Adventures with the eeeeeeeee and Linux

[triskellian]

I have discovered that the eeeeeee with its default installation of Xandros won't work with Eduroam (the wireless system used by universities). No problem, I am assured, it works fine with Ubuntu, and there's an eeeee-specific version with handholdy instructions

Comments

[bateleur]

I recommend you ask on the forum. Chances are you're hitting some known problem.

Incidentally, your description above isn't enough to work out what you're doing. You say "these instructions" and link to a page which contains multiple sets of instructions for different procedures.

Would I be correct in assuming that you're running through the section "Detailed USB installer instructions" and that they fail at the point "Please insert your flash drive now"?

Assuming this is the case, what do you mean when you say that you "just run the script"? (For Linux debugging generally I'd recommend posting stuff exactly as typed/seen using
... to avoid confusion.)

In the unlikely event that the forum users can't help you, email me a copy of the mkusbinstall.sh script and I'll see if I can spot the bug.

[triskellian]

Yes, I do seem to have been rather vague, don't I? Sorry about that - was obviously flustered and tired.

You're right about where it's failing, but looking at it just now to confirm, I've spotted a place where I think I misinterpreted the instructions, so I'll have another go.

(I'm scared of posting in tech forums, but will do that if my next attempt doesn't work.)

[triskellian]

Ah-hah! A combination of poorly-written documentation and tired me was to blame for last night's failure - I now (at this very moment) have Ubuntu running from an SD card on the eeeeeeee. Latest 'opportunity' is to work out why it's not offering me any wireless... (typing this on the MacBook.)

[bateleur]

[_kent]

What model of Eee is it? I'd be surprised if an old install of eeeXubuntu was really what you needed there. I don't think they've been officially updating that in over a year.

[smiorgan]

Good point - although once triskellian can connect to the interweb she can do an update over the net to the latest stable version. Not so good if you can't connect via wireless, but the eee does have an ethernet port I believe

[_kent]

My suggestion would be to start with straight vanilla Ubuntu 8.10 or 9.04 Beta. I installed 9.04 Beta the other day, and that genuinely did work straight out of the box. I also tried Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but found that the swishy animations of the netbook specific launcher crawled on my older Eee (it's on of the older 900s before they started using Atom processor.) The basic Ubuntu 9.04 install works great.

[smiorgan]

Interesting - I was about to point at eeebuntu.org for the NBR, because of the FAQ:

Couldn't I Just Install Ubuntu?

Absolutely. However there are several important parts of the kernel which won't work if you install Ubuntu yourself (wifi, networking, function keys etc) and several important fixes that will prevent you from enjoying the full Ubuntu experience on your EeePC - in order to get those things working, you would need to install a custom kernel and make several changes to the configuration. Eeebuntu has all of those changes made by default. It works out of the box.

But if a base install of Ubuntu works, so much the better.

[secretrebel]

I need a new eeeeeevil inside icon.