distro with room to spare.

I really have a strange attachment to this little machine. It's just built so well for what it is.

[vancheese]

Thanks for commenting - I too have a soft spot for these machines too.
Can you tell us what/where memory/hd you used? I can't find out which type to buy. Is there a bios limit?

[amjjawad]

Thanks for commenting - I too have a soft spot for these machines too.
Can you tell us what/where memory/hd you used? I can't find out which type to buy. Is there a bios limit?

If your machine is still under warranty, try to check with the dealer you bought it from and see if they can replace some part because that would be easier for you.

I too feel and understand your situation. Lately, I got Lenovo G570 which has everything I want except it's Web Cam is SO BAD that I can't use it at night :/
It's my mistake, I was looking for a brand name more than hardware specifications so I blame no one but myself. Next time, I'll do my homework really good

Hmm, do you have External HDD? I know the performance is going to be slower but at least that will save some money for you in case you are short of money (like me )

[MSEslacker]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents' worth in.
I picked up a 900a on the woot.com special back in '09.
The pre-installed Asus-Xandros OS was ... awful, and I pretty much shelved it for 2yrs.

I pulled the eeePC out recently and started messing around with Linux distributions.
I've had a pretty good experience running a Xubuntu Live distribution from an 8GB USB flash drive. I started out with a 2GB "persistence" file (which stores the /usr filesystem), to get a feel for how the OS would perform with only 4GB of SSD. It worked surprisingly well. The distribution's files only required 670MB, and 2GB was more than enough for the packages I wanted to install.

But, apparently, the Live distributions are compressed when they install.
I was very surprised when I installed to the SSD, and the OS files occupied 2.5GB. And the OS allocated itself 1GB for swap. There wasn't even enough free space left to install the first round of updates.
If I could figure out how to install the OS compressed (as in the Live distro) to the SSD, that's exactly what I'd do.

But, I can't figure out how to do it. So, I'm looking into upgrading the SSD.
I'm considering this 32GB SATA mini PCIe drive:
www.mydigitaldiscount.com/mydigitalssd-32gb-50mm-bullet-proof-msata-ssd/

Next question is: will my BIOS support it?
Apparently, yes. Seems SATA support was introduced in v1006, according to users.telenet.be/tom.alderweireldt/Eee900-en.pdf.
I've got BIOS v1103. Most recent available from asus.com is 1102. So, I guess I'm ahead of the curve there. v1103 might have been installed by Asus during an RMA repair/replacement incident... Anyway, v1102 and v1103 should support SATA SSD drives.

Another thing about the Live distributions is that they never run fsck to repair the /usr filesystem.
Since I still have that cramped Xubuntu install on the SSD, I can use it to run fsck on the USB stick's persistence file periodically and clean up the ext filesystem with:
sudo fsck -y -t ext3 /media/[drive]/casper-rw
as per:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/18466...ile-in-liveusb
Otherwise, the casper filesystem tends to self destruct after a dozen boot cycles or so.

_________________________________
Asus 900a | Atom N270 Hyperthreaded, 2 logical cores, 1.6GHz | 1024x600
1GB DDR2 | 32GB MyDigitalSSD mSATA SSD | Xubuntu 11.10 | BIOS v1103

[rrashkin]

I have a eeePC 701 with 4G of drive. I'm currently using EasyPeasy but it's pretty full. I get periodic messages that I only have 300-odd MB of available disk. Since I use an SD card for data, I'm just living with it.

Now I'm thinking of going to Lubuntu using the Alternate ISO (since that's recommended for smaller environments). This thread, however, has given me pause. I don't have an external CD reader so a thumb drive is really my only option. Does anyone know if there's any way to get Lubuntu to install from a thumb drive onto an ASUS eeePC?

One question in this regard is whether to use Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.6.8.exe (which is what I got from links on the Ubuntu site)or unetbootin-win-549.exe (which I got somewhere else)?