Do you still have an Eee 701 (4GB SSD version), and dont know what OS to put on it? Try Lubuntu 13.04 – it works perfectly, no tweaking, no problems. Just create a bootable USB memory using Unetbootin, boot it, try it, install it.
Of course, it is the 32-bit (x86) version of Lubuntu, that you should use.
Handbrake is a fantastic piece of software that I prefer to run on my Ubuntu machine, that I updated to 13.04 a little while ago.
There are Handbrake versions for Ubuntu available via the Stebbins PPA (thank you very much!).
At this time, no version for 13.04 (Raring Ringtail), only for older versions of Ubuntu. However, I found that the 12.10 (Quantal) version works perfectly with 13.04. You just need to:
Probably not so long until Stebbins releases for 13.04, but until then this might be useful for someone.
My private Linux workstation is an ASUS Barebone V3-M3N8200, equiped with an Athlon II @ 3GHz. Not the fanciest machine, but it is ok. As mentioned before I have had video-related problems when running Ubuntu on it. Well, it worked fine until 12.10, when I needed to fall back from proprietary Nvidia drivers to Nouveau drivers. That is just fine with me, except lately those drivers have not been working perfectly either (lightdm has not always started automatically, so I have needed to Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in, service lightdm restart…).
Everything applies to the x64-version. I dont bother with x86. I also use Xubuntu rather than Ubuntu, but I believe most of what I write is true for [L/K/X/Ed]Ubuntu.
So, I decided to give 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) a try before it is actually released.
Result first, for those who have Nvidia GeForce 8200 and problems with 13.04. LiveCD does not work at all. Upgrade from (fresh) 12.10 to 13.04 leaves you with unusuable system, unless you have SSH Server activated! To fix 13.04 ssh to the system, remove all nvidia drivers and nouveau drivers, and install nvidia-173.
Some more details follow.
13.04 LiveCD problems
The LiveCD starts, the screen goes black. Ctrl-Alt-F1 does nothing. I found no way forward. It could be that the Xserver starts correctly, and that Compiz crashes for some reason – I have no idea.
Upgrade from 12.10
Installing 12.10 works just fine. I update it completely. I install SSH-server and then upgrade to 13.04:
$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server $ update-manager -d
It can be a good idea to test the ssh-server, if nothing else to make sure you know your IP (hopefully you get the same after upgrade), before you go on with the upgrade. The upgrade is quite simple, just follow instructions.
For me, upgrade gave me an unusuable system, just like the LiveCD. But – I can now SSH into it!
Nouveau does not work
Noveau-driver, installed by default, and uninstalled and installed with:
$ sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau $ sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
does not work. Ctrl-Alt-F1 does not give me a console.
nvidia-current does not work
nvidia-current-driver, installed by default, and uninstalled and installed with:
$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
does not work. Ctrl-Alt-F1 does not give me a console.
nvidia-313-updates do not work
I installed those ones via the GUI (update-manager, Additional Drivers tab), and uninstalled with:
$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia-313-updates
I dont know what the “updates”-word mean in this situation. However, the 313-driver was a little better; Ctrl-Alt-F1 worked, and I could see boot-information (press C to abort disk checking…).
nvidia-173 works!
The old nvidia 173 driver works though (maybe thats why it is still there). Install with:
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-173
Make sure you have purged all the other drivers.
Submitting a bug? Helping out?
There are many registered Ubuntu-bugs related to Nouveau and/or GeForce 8200. Many of them are old. Some seem to overlap. Some seem to more or less describe my problem. I dont really know if this is a Nouveau-problem, a problem for Nvidia, or a problem for Canonical. I am willing to give more information, logs, or test stuff if anyone is interested, but for now, no submitted bug.
Innocently I decided to just upgrade my desktop Ubuntu PC to 12.10 (from 12.04). I say innocently, because nowadays I just expect Ubuntu to work – better so than Windows which often causes weird problems.
I was a bit disappointed though. I upgraded using the GUI tools, just pretending I knew nothing and cared nothing about the process and just wanted it complete.
When the computer restarted I was met by
error: file not found. grub resque>
Haha! Not. I mean, what would normal people do now? Consider files lost and go shop a new computer? This disappoints me, because my computer has updated kernel/reinstalled GRUB several times since I installed 12.04. And I dont edit grub config files just to mess with Ubuntu (I only do that when it refuses to boot).
