• power up your EeePC
• Press esc to choose “boot from CD / USB”
• choose eee….
• when the desktop appears
  • establish a network connection (wireless should be working)
  • press install
• when gparted is launched, choose manual
• from the upper right corner choose your sdhc and then create an ext2 partition (mimimum 2gb) mounted as '/'
• If you only have 512MB of memory and chose to run without swap, Ubuntu is very likely to exhaust memory resources; this may cause significant slow-downs and/or temporary lock-ups of the system when an application requests memory and none can be allocated. In rare instances, this may even cause Ubuntu to crash completely, requiring a reboot. For these reasons, it is recommended that you seriously consider creating a swap partition per the instructions below if you do not have at least 1GB of memory.

• power up your EeePC
• Press esc to choose “boot from CD / USB”
• choose eee….
• when the desktop appears
  • establish a network connection (wireless should be working)
  • press install
• when gparted is launched, choose manual
• from the upper right corner choose your sdhc and then create an ext2 partition (mimimum 2gb) mounted as '/', leave about 550 - 1gb free for swap. Check to format
• Select the free space and set it as a swap partition at the end of the drive

Why enable swap? Enabling swap allows hibernation (suspend-to-disk). It also allows the occasional use of large amounts of data from applications.

Why enabling swap is not a bad idea on SSD based devices? (This does not apply to the Xandros install supplied by default, so this seems like the right place to document this). There is a certain amount of disinformation about swap on SSD (solid state drive) based devices. The kernel will not make use of the swap unless applications are run on inappropriately large amounts of data. Code pages are only cached to RAM and these RAM pages are freed if required for dirty pages.

Is hibernating particularly efficient on the eeePC? Hibernating to swap works in a particularly efficient way, whereby user application data pages are paged out to swap; all unmodified pages (e.g. disk cache and code pages) are thrown away; and only the kernel data state is bundled up, and written to swap. Upon resume pages which are not required for write are retained in swap (which is why swap usage is shown in the system monitoring tray following resume, but there are no disk writes).

On shutdown cached kernel data (e.g. file tables/inodes) have to be flushed to SSD anyway and cold boot up also spatters small writes around the disk. Therefore there is little additional wear on the SSD (depending on your usage profile there might even be less) as a result of using swap and hibernate.

When not to use swap If you've updated your device to 1G or 2G of RAM, you may have problems with hibernation. The system requires at last as much swap as onboard RAM to reliably hibernate, so you'll have to dedicate more of your Flash space to swap to get the ability to hibernate. In this case, you may want to not use swap and just use sleep mode or device shutdown.

The “Hibernate” button in the logout screen may be hidden as follows: click the Applications button → Settings → Sessions and Startup Settings. Check “Prompt on logout” and uncheck “Show hibernate button”.

Getting hibernate to work Due to a bug in Ubuntu's Ubiquity install manager (details), hibernate does not work OOTB in some installations. Although the swap file is written correctly on hibernation, this overwrites the swap partition's signature so that it is no longer visible and cannot be mounted.

How to initialize a broken system You may have to run your system in a special mode in order to recover a broken system:

• In grub, edit the longer line [e,↓,e] and add “init=/bin/bash” at its end
• Make sure to delete any “vga=…” parameter, you may also want to delete “quiet splash” in order to see what happens
• Accept [enter] then boot [b]
• You are now root and can access to your filesystem, nothing has been loaded but minimal daemons and stuff needed to boot in a shell script
• If you cannot write, then remount your / partition :

  mount / -o remount,rw

  (after doing that i could'nt see what i typed, but it actually worked : try

  ls

  to see!)

— Djakoni 2008/03/31 05:55 I had to do this in order to repair my broken system due to an hibernation test without having modified my grub entries

To get it working, first fix the damage done by the hibernation progress:

sudo mkswap /dev/sdaX
sudo swapon -cv /dev/sdaX

(sdaX being your swap partition of course, e.g. sda2 or sda5 on the internal flash memory, or sdbX, e.g. sdb2, on an SD card)

Next step is to edit and fix the grub boot command:

sudo mousepad /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find the right entry for your eeeXubuntu installation:

title   Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root   (hd0,0)
kernel   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx ro quiet splash
initrd   /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

and add “resume=/dev/sdaX” (sda2, sda5, sdb2, etc) to the longest line:

title   Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root   (hd0,0)
kernel   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx resume=/dev/sdaX ro quiet splash
initrd   /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

NB: Hibernate will not work on USB devices other than the internal flash memory as they tend to get dismounted by the standard installation in the hibernation process.

