Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Yesterday I installed Ubuntu Eee, the Netbook Remix. I’m very impressed! Testament to it’s functionality comes as this post was written entirely on it. What I like the most is that for the first time, things actually fit on the screen without having to use Alt and dragging, and the font size doesn’t give you a giant headache as you squint to read.

Ubuntu Eee

Installation couldn’t have been simpler. The hardest part was using the program that unpacks the iso onto your usb pen drive. The install onto the EeePC was so simple, it loaded the netbook remix as a live distro from the usb pen and then launched the install shortcut on the desktop for me, must have been set as a startup session. A few simple questions about my name, location and password later, I was partitioning the ssd.

I have partitioned the ssd so that there’s no swap at all. I didn’t deem it necessary as I have 2gig ram installed, and there’s not much room to play with on only a 4gig ssd. I’ve read on eeeuser.com about the pros and cons of not having a swap partition. I don’t fully understand what swap does for performance, but I can say that this is working fine, so I have zero regrets about saving on ssd space.

I had tried Netbook remix out once before when it was first announced on launchpad, but it was quite buggy and the icons didn’t fit into the main window space properly, especially the program names. The difference now is staggering, and this version looks promising. I would definitely buy a netbook/notebook with this installed by the maker.

I’d like to say thank you, on that basis, to the community that put together Ubuntu Eee, because it has made Ubuntu have the qualities I most enjoyed about the Easy Mode on the default Xandros installation to the 701 EeePC: big buttons, simple menus and speed.

When the 701 with the custom Xandros build first came out, there was no way to add icons for newly installed programs, so I spent a lot of time in terminal launching apps like Zattoo player. With Ubuntu Eee, you get the full Ubuntu repos and therefore all the software available through Synaptic package manager. Anything you install appears under the correct menu, just as it would in Ubuntu Hardy, but as a giant icon.

I’ve now used this for about 18 hours, and my observations so far have led me to find a couple of problems. Firstly, I love having a desktop cube and shiny effects, more commonly known as Compiz. Activating those functions completely messed up the screen display, and I lost the ability to have windows in the top tab bar. I will have to play around with this more, because I’m convinced there’s a way to have this view as a rotating cube. I think it’s just a case of disabling wobbly windows and any other features that conflict with the Netbook remix properties.

Cheese working properly

The second is with Cheese, which works, but can’t display properly on first load. I have to launch the program twice and then close the first instance which displays in a way that I can only describe as portrait over landscape – i.e. the control buttons are off the bottom of the screen, the orientation is the wrong way.

Thirdly, I had trouble with repositories. This Ubuntu Eee uses a custom kernel from Array.org, something that in my hurry to get it all working I didn’t take the time to sit back and read about. When I tried to use Synaptic package manager to update my sources list (having ticked archive.ubuntu.com in Settings, Repositories) and check for software updates, it was reporting errors fetching the lists, and reported the error “Media Mismatch”. I fixed this by opening Accessories, Terminal and then navigating to apt with “cd /etc/apt”.

Once in here, “ls” told me that there were two places to look through to find the list of sources: sources.list and array.list (located inside a sub directory called “sources.list.d”). I opened up each of these two lists with “sudo nano sources.list” or “sudo nano array.list” (having performed “cd sources.list.d”) and first disabled the array.org source in array.list by adding # to the front of that line. I then started a process of elimination: I changed sources.list so that only one source was active and all the rest from archive.ubuntu.com were inactive with #, I allowed Synaptic package manager to reload after every line change. I figured out the clash was with array.org because of the custom kernel, eventually.

I added some software, such as Xchat and all the Gstreamer plugins, and then turned the Array.org sources back on, because I’d like to continue to use this custom kernel. I’m yet to finish reading about it completely, but it seems attractive because I used to have to run RiceeeyTweak every time I performed a kernel upgrade on standard Ubuntu Hardy to re-install MadWifi and the other fixes for the EeePC.

Lastly, the volume control on the system notification panel displays is muted, even if the volume is way up and playing music. I suppose this is better than it being muted and stuck that way, because then I’d have no music, but it’s a little odd. If I turn the volume up, when I next turn the system on it will be back muted. *Edit* Fixed by re-installing the Alsa package, guessing this got slightly messed up during install somehow.

I’ve been listening to the Ubuntu UK podcasts for the last couple of days, and noted that Mark Shuttleworth and Co seem to be very keen on pushing Ubuntu into the mobile and small form factor spaces. LiMo is making big waves on devices and so I’m glad to see that Ubuntu Netbook remix is coming along so well to push the Canonical brand.

I will be keeping this version of my favourite distro installed on this 701, and I’ll be keeping it up to date with any changes available from the Array.org repo. I highly recommend this to anyone with a netbook/notebook looking to try out an OS different to the one it came preloaded with.