I am not going to tell you about all my failed attempts to fix the problem, but I will tell you what worked. I have two hard drives in my computer, like this:
sda1: boot sda2: home sdb1: root sdb2: (big backup data partition)
Naturally, BIOS boots sda (where boot is). Now, after Ubuntu upgraded, it obviously put GRUB on sdb, and telling BIOS to boot sdb instead of sda fixed the problem. My /boot on sda is still in use. What assumption is it, to assume that GRUB should be installed on the drive where / is, regardless where /boot is, and regardless where GRUB used to be installed? I am not going to investigate this further now, my computer boots and I have more problems to solve 
Next problem… Ubuntu starts and the display just turns black… CTRL-ALT-F1 works and gives me a console. Obviously something fishy with the X-server. Well, my computer has an onboard Nvidia 8200 and in the past I have been struggling a little with it. However, with 12.04 it worked out of the box. I tried
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-experimental-310
No success. Turns out, however that:
$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current
(and/or whatever nvidia drivers you have installed) makes Ubuntu fall back to the Nouveau drivers, and those seem to work very fine. I dont expect (or need) much 3D acceleration, but 2D performance seems good so far.
Installing Citrix in Linux is always a hazzle. The following worked for me on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 12.04.
Prerequisites (amd64):
$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch:i386 $ sudo apt-get install libmotif4:i386
Prerequisites (i386):
$ sudo apt-get install libmotif4
Now choosing Citrix version was not so easy… I found:
icaclient_12.0.0_amd64.deb (failed to meet dependencies) icaclient_12.1.0_amd64.deb (failed to meet dependencies) icaclient_12.0.0_i386.deb (OK! - both i386 & amd64) icaclient_12.1.0_i386.deb (broken gzip!!!) linuxx86-12.0.0.189834.tar.gz (did not test) linuxx86-12.1.0.203066.tar.gz (broken gzip!!!)
The amd64 bit packages do not seem to contain a 64-bit Citrix client. They are just built to install cleanly on a 64-bit system, but it doesn’t on Ubuntu 12.04 (perhaps better luck in Debian). The broken gzip-errors were really weird.
amd64 specific plugin issues
Now when Citrix is installed it can be useful to know that it ends up in /opt/Citrix. That is, on amd64, you need to tell Firefox to open ica-files with /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/wfica. The plugin /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/npica.so appears to be i386 (no suprise) and will not work with amd64. I tried to install firefox:i386 instead of the amd64-version, but then none of the other plugins worked. It is probably possible to fix, but I will not.
Certificates
Also, you (may) need to fix certificates:
zo0ok@oden:/opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore$ ls cacerts zo0ok@oden:/opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore$ sudo mv cacerts cacerts.orig zo0ok@oden:/opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla cacerts
Finally
Finally, Citrix receiver 12.0 works nicely in Unity and Ubuntu 12.04. This was not the case a few versions ago.
Summary: add an 8GB SD card to your Eee 701 an install Ubuntu 12.04 on it! I believe Ubuntu has improved for this netbook with every release and now it is really nice.
Ubuntu 12.04 is the best Linux distribution and operating system for the Eee 701. This is with 1GB RAM. Not so sure about running with original 512Mb.
You need to make a little fix to run the CPU at 900MHz instead of 630MHz (if you want to).
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install cpufreqd cpufrequtils $ sudo modprobe p4_clockmod $ cat /proc/cpuinfo (should tell you CPU runs 900MHz) $ sudo vi /etc/modules (add p4_clockmod on a line, to make it work after reboot)
On disk usage and partitioning
I choose to partition putting /var on a 1.5GB partition on the SD card, and use the rest of the SD card for /usr. The root partition (/) goes on the internal SSD, giving me more than 3GB for fast /home (also on /, to be clear). No swap. I use ext2 for all filesystems (journaling can hardly be faster than not journaling).
The great thing compared to earlier versions of Ubuntu, is that with final 12.04 Ubuntu recognizes the SD card as installable media. It will not complain that the 4GB SSD is not enough as it used to!
Update: Install 12.04 on Eee 701
I have been running Xubuntu a while on my Eee 701. However the 4 GB SSD drive is not enough for making system updates anymore. I could probably get rid of some applications to fix it, but I decided to try Ubuntu 12.04 instead. To improve the storage situation I got an 8GB SD Card. I have 1GB of RAM in this Eee 701, and perhaps the original 512Mb is not enough for Ubuntu.
Note, with the small 800×480 display, Alt-F7 helps you move windows around.
The disk limit
The Ubuntu installer complains that it does not have 8.6GB available. It seams it knows that it needs 4.3GB, but it wants extra space… and, I dont think it reconizes the SD Card as a legal place to install. Anyway, there is a file where you can make a change:
/usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/ubi-prepare.py min_disk_size = size * 2
Replace the 2 with for example 0.5, and you can attempt any configuration you want.