— Djakoni 2008/03/31 05:45 Hibernate w/ SD card not tested yet (my eeePC has begun hibernation then returned to X, and here I am)

It's also possible to install without a swap partition and create a swap file later. This is more flexible because it's easier to create / delete / resize files than repartition the SSD. However it's not supported by the installer, not well tested, and much harder to hibernate.

• Install as per “No SWAP” above
• Create a swap file of e.g. 512Mb:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=512

• Format it

mkswap /swapfile

• Add the appropriate line at the end of /etc/fstab so it will be enabled automatically on your next boot:

/swapfile swap swap defaults

• Now try enabling it manually

swapon -a

• The swapfile should now be listed in /proc/swaps:

$ cat /proc/swaps
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/swapfile                               file            524280  44636   -1

If you want to resize the swapfile later, disable it

swapoff -a

then delete and recreate it.

Trying to install a custom language (e.g. German localization) on the minimum 2GB partition mentioned above will fail. It requires up to 3GB for the initial installation! This disk usage can be reduced to about 1,2GB later on by removing language-support-en and other packages.

When the install is over and you have rebooted for the first time, the first thing to do is connect to your network. If you're plugged into a wired network it will auto-start. If you're connecting to an unprotected wireless network you will need to select the network to connect to by clicking the network symbol in the far lower right. If you are connecting to a protected network, you will need to enter the password.

Next, Xubuntu will need to download lots of updates (115 as of Apr 03, 2008) which will require yet another restart when it is done. This could take from 10 minutes up to an hour depending on your connection, or even how busy the servers are. Be patient. Don't start patching the system until after all the updates are in place. From the applications menu, select system and update manager. Run a check, then ensure everything is checked and click to install updates.

This is not working if you're behind a firewall and need an http proxy to go into the internet.
Since I'm very new to the *ubuntu scene I've found no way to set the proxy for the GUI update tool, so I've opened
a terminal, set the environment variable http_proxy to the proxy server and then did a “sudo apt-get update” and “sudo apt-get upgrade”.
Maybe there's a better way, then somebody who knows it should write it down ;)

Now we are at the Out-Of-the-Box (OOTB) experience for EeeXubuntu. The Fn keys for screen brightness, mute, volume up/down should work, with On-Screen-Display (OSD). glxgear (alt-F2, glxgear and check run in terminal) will produce 70-90 fps. Ctl-Alt-left/right will move between the 4 desktops. Ctl-F1/F2/F3/F4 will take you to the respective desktops as well.

There is still plenty to do but this is our baseline.

SD Cards wont mount, can't toggle wireless on/off (it will after some updates and reboots) there is no audio and the camera may not be available.

If nothing else DON'T JUST RUN THE UBUNTU SCRIPTS, only a few seem to work (acpi). While it is my goal to re-create the scriot approach for Xubuntu for now we have a live CD and this approach. Hopefully this wiki page along with the EeeXubuntu developers page will help codify what is needed for a fully feature Xubuntu experience on the Eee.

The default installation leaves a line at the top of /etc/apt/sources-list that references the Xubuntu CD. It has a “cdrom:” URL. This means that if you try to install some packages (g++, for example), apt-get will fail because it can't find the CD. To fix this, edit that file as root

sudo mousepad /etc/apt/sources.list

and put a '#' in front of the cdrom line. That will comment it out, and apt-get will now refer to the web for all package downloads.

The Gnome Power Managment Utility makes problems!

cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state 

shows a percentage value for “remaining capacity”

With hal-device we can see the status of the battery:

hal-device | grep battery

Percent of Charge:

hal-device | grep charge_level.percentage | awk '{print $3}'

Current Voltage in mV:

hal-device | grep voltage.current | awk '{print $3}'

Remining Time: (i doesn't know the time format for this)

hal-device | grep reminaing_time | awk '{print $3}'

With the Gnome-Power-Manager the Eee won't shutdown when the battery is critical.

You can remove the power manager and use the Battery Status Plugin from XFCE:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-power-manager
sudo visudo

Removing gnome-power-manager will cause your power button to shutdown immediately instead of bringing up the logout menu. Can someone verify? — StirfryNinja 2008/03/28 10:15

Yes the eee shutdown immediately after this — x2on 2008/03/28 20:25

Write below # Cmnd alias specification

Cmnd_Alias SHUTDOWN_CMDS = /sbin/shutdown, /sbin/halt, /sbin/reboot

Write below %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

your username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: SHUTDOWN_CMDS

and replace your username.

