Tag Archives: EeePC
Me and My Eee – Fedora 13 Review
Now before I begin, I’ve been holding off from installing Fedora 13 since I have been waiting for an update to Ahmad Abdel-Yaman’s custom Fedora Netbook Kernel. I’ll talk about that a bit later on in the review. Anyway, lets begin:
My Experience
So I’ve been using Fedora 13 on my Netbook as a main Operating System for a while now. Once again, I installed Fedora via USB Booting the live image, though this time I believed I used the offical Fedora Live USB Creator since I find that Fedora hass a few issues with Ubootnetin. I had no real issue with the process of creating a live USB with the problem, but it is worth noting that it’s 28MB compared to Jolicloud’s USB Creator which is only 7MB. (Jolicloud is a cloud OS based off of Ubuntu) So the creator itself is a little bloated, in my opinion.
Anyway the installation is fairly straight forward, it’s got a nice clean GUI and you just go through each step such as selecting your language, keyboard layout, location and partition layout etc. After that installation process has finished you will be then greeted with a “First time usage” screen, here you’ll be able to set up user accounts like your root user, time and date and you even have the choice to send off a profile of what computer hardware you are using. This is useful for the devdelopers at the Fedora Project since it gives them a good indication what hardware is still widely being used.
After that you have finally finished setting up your Fedora OS. The screenshot below is a screenshot of my current fedora desktop on my Eeepc, I’ve customised it to my liking by giving it a cool Android wallpaper and changed the panel images so it gives it a nice transparent appearance.
The Pro
The one thing I love about Fedora on a Netbook is the fan’s contribution improving the experience of Fedora on a Netbook, specially a fan called Ahmad Abdel-Yaman. He is the developer of a custom kernel for Fedora that is designed for Netbooks. His Kernel has been useful for Fedora Netbook users for the past 3 or so releases of Fedora.
This custom Kernel for Netbooks remove uneccesary files from the offical Netbook Kerenel so it reduces the actual size of the Kerenel as well as drastically improving boot times. On his website that can be found here, states that Fedora 13 with the stock kerenel takes about 27 Seconds to boot on his Eee Pc 901 and the reported size of the stock kerenel is 20MB.With his Netbook Kerenel it takes about 18 Seconds to boot and only takes up 7.2MB so as you can see it’s made quite a difference.
The programs that come installed on Fedora are fairly interesting even though there isn’t a lot of them. One program I found useful was the Twitter Client called Pino. this is similar to Ubuntu 10.04′s Twitter Client that is pre-installed called Gwibber.
One program that I was surpised to find on here was a Project Management program for Gantt etc, it has a much easier/cleaner layout than compared to Microsoft Project 2002 which I have used for a subject at my college for Project Management.
The Cons
This is another solid Linux distribution that I find hard to find any major flaws with. The only issue I have really found when using Fedora is these annoying error messages that take up quite a lot of screen space, especially on a netbook. I think there are a few hacks around to disable the service, but it’s just not worth the fuss since it only happens now and then.
Conclusion
Like I said previously this is yet another great solid Linux distribution, even though that Fedora 13 was delayed twice it was definately worth the wait!
I’m going to give Fedora 13… 5 E’s out of 5.
EEEEE
That’s it for now, I hope you’ve enjoyed the return of my “Me and my Eee” project. So what’s next? Well I’m going to run down the top 10 programs for a Windows Netbook, how to optimize a Windows Netbook and also I’ve recently discovered Peppermint OS which sounds very exciting so I’m going to give that a wiz.
Me and My Eee – Eeebuntu 3.0 Review
Introduction
Hello there, welcome to the very first edition of “Me and my Eee” a project I’ve been planning on doing for some time now. (Was even thinking about making a separate blog for it) This project is mainly about my personal reviews on certain topics surrounding the tiny machines called Netbooks. I fell in love with these underpowered machines ever since I laid my eyes on them, they’re great!