Partitioning and disk usage
When installing, I had the following drives:
/dev/sda -- 4GB (internal SSD) /dev/sdb -- USB memory that I install from /dev/sdc -- 8GB (SD Card)
I decided to try the following partitioning:
/dev/sda1 -- 128 MB /boot (24 MB used)
sda5 -- 3.8 GB /home (empty)
/dev/sdc1 -- 8 GB / (3.8 GB used, usr=3.2GB, var=423Mb, lib=176Mb)
The safer alternative would be to put / on sda, and /usr on sdc (but that would leave me with 600Mb less space for home).
Boot issues
Two possible problems with my setup:
Second problem should be easy to fix.
So, after installing, I rebooted WITH install USB memory stick (sbd) still inserted. And the system boots perfectly. I attempt a boot without the memory stick inserted. As I feared, root filesystem is not found, but I get a prompt (not a Panic like in the old days):
BusyBox v1.18.5... Enter 'help'... (initramfs)
I boot back into Ubuntu (so I put the USB stick back – and now sbc is root again) to fix Grub. Now, this is how grub works… you edit /etc/default/grub and/or files in /etc/grub.d/. Then you run grub-update. However, this procedure automatically figures out your root device, and that is what you want to change… so I did the forbidden:
sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.cfg
and replaced root=/dev/sdc1 with root=/dev/sdb1. Finally, I ran
sudo /usr/sbin/grub-setup /dev/sda
And shutdown, remove memory stick, and boot… and it works! To make sure everything is in order, I now automatically generate /boot/grub/grub.cfg
sudo update-grub sudo /usr/sbin/grub-setup /dev/sda
And confirm with another reboot.
I believe that now everything weird I have done is history, and I have a clean system. Booting is actually reasonably fast from SD Card. Probably using the internal SSD for / would give better performance.
Updated disk usage
After updating the Beta to latest everything, this is how disk usage looks like:
8.6M bin 48M boot 15M etc 288M lib 106M opt 8.8M sbin 3.3G usr 894M var
Could be interesting for those of you who wants to install on limited disk. Probably /var can be reduced (and will grow when updating the system). Chrome is installed in /opt.
Raise CPU from 630Mhz to 900MHz
The Eee 701 is equipped with a 900MHz CPU clocked at 630MHz. It is perfectly fine to run at 900MHz, especially when plugged in to AC. This is what I did:
sudo apt-get install cpufreqd cpufrequtils sudo modprobe p4_clockmod # now check with cat /proc/cpuinfo sudo vim /etc/modules # add p4_clockmod
If you are not connected to AC, the cpu will run slower. See /etc/cpufreqd.conf.
Moving / to SSD?
Now that I know how much disk space is required it is tempting to move / to the SSD (sda). I did some read/write performance tests…
SSD (sda) SD (sdb)
Write 1GB 44s 327s
Read 1GB 35s 64s
At my company there are several internal Windows web servers using AD and Kerberos single sign on. That means, on a Windows computer with Internet Explorer, I dont need to authenticate to access those web servers. Using Firefox, I have to give username and password to each and every site. This article tells how I made single sign on work with firefox.
Ubuntu (Natty) client with Firefox 4
First, Kerberos needs to be installed, which obviously was not default in Ubuntu Natty. When running kinit I got the following:
$ kinit No command 'kniit' found, did you mean: Command 'kinit' from package 'heimdal-clients' (universe) Command 'kinit' from package 'krb5-user' (main)
I guessed correctly and installed krb5-user:
$ sudo apt-get install krb5-user
That installation asked me for my realm (or something), and I gave the internal DNS domain name, which is on the form:
ad.mycompany.intra
The servers I want to access are called things like:
http://intranet.ad.mycompany.intra http://server321.ad.mycompany.intra http://portal.ad.mycompany.intra
This realm was then stored in the kerberos configuration file:
# /etc/krb5.conf
[libdefaults]
default_realm = AD.MYCOMPANY.INTRA
Now running kinit asked me for my password, I authenticated successfully. My username on my Ubuntu client happened to be the same as my username in Active Directory:
zo0ok@zo0ok-workstation:~$ kinit Password for zo0ok@AD.MYCOMPANY:INTRA: zo0ok@zo0ok-workstation:~$ klist Ticket cache: FILE:/tmp/krb5cc_1000 Default principal: zo0ok@AD.MYCOMPANY.INTRA Valid starting Expires Service principal 05/26/11 13:10:39 05/26/11 23:11:09 krbtgt/AD.MYCOMPANY.INTRA@AD.MYCOMPANY.INTRA renew until 05/27/11 13:10:39 zo0ok@zo0ok-workstation:~$ kdestroy zo0ok@zo0ok-workstation:~$
Above example authenticates, lists my tickets and destroys them.