Safe with Ctrl + O

Right click on panel and click “Add New Item”. Scroll Down and Select Battery Monitor

Change the settings in the XFCE Battery Monitor:

• Low percentage: 11
• Critical percentage: 7
• Critical battery action: Run command
• Command: sudo halt

Thx to http://forum.eeepcnews.de/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1330

After installing eeeXubuntu, the fstab file contains a line which assumes that any external device you plug in is going to be a CD ROM drive. Ooops! So, to get external devices to mount:

sudo mousepad /etc/fstab

And comment out ( put a # in front of ) the /dev/sdb1 line and/or /dev/sdc1 line (whichever you have.) The example below shows the line commented out. It's the line that contains /media/cdrom0.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=10d03d2a-7732-4f6f-924f-541b39dd9559 /               ext2    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
#/dev/sdb1       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0       0

If there's a /sdc1 line, comment it out too.

You may also need to turn off “Volume Management” in Thunar (File Manager) settings ('Misc' tab).

Now external USB devices, USB flash drives, USB hard disks and SD cards should auto mount.

Suspend: In order for some USB storage devices to continue to operate normally after suspend, it is necessary to unmount them first. For example, supposing you mount an SD card on /media/sdram, then the following edits will allow it to survive suspend.

Create the file /etc/acpi/suspend.d/12-umounts.sh

#!/bin/sh
umount /media/sdram

and also the file /etc/acpi/resume.d/89-mounts.sh

#!/bin/sh
mount /media/sdram

Something similar is probably needed for hibernate.

Note that if the umount command fails (typically because a program stored on the medium was running), the remount won't work. In such a case, the usb storage device must be disconnected and reconnected, and also manually remounted if you aren't using volume management.

WARNING! If you installed&run eeexubuntu on a SD card, after suspend mode your ubuntu won't boot at all I have done this operation twice with same result — Gennady G. Marchenko 2008/02/25 11:37

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=5984.

On machines with a swap partition add the following to

sudo mousepad /etc/rc.local

Put these two lines just before the “exit 0” statement at the end:

sysctl -w vm.swappiness=1           # Strongly discourage the swapping of application data to disk
sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50  # Don't shrink the inode cache so aggressively.

This reduces the likelihood of the actual applications, or directory listings, from being paged out. Disk page cache is not nearly as important as random access SSD reads are faster than on HD. As a bi-product the above will improve the responsiveness for interactive use (which is the primary use of the EEE), although reducing the overall performance of the system.

Alternatively you can change /etc/sysctl.conf and change the last line to be

vm.swappiness=1

and then add line

vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

This way you do not need to change the script.

By default Linux ext2/3 keeps a tab on access times for every file on the system. This leads to more writes than we need. Add “noatime” to the options for the / mount as shown below.

sudo mousepad  /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=10d03d2a-7732-4f6f-924f-541b39dd9559 /               ext2    defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
#/dev/sdb1       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0       0

You will need to reboot or run …

sudo mount -o remount /

This will reduce the number of writes to the SSD, save SSD disk space, and very slightly improve system performance by keeping some temporary information in memory instead of reading/writing it to the SSD.

To have the various log and temporary files written to RAM instead of to flash, you need to edit /etc/fstab again

sudo mousepad  /etc/fstab

then add these lines to the end

# enable RAM-based temporary file systems
tmpfs     /var/tmp     tmpfs     noatime    0    0
tmpfs     /tmp         tmpfs     noatime    0    0

This also means anything stored in /var/tmp or /tmp won't survive a reboot, so if you're debugging a problem where you need to preserve those files, you might want to comment out those lines.

Since Xubuntu uses Thunar for a file manager it doesn't natively support browsing a Windows network out of the box.

Here is a link to a How To at Ubuntu Forums. This works for eeeXubuntu installs as well.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=304131

Sound has been interesting, it may require running Totem or even playing a file before everything shows up but the short story is to add the Volume control to the panel.

• Right click on the task bar at the bottom of the screen.
• Press “Add New Item”
• scroll down until you find the Volume Control applet and drag it to the panel next to the applications button. (Drag anything else you want down at this time too.)
• Then right-click on the new Volume Control icon and go the “Properties”.
  • For “Device”, choose “#0: HDA Intel (this should be the only one you can choose)
  • For “Wannabe Master”, choose “Front,0” (which is responsible for main sound output).
  • Leave the “xfc4-mixer” in the “when clicked” box alone. – that's what we're running.
• If you click on the icon, it brings up the mixer where you can adjust front speaker and mic volume.
• If you click the volume meter to the right of the panel icon it will adjust the volume up and down.

Alternatively you can load ALSA-Mixer (gtk not Gnome) and set the Volume control to run gamix, but that is not covered in this walk through.

This has been already implemented in Release 3. For earlier releases, you can perform the steps below. In fact the solution describe below is implemented in r3 but it requires a little fixing: the script supposed to ensure clean shutdown isnt't run by default. See below how to enable it.

