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Eeebuntu / Ubuntu Linux on the Asus Eee PC S101

Last weekend I’ve got an Eee PC S101, now I’ve got time to test it: I’m writing some notes here sharing the first experience with the S101 and useful links for installation. After delivery I’ve upgraded the netbook to 2 GB RAM using a Kingston 2GB 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 SO DIMM module. The S101 came with Windows XP. Though I’m mainly using Ubuntu Linux I decided to keep XP for compatibility reasons but to install a double boot system with Linux and Windows. I’ve used the free EASEUS Partition Master 3.5 Home Edition to resize the XP partition to 8 GB, that worked fine. I installed the Gavotte RAM disk and linked tmp and temp directory there as well as the browser cache to speed up work and to save SSD life time. For the TeX work I’ve added TeXnicCenter and MiKTeX. I’ve chosen MiKTeX because it’s been a great distribution since many years, further I’ve already planned to install the alternative TeX Live 2008 on the Linux partition.

But the Windows installation wasn’t the main issue – back to Linux. I decided to install Eeebuntu, in particular the Eeebuntu Netbook Remix 2.0. After downloading the Eeebuntu NBR iso file I’ve used Unetbootin to save that iso image to the SD card that came with the S101 and to make the SD card bootable. The S101 is able to boot from the SD card, so I did it, the Eeebuntu live system started, using this I installed Eeebuntu to the remaining free 8 GB space on the internal SSD. That was done quickly, not much to tell. The GRUB boot manager has been installed and allows me to choose between Ubuntu Linux and Windows. Ubuntu runs fine now, I’ve also linked the Firefox browser cache to the RAM disk located on /dev/shm.

Finally I’ve installed Kile by Synaptic and TeX Live 2008 over the internet using the small network installer package. The latter took some time but required few interaction. Even after it failed because of a network disconnection restarting it just continued the installation with the same settings. After adding some tools and of course some math software I’m very satisfied with it and I’m using it right now.

20. April 2009 by stefan
Categories: Uncategorized | 14 comments