Wot I Did Today

[kerravonsen]

I have upgraded my eeePC to Ubuntu 8.04 today; I'd been putting it off because I was waiting for a custom version of eeeXubuntu to come out, which it didn't.

- I followed the default upgrade instructions, and it said there wasn't enough room on the drive.
- I uninstalled a bunch of packages, and moved some stuff onto the SD card.
- Upgraded again, and and everything appeared to work, except that my network connection stopped working.
- I thought "Oh no! Am I going to have to wipe everything and install from scratch?"
- I followed several contradictory sets of instructions for how to install from a USB stick (since the eeePC does not have a CD-ROM drive). I didn't follow the instructions all at once, I followed them one after another, after each set failed to work.
- I finally got a bootable USB, but before I did the wipe and install, I put it into "live" mode, to see if the networking would work with this new version.
- The networking still didn't work.
- There was no point in trying the wireless, since I'd originally discovered that the networking didn't work when I was trying to install the updated wireless driver that the eeePC needs.
- I restarted the router a couple of times, in case that was the reason. But the eeePC wasn't even finding the router; it was a networking problem, not a router problem, since the Big Laptop connected and disconnected fine.
- I finally stumbled upon an eeePC troubleshooting page which noted that some people had problems with their networking, and that all one needed to do to fix it was shut down the eeePC, unplug it, unplug the battery, plug everything back in and start it up again.
- Lo and behold, my networking was working again!
- So then I went around removing various unwanted packages that the upgrade had added, and adding in the packages that I'd removed before.
- I haven't tried doing suspend yet. I don't think it will work, because I gather I need a custom-built kernel for it to work properly; there was one available for the previous version of Ubuntu, but I haven't found one for the current version. (sigh) Apparently the kernel needs to have the USB_Persist flag set, so that it will find the SD card when it comes back from suspend. Well, find it and not do nasty things to it.

Comments

[labingi.livejournal.com]

Interesting to read of your trials. I recently got an eeePC, but I've only used it a little, mainly for internet access at work. I'm definitely still learning the ropes. It's the first time I've ever used Linux, and I've rarely used Windows (which this OS seems closer to than Mac). I think it's going to be a great resource though, especially if I need to take it traveling.

[kerravonsen]

The Linux that comes with eeePC is a customized version of Xandros Linux; I replaced it with Ubuntu Linux very soon after I bought it. Not that there is a huge amount of difference between them; they're both Linux after all. I just like Ubuntu (to be precise, eeeXubuntu) better.

Right now I'm looking into compiling a custom kernel (more googling for helpful instructions) to see if I can solve the suspend problem.