I apologise. It appears however, that this could have been an addition to the official reposistories. A fresh install last night proved that the file did not exist, however after retrieving all updates rc.localstop contained a new entry with a comment, containing this addition. Will need to look into this more - StealthCP

If you've installed Release 3, you already have this in your system. However, you need to re-instate it's invocation. A “sudo update-rc.d rc.localstop stop 01 0 6 .” (with the end period) will fix this and permit a proper shutdown. - STrRedWolf

The Eee PC won't shut down completely after using the sound module. At the end of the shutdown procedure you will see the green power light still lit with nothing happening.

Edit the file /etc/rc.localstop:

sudo mousepad /etc/rc.localstop

The end of the file should look like this:

# workaround to prevent hang on system shutdown (eeePC)
rmmod snd_hda_intel
exit 0

It seems that recently this change was added to the official repositories, so if you fully updated your system recently as advised above this should already be done. If not, then simply add 'rmmod snd-hda-intel' just before 'exit 0'. Save the file.

To activate this script during system shutdown procedure type the following

sudo update-rc.d rc.localstop stop 99 0 .

Source: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/faq#how_can_i_get_my_x_eee_ubuntu_to_shutdown_completely

You can test if this is nessesary by running the program glxgears. On the eee PC properly configured, glxgears should run at over 400 frames per second. Without 3d acceleration it runs at 30 to 40 frames per second. To test, simply open a terminal window and type glxgears. A graphic of spinning gears will appear, and after a few moments, the frames per second rate will be displayed in the terminal window. If your number is under 100, you need to follow the instructions below.

If you want 3D games to work well like they did on Xandros, or if you're interested in installing the uber-cool compiz-fusion 3d desktop, follow these instructions to enable direct rendering in three easy steps:

Open a new terminal (menu: Applications→Accessories→Terminal) and…

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa

NOTE: thats libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa - be careful of 1's and l's!

Type in your user password if it asks you for it, and answer Y when it prompts you with a question to install the packages.

sudo mousepad /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Once again, enter your user password if it asks for it. This will open a text editor to edit your configuration for the foundation of Linux's graphical interface. Ignore the message about potentially harming your system because you are root (don't worry, nothing bad will happen).

Scroll down to the very end of the file, and add this text:

Section "Module"
	Load "glx"
	Load "dri"
	Load "dbe"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Mode    0666
EndSection

(Make sure the file ends with a blank line. The cursor needs to be TWO LINES below the last print. Failing to have a blank line will bork your xorg.conf)

Save and quit.

That's it! After you reboot and log in to your system, you can check if 3D acceleration is working by running glxgears. To do this, use the Alt-F2 combination in xubuntu to bring up the run dialog, type glxgears in the textbox, check run in terminal and hit run. Now you should see ~400fps!

Note: if glxgears runs jerkily or ~200fps is reported in the console, comment out the following lines in the Section “Screen” of your xorg.conf

# Comment out these to get full OpenGL performance
         Virtual  1680 1680
         Virtual  2560 2048

While you're in xorg.conf, you can uncomment the entries for the Wacom tablet if you want as well.

Note: Some users report that upon performing this step, the volume control function keys (fn-f8 and fn-f9) quit displaying the on-screen display although they continue to work.

The camera is not enabled in the bios by default. This is to conserve power. Therefore, before testing to see if the camera works, you will either need to enable the camera in the bios (press f2 when asked in the boot sequence, select advanced, select devices, and enable the camer) or you will need to “turn the camera on” after booting.

For details about enabling and disabling the camera, see Controlling the built-in webcam.

To run the camera to capture shots, or video, install the ucview application which came with the original eeePC. To install ucview you first need to set up the unicap repository following the instructions here:

http://unicap-imaging.org/using_repository.htm

Then from a terminal

sudo apt-get install ucview

There seems to be an issue with ucview that image capture produces a black jpeg file:

• don't forget to tell the BIOS that the system is finished, otherwise the camera will not work ;
• replace the YUYV for UYVY in the Video Format

Some people may find the scrolling and tap button behavior on the touchpad annoying. The scrolling can make a web page or document you are working on suddenly start scrolling up and down wildly, and the tap button behavior often causes the cursor to suddenly appear in the wrong place in a document or text edit field. Generally, this is because a stray thumb or palm has hit the touchpad.

One approach to tweaking these settings is to add synclient commands to your autostart applications. Synclient is a command line application that can change settings for the touchpad. To add commands to autostart applications choose “Autostarted Applications” from the settings menu. For each command click the Add button. You can put whatever you want in the name field, but it's good to be descriptive, like “no vertical scroll”. You can leave the description blank if you want. Put the command in the command field. The changes will be applied the next time you restart. You can test out the commands in terminal first if you want.