Now it is time for Firefox configuration. In the URL-field, type about:config. You may get a warning about dangerous things and voiding warranty. Proceed and you get to a page with very many configurations. We want to set:
network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris = .ad.mycompany.intra
I have been told the . before ad is important. Not sure. It should also be possible to include more servers/domains using , between them. I dont know exactly how flexible the field is, but the above setting works for me.
Now, I can single sign on to internal webpages using Firefox on Linux! Note that I have to authenticate using the “kinit” command. It does not work to authenticate to one site in Firefox, and hope to get SSO to all the others.
I rarely upgrade my operating systems. Installing from scratch and migrating my files usually gives a more predictable result. Mac OS X is usually fine to upgrade.
So, I decided to try to upgrade my x64 workstation running Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04, and to do it the normal user-way.
In conclusion everything went just fine. The upgrade took roughly 3h on a 3GHz Dual Core Athlon x64 with an old-style SATA drive (tempting to get an SSD drive), with a 10Mbit internet connection.
Grub Question
I got a scary question from Grub: do you want to keep your grub configuration, use the maintainers version, or [plenty of other options]? I dont remember editing my Grub configuration. I have a Windows 7 system as well that I want to be able to boot. Anyway, I choose to install the new version and pray. It went all fine. But, for a user upgrade, that question did not feel so comfortable.
Extra PPA repositories
I had installed software from non-standard repositories (latest version of Shotwell and Handbrake). Those programs simply did not exist when I had upgraded. I did not get any warnings or questions, they just disappeared.
Skype and DropBox did work after the upgrade though. DropBox works, but the DropBox icon (some kind of nautilus-plugin) is lost in Unity. Starting the Dropbox application (which exists) does not do anything. So, I really dont know if I can reconfigure or manage dropbox from Unity, or if I can monitor my transfers.
Unity
Well, it will take time to get used to Unity. I did not love Gnome, and I like the Unity vision and idea better. So, I have decided to live with it and try to enjoy it. All my Compiz configurations were gone, perhaps it is possible to restore them. What currently disturbs me the most with Unity is that the Icons are so large, and that I have to click “see 31 more results” when there would be room for all of them at once.
Also, the menu bar is empty (cant see File, Edit, etc) until I move the mouse there. Well, it looks clean, but it can hardly help productivity.
I have not noticed any performance problems with video etc.
Citrix / LibMotif
A nice thing is is that Natty comes with Libmotif4, not Libmotif3, which makes Citrix ICA client work out of the box without stupid symlinks.
After the relative success with with my EEE 701 I decided to give my EEE 1101 a try. First, there are official Ubuntu instructions how to run Ubuntu on a computer with gma500 (poulsbo) graphics chipset. I post the link because it is surprisingly hard to find it using google. Note that they updated that page just about an hour before I write this.
Natty (Ubuntu 11.04)
First I gave Natty a try (the Ubuntu page was not so discouraging a few days ago). It did not work at all, and since it is not supposed to work, I am not going to explain what I went through.
Maverick (Ubuntu 10.10)
Maverick installs without much problem on the EEE 1101, using a slow VESA-mode (or something) at 1024×768. As soon as I was done with the installation I upgraded (apt-get update, apt-get upgrade) and then followed the instructions. The first command (add-apt-repository) gave some GPG-key complains, but I found out it was ok to proceed anyways. The other commands went all fine. I rebooted, and everything was fine.
Unity
I decided to try Unity on this machine with Maverick. I found installation instructions for Unity and followed them. Unity did not work at all. The “dock” did not render properly. The “menu” did not render properly. The computer felt very slow. I gave up.
External display
I use this netbook at work, and it is common that I connect it to a projector during a meeting. This has before stopped me from running Ubuntu on it. Well, I found out that:
Having your laptop display black, and the external display working, can be worthless, useful, or perfect, depending on situation. The Gnome monitor application is not really designed to do this kind of switch only, so it is a little cumbersome, but it works.
Flash performance
YouTube video performance is bad. 240-resolution flows. At higher resolution, and full screen, the jerkiness and lost frames make it unpleasant to view. Facebook games like CityVille are painfully slow to play. To be fair, I think this is very slow in Windows too, on this computer. (I will double check some day)