These articles aren’t going to be your bog standard review but more of a “Journal” approach to things such as Operating Systems (Yes, I’m an OS Hopper), cool accessories or any awesome Netbook oriented software and games, just so people can have a better idea at what the daily experience is like before they try it out for themselves (I’m sure you don’t want to waste your time and money, do you?) Before I begin I’d like to introduce you to my Eee.
My 904HD Model Eeepc, an Eeepc if you already didn’t know is Asus’ brand of Netbooks. Here are the basic specs of my Netbook:
80GB Hard Drive
900 MHz Intel Celeron Processor
2GB of RAM (Upgraded from 1GB)
Intel 915GM Graphics Card
So as you can see it’s not too bad for your average Netbook. It’s not designed to be a high performance gaming machine but a portable device to read the odd email, play a few classic games, chat and browse the internet. You get the idea. Anyway on with the show!
My Experience
So this is Eeeubuntu 3.0, based off of Ubuntu 8.04 but more directed at Netbook users, if you don’t know already Ubuntu is one of the most Linux Distributions available to download for free. I’ve used Eeeubuntu 3.0 for a while in the past before and have recently reinstalled it since I’m in need of a Windows 7 product key. So it’s was sort of Substitute for the time being… Well that’s what I thought until I actually started to mess around with it for an hour of two.
Once I installed it (In a matter of minutes) I decided to have a little play around with it, just customizing a few things and just giving it my personal touch and of course doing what I like to do best, optimize and remove crap from the OS in order to give it a faster boot time and of course make it more responsive when actually using the Operating System.
The above screenshot is what my desktop currently looks like, First thing first was too change the background image to a cute “Netbook Resolution Optimized” image (1024×600) of Lego Stars Wars… On Bikes! I did a few more cool things like implement the Aero Snap features from Windows 7 into Eeeubuntu 3.0 using this guide.
After I’ve finished designing it to my liking and installing the essential programs for my daily usage such as Google Chrome and LAMPP, a Linux version of the software XAMPP, I gave it a quick reboot, 45 Seconds on battery mode, not bad at all really, it’s tolerable. There is definitely more stuff to take out to reduce that boot time too, I just did the usual things like stop any unwanted start-up programs, removed the boot splash screen, etc.
The Pros
Eeeubuntu 3.0 is definitely worth getting over the standard version of Ubuntu, my personal reason behind this is that the pre-installed software that comes with Eeeubuntu 3.0 is so much better for me, personally, than what comes with the bog standard Ubuntu, such as aMSN, a Linux Client for Windows Live Messenger, the interface is very similar to the official client, especially if you download the MSN Version 7 skin. It also comes with a pre-installed application that gives you control over various hardware inside your netbook by a single click of a button! Such as CPU Scaling, Enabling/Disabling hardware such as WiFi and Webcam which is very useful when you’re on battery power and you want to save every last bit of energy.
Another little bit that I love about this OS is that the developers have made a dock to launch all your favourite applications straight from your desktop using just one single GNOME panel, this is such a great idea since it means you won’t have to download any fancy programs such as Avant Window Navigator.
The Cons
The only major con is that it’s quite old now, a few of the repositories are now dead, but don’t worry there is a forth version currently in development, you can download it by going to their site at: www.eeebuntu.org
Conclusion:
If you want a clean, simple and yes USEFUL Linux Distribution for your everyday netbook needs then this is perfect! Especially if you don’t have the time to customize a standard Ubuntu installation in order to make it friendlier for a Netbook.
I’m going to give Eeeubuntu 3.0 a perfect 5 E’s out of Five!
EEEEE
Not bad for the first OS to be reviewed! Let’s see if other Operating Systems can live up to Eeeubuntu 3.0!
And that’s all from me today, folks! Sorry it’s a bit of a mismatched review, but hey give me a break it’s my very first review ;] Hopefully the articles will get a better structure once I get writing more. Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully be downloading the latest Ubuntu Beta and see how that performs on a Netbook and hopefully have a review up next weekend. But until then…
OVER AND OUT!