To turn off vertical scrolling on the touchpad add this command to your autostarted applications:

synclient VertEdgeScroll=0

To slow down but not disable vertical scrolling add this command to your autostarted applications:

synclient VertScrollDelta=25000

(You can experiment with the number to find a speed that works for you. 25000 is pretty slow.)

To turn off tap button add this command to your autostarted applications:

synclient TapButton1=0

This will turn off one finger tapping

To turn off 2 finger tapping add the following to your auto started applications:

synclient TapButton2=0

You can also configure the touchpad corners. Each corner can be assigned any button number. The following commands will set the corner buttons to left click, right click, middle click, starting from the top left corner and proceeding clockwise.

synclient LTCornerButton=1

synclient RTCornerButton=3

synclient RBCornerButton=2

You can change the corner buttons to anything you like. These buttons can then be used in Compiz as shortcuts. Some useful shortcuts would be raise and lower. Experiment to find what suits you.

These commands can also be entered directly into your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file under the Synaptics Touchpad section. See the following for an example:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "HorizEdgeScroll"       "1"
        Option          "UpDownRepeat"          "1"
        Option          "LeftRightRepeat"       "1"
        Option          "ScrollButtonRepeat"    "10"
        Option          "RTCornerButton"        "8"
        Option          "LTCornerButton"        "9"
        Option          "LBCornerButton"        "10"
EndSection

Note: I had to add Option “SHMConfig” “on” in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (Synaptics Touchpad section) to be able to execute a synclient command. — vincent.fretin 2008/03/09 19:05

This should be auto-done by installing the xubuntu-restricted-formats under codecs below. If it isn't please refer to the forum's Original thread which had reference to this page for getting flash and Java 7 to work.

Ubuntu provides a single point install of restricted codecs, several applications including Java and Flash and etc. To install it simply:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-restricted-extras

• as of 12/26/2007 ubuntu restricted extras failed to install flash claiming an md5 mismatch. Downloading the .tar.gz from adobe and running the install script contained therein as root works. Don't ask me why one works but not the other when they're both downloading from the same place – Rick
• There's a temporary fix over at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=634551&page=2. They suggest downloading http://launchpadlibrarian.net/10761023/flashplugin-nonfree_9.0.115.0ubuntu2_i386.deb from the next Ubuntu release (8.04). It did it for me. –Martin

• Looks like this loads Flash 9 and Java 6 as well. BTW I ran sudo aptitude and not apt-get but did get the md5 mismatch for Flash 9. Still can't play Xvid in Totem. –Curt

  sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg xine-plugin

this Adds DivX, Xvid support to Totem and get the Mozilla plug in

Have you installed the nonfree win32 codecs for mplayer/xine? I don't know if Ubuntu supplies a .deb for them, but for most distros you have to download them from mplayer.hu and untar the archive to /usr/lib/codecs. With these codecs installed you should be able to play any video in existence including the newest Windows Video VC1 videos.

It is “unofficially” suggested to download the nonfree codecs from the medibuntu repository.
See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu for instructions

??I'm a total linux newb, I just installed MPlayer and the Mozilla Plugin from Add/Remove.
I added all of the extra codecs (wmv, xvid etc) by downloading the codec files from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
and installing them to usr/local/lib/codecs - this is wonderful guide _> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOeBcWQDOKk.??

On login, nm-applet will prompt for the keychain password, unless wireless roaming is disabled. This is annoying as, even if your keychain password is the same as your login password, you will always need to enter your password twice.

Note: The problem is the libpam-keyring0! With libpam-gnome-keyring you can choose to activate the keyring with login (works fine). But i can't deactivate the libpam-keyring0, any ideas? — x2on 2008/03/22 12:15

Before you do this, BEWARE that this poses a security risk as it leaves your keyring password sitting in plaintext on your hard drive. It's probably best to change it to something other than your login password (see below) and be aware of which other passwords you add to your keyring

Download the pam-keyring-tool binary (compiled for *buntu 7.10): http://launchpadlibrarian.net/10241907/pam-keyring-tool

Copy it to /usr/bin

cp ./pam-keyring-tool /usr/bin/

and make it executable

chmod +x pam-keyring-tool

Now create a file called unlock_keyring.sh, e.g. in $HOME/shellscripts

mousepad $HOME/shellscripts/unlock_keyring.sh

and put in the following

#!/bin/sh
echo "YOUR_PASSWORD" | /usr/bin/pam-keyring-tool -u -s

and make it executable

chmod +x $HOME/shellscripts/unlock_keyring.sh

Now add that shell script to you autostart list by going to Menu –> Settings –> Autostarted Applications (Your autostart configuration will end up in ~/.config/autostart/)

To change your keyring password, you can use pam-keyring-tool:

 pam-keyring-tool -c

If you have forgotten your keyring password, you can delete your keyring and start again: go to $HOME/.gnome2/keyrings and delete the file default.keyring and reboot. nm-applet should now ask you for your wireless key and after that, it should ask you to enter a new password for your default keyring.

this solution was found here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=15346

Addressed in .3 release of EeeXubuntu Out of the box Fn plus the following should work:

• F1 - Instant power off (no dialog)
• F2 - toggle wireless card on and off
• F3 - Screen to dimmer
• F4 - Screen to brighter
• F5 - ???
• F6 - ???
• F7 - toggle sound on/off
• F8 - Volume down
• F9 - Volume up

F2 doesn't work in original eeeXubuntu install. However, you can fix it by either of following two methods.

Method 1: Both the wifi update below and the enabling of F5 (external monitor toggle) can be done. Follow these instructions these instructions. No need to cut and paste large amounts of text from this wiki. — Francis Turner 1 Feb 2008

If your Eee PC is non-US model, you will need to modify xorg.conf file to restore original keyboard layout setting. You can find correct settings in xorg.conf.backup file (you must have made it!).
Here's an example fro UK (GB) keyboard:

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier	"Generic Keyboard"
  Driver	"kbd"
  Option	"CoreKeyboard"
  Option	"XkbRules"	"xorg"
  Option	"XkbModel"	"pc105"
  Option	"XkbLayout"	"gb"
EndSection

Method 2: The Wifi Hotkey Fn-F2 can be fixed as follows:

1. Create the file /etc/acpi/events/eee-wifi-on

sudo mousepad /etc/acpi/events/eee-wifi-on

and put the following

# ASUS eeePC Wifi Hotkey (Fn-F2)
event=hotkey ATKD 00000010
action=/etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh on

* I had to use “ATKD 00000090” here to make this work on my EeePC. - Petaramesh, 2008/02/15

2. Create the file /etc/acpi/events/eee-wifi-off

sudo mousepad /etc/acpi/events/eee-wifi-off

and put the following

# ASUS eeePC Wifi Hotkey (Fn-F2)
event=hotkey ATKD 00000011
action=/etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh off

* I had to use “ATKD 00000091” here to make this work on my EeePC. - Petaramesh, 2008/02/15

3. Create the file /etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh

sudo mousepad /etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh

and put the following

#!/bin/sh

#FILE: /etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh
# main wifi toggle script (loads/unloads modules)

. /usr/share/acpi-support/key-constants

# The sequence here *is* important.
unload_modules() {
   rmmod ath_pci
   rmmod ath_rate_sample
   rmmod ath_hal
   rmmod wlan_ccmp
   rmmod wlan_tkip
   rmmod wlan_wep
   rmmod wlan_acl
   rmmod wlan_scan_sta
   rmmod wlan
}

# At least this one's straightforward.
load_modules() {
   modprobe ath_pci
}

wifi_on() {
   # Force PCI Express Hotplug to reinit
   rmmod pciehp
   sleep 1
   # pciehp_force may be unnecessary; Xandros did it.
   modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1
   sleep 1
   # Switch on the hardware
   echo 1 >/proc/acpi/asus/wlan
   sleep 1
   load_modules
}

wifi_off() {
   unload_modules
   echo 0 >/proc/acpi/asus/wlan
}

case $1 in
   on)
      acpi_fakekey $KEY_PROG1
      wifi_on
      ;;
   off)
      acpi_fakekey $KEY_PROG2
      wifi_off
      ;;
   toggle)
      STAT=`cat /proc/acpi/asus/wlan`
      if [ "$STAT" = "1" ];
         then wifi_off;
         else wifi_on;
      fi
      ;;
esac

Note: My eee is downclocked to 57 MHz FSB. I had to increase the sleep time for pciehp in wifi_on() a bit, otherwise wlan would fail. Martin Hinterberger 28 Feb 2008

4. Make the file /etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh executeable (open a shell and type the following)

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/eee-wifi-on-off.sh

This solution was found here.

Added Conzi 04.02.2008 It seems that the OSD does not work ootb with eeeXubuntu. Graves has released the 'eeeXubuntu ASUS OSD Scriptpack v2.0' whitch fixed this issue for me. Detailed Information about this can be found here and here (in german).

The eee has a really neat built-in BIOS upgrade utility. Just put the new BIOS on a USB stick, rename it to 701.ROM, hold Alt-F2 at boot, and it will perform a BIOS flash automatically. The utility is built into the BIOS itself. Or you could make a bootable DOS USB stick, put the flash utility and BIOS image on it, and boot from it. There's no need to with the built-in utility, though.

Getting the famous cube, wobbly windows and all is easy, and works fine on an stock g4 with 512 meg of ram (amazing at that may seem.) It's a little too long to post here, so please visit How to setup Compiz Fusion on eeeXubuntu. Definitely worth doing!

The OOTB Xubuntu GDM theme has a small glitch on a screen as small as the Eee's where the text-box for your username and password does not quite fit correctly. This can easily be fixed by editing the XML file that describes the theme's layout. First make a backup copy:

sudo cp /usr/share/gdm/themes/xubuntu/Xubuntu.xml /usr/share/gdm/themes/xubuntu/Xubuntu.xml.bak

Then open up the original XML file and browse to line 125 (you can check your current position in nano by hitting ctrl+C)

sudo nano -w /usr/share/gdm/themes/xubuntu/Xubuntu.xml

The line you are looking for should read:

<pos width="160" height="24"/>

You need add x=”+4“ and change width to 134. The corrected line should look like this:

<pos x="+4" width="134" height="24"/>

Hit ctrl+X → Y →[enter] to save your changes and Voila! The Xubuntu GDM theme will now look normal!

Note: This was based off my own install of eeeXubuntu; I followed the wiki and noticed this problem and this was how I fixed it. It should be the same for other Eee users but I haven't noticed reports of it elsewhere. — Nate Weibley 2008/02/25 14:50

Note: Works here on my Eee too… THX — x2on 2008/03/03 11:00

GIMP is installed by default.

Inkscape is a very good Vector graphics program http://www.inkscape.org/

You can install it with:

sudo apt-get install inkscape

To be able to use it in 800×480 you need to install the Clearlooks Compact GTK2 theme (see “Screen Space and Themes” section below)

Scribus is a desktop publishing program that gives you full control over page layouts. It works with CMYK color profiles and has PDF output. http://www.scribus.net/

Scribus 1.3.3.9 is available through the Synaptic Package Manager.

GQView is installed and usable as an image viewer. You will have to go into the preferences and set it to scale the image to window size as it defaults to showing them full scale.

Ristretto is a lightweight image viewer for the Xfce desktop. Information and downloads can be found here

Avidemux works well as a lightweight video editor. Version 2.4.1 has .flv support which allows you to edit flash files from youtube etc. To download 2.4.1 visit getdeb.net: http://www.getdeb.net/release.php?id=2178

ffmpeg2theora is a tiny but useful command line application (you use it in terminal because it doesn't have a graphical interface) for converting video files into the theora format (.ogg - a free video codec).

To install, use this command:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg2theora

To use the program, open a terminal and navigate to the directory where your video file is. If it's on your Desktop, for instance, you would use:

 
cd /home/YOUR_LOGIN_NAME/Desktop

Don't forget to change YOUR_LOGIN_NAME to whatever your login name is.

Next, use this command:

 
ffmpeg2theora (Filename of the video)

Your converted video file (.ogg) will show up in the same directory as the original video file.

Audacity runs well in eeeXubuntu as a basic sound editor: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Audacity 1.3.3 supports Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV, AIFF, and AU and is available through the Synaptic Package Manager.

A cross platform media player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, flv, etc).

sudo apt-get install vlc

Evince is installed by default as the MIME application for reading pdf files. Unless you need advanced Acroread features there is little point in going to the bother of installing Adobe Acroread as its interface is not as snappy (e.g. cluttered, not as fast, buffers keypresses).

EeeXubuntu includes just the word processor part of Open Office and ignores the other parts (presentation, spreadsheet etc.) which seems a bit silly. You can easily install the rest using the full openoffice.org package using apt-get or synaptic and at the same time remove Gnumeric (for spreadsheets) and Abiword (for text). This appears to be roughly neutral in terms of storage space used but adds the ability to use presentations too.

Alternatively you can uninstall all of Open Office and stick with Abiword and Gnumeric for a reasonable saving in disk space

These files are regarded as basic for any TeX system, covering plain TeX macros, Computer Modern fonts, and configuration for common drivers.

To install Latex with the Kile (KDE Latex Editor) on your Eee-PC just copy this to an terminal:

sudo apt-get install texlive-base kile

Freemind is a great mind-mapping app that works well with eeeXubuntu. http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

To install Freemind 0.8.0 you can follow these instruction on the Freemind wiki:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/FreeMind_on_Linux#Ubuntu_.26_Kubuntu

If you want to made video calls with Skype then you need to download the beta 2.0 version from the Skype Garage. It won't install however until you install libqt4-core and libqt4-gui. The latter won't install because it can't find an installation candidate for libaudio2. this thread on ubuntuforums.org explains how to install that.

• download skype beta 2 from http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu

Synaptic shows libaudio2 in the Xubuntu repositories since version 4…, as is libqt4 core and gui. you have to install libqt-gui to install eeeCamTray, so you may already have that, but all 3 of these are just in synaptic or can be gotten just by doing an apt-get
after downloading, I was told “All dependencies are satisfied” on xunbuntu, but I had previously installed libqt for eeecamtray — Rick Boatright 2007/12/29 00:06

You may find it easier to simply enable the medibuntu repositories (see below for getting codecs that way) and install Skype from there as this is now the 2.0 version. — Francis Turner

Easy Way to install Skype at your Eee-PC:

Use this script to install Skype 2.0.0.43 automaticly (use the script at your own risk): — x2on 2008/03/03 12:33

wget http://www.x2on.de/eeepc/skypeinstall && chmod +x keepassinstall && ./skypeinstall

Note: You can find the script also on http://code.google.com/p/eeescripts/ — x2on 2008/03/03 13:10

To install the newest Version of Pidgin (actually 2.4.0) you must first remove the old one:

sudo apt-get remove pidgin pidgin-data

Download the .deb packages from getdeb.net: pidgin pidgin-data libpurple0

Install the new Pidgin 2.4.0:

Open an Terminal and go to the downloadlocation:

sudo dpkg -i pidgin-data_2.4.0-1~getdeb1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i libpurple0_2.4.0-1~getdeb1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i pidgin_2.4.0-1~getdeb1_i386.deb

You can install Eclipse 3.2.2 easily with

sudo apt-get install eclipse

Install Eclipse 3.3.2:

To install the newer version of Eclipse you must download Eclipse 3.3.2 from here: Eclise 3.3.2 Open an terminal and copy the downloaded archiv to /opt and untar

sudo cp eclipse-SDK-3.3.2-linux-gtk.tar.gz /opt
sudo tar xfvz eclipse-SDK-3.3.2-linux-gtk.tar.gz

Make a symbolic link to eclipse:

ln -s /opt/eclipse/eclipse /usr/local/bin

You can run Eclipse with

eclipse

in the terminal or put an shortcut to the Desktop

There has been much discussion in the Xandros sections concerning setting the behaviour on battery exhaustion, opening and closing the lid etc. Under xubuntu the way to access the GUI interface for these options is to right-click on the battery icon in the system tray (Xandros requires manual mods to the scripts, apparently).

Provided you have enabled a swap partition you can, for example, set the EEE to hibernate instead of shutdown. This reduces boot time, allows you to carry on from where you left off and reduces your chances of losing work due to an unanticipated shutdown

When you're done downloading and installing packages with apt-get, it's a good idea to run

 sudo apt-get clean

to flush the package cache. This should free up some space on your SSD by clearing out all of the *.bin and *.deb files that are in /var/cache/apt and /var/cache/apt/archives.

When sudo apt-get remove xxxxx is run, it does not remove all of the files off of your system. The configuration files and the installation files still remain. The configuration files are typically very small, so they don't pose a threat to your overall disk space, but the installation files do. Clearing the apt cache removes these installation files.

Localepurge is an automatic utillity to remove unnecessary locale data.

Install the tool:

sudo apt-get install localepurge

Choose your locale: Always choose en and en_US* (For German Eee choose de and de_DE* too!)

Run

sudo localepurge

too remove unneeded locales

Littlefox

Littlebird

This removes one row of icons from the top. Combine this with a small icon them like the Littlebird theme to save quite a bit of space.

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird
2. Click on View → Toolbars → Customize
3. In the bottom left:
   Show: Icons
   Use Small Icons: “Checked”
4. With the “Customize Toolbar” window open, you will notice that if you move your cursor over the mail toolbar icons, your cursor changes to a hand. Move all of your icons from the main tool bar up one level to the right of “Help”.
5. Once you have all of the icons moved that you want moved, click “OK” on the Customize Toolbar box.
6. Click on View → Toolbars → Mail Toolbar to remove the check mark next to it.

If you want more working space on the 800×480 for your programs… you can install these themes:

This makes almost all the controls smaller. http://martin.ankerl.com/2007/11/04/clearlooks-compact-gnome-theme/

1. Download the tar file to your Desktop: http://martin.ankerl.com/files/ClearlooksCompact.tar.bz2
2. Right click on the file and select “Extract To”
3. In the text box beside “Location” type: /home/YOUR_LOGIN_NAME/.themes
   1. Don't forget the ”.“ before “themes”
   2. Remember to change YOUR_LOGIN_NAME to, well, your actual login name
4. Click the “Extract” button
5. Go to Menu→Settings→User Interface Settings and Select Clearlooks Compact from “Theme”

Very small but still usable. http://www.xfce-look.org/content/show.php/prelude-4?content=69300

Bigger and easier to use. http://www.xfce-look.org/content/show.php/Boto?content=58205

Information about installing themes in xfce4 can be found here