So, I'm a few more weeks into using my Asus Eee 1215B netbook. I'm still very happy with it. It's nice and light and the battery life is wonderful. I've been having a lot of issues with it and Linux compatibility, however. I had to run Ubuntu 11.10 Beta-1 in order to resolve a suspend/resume issue I was having. Overall 11.10 is pretty stable but I did run into a few instances here and there where an application would crash, normally a background application though. In addition, I found another particularly annoying bug with the Fn-F9 key. This key combination disables the touchpad, which can actually be kind of useful if I'm typing a lot, and while the first time you press the button it works as it's supposed to (IE turns off the touchpad) I have yet to find a way to turn it back on short of re-creating my home directory. After doing this several times yesterday to fix my accidental button presses (the volume button is right next to the trackpad button) I decided to try something else. I checked out the top picks on the Distrowatch page. There I found a few candidates to try out.
The first candidate was Bodhi linux. I had heard good things about it it and I wanted to give it a shot. Bodhi is an Ubuntu based distribution that uses the Enlightenment E17 window manager. I've always wanted to try that windows manager out. I was sorely disappointed, however, to find that the installer would get stuck at a snowy looking still image at boot and would not move forward. Both the normal and "failsafe" install methods exhibited this same behavior.
The second candidate was Lubuntu 11.04. This is an Ubuntu derivative which uses the LXDE desktop environment. I was again disappointed, though not terribly surprised, that Lubuntu 11.04 had the same suspend/resume issue that Ubuntu 11.04 did.
The third candidate, Crunchbang 10 "statler", is a distro I use on my older Pentium III laptop. It's extremely light weight and based off of the Debian/GNU Linux operating system. I was more successful with Crunchbang than I had been so far with the others. It booted up fine (and quick) but sadly to a 1024x768 resolution. The 1215B has a widescreen monitor so this didn't look quite right. Upon further investigation, this appears to be a known issue with the Radeon HD6250 video cards and is only a problem in the live environment. I will likely return to Crunchbang if Lubuntu 11.10 Beta-1 does not prove any better.
This brings me to the distro I'm currently trying out, Lubuntu 11.10 Beta-1. Again, based off of the Ubuntu 11.10 Beta-1 I was using previously, I expect it to have some of the same bugs, most notably the touchpad issue mentioned early.
I'll add a quick follow up after I settle on a distribution to report on what I ended up with. Though I have a feeling it's going to be Crunchbang 10 from the looks of it.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 on an Asus eee 1215B
I purchased an Asus eee 1215B netbook recently with the intent of replacing my IBM T61 for day to day mobile computing. The computer, from the factory comes with a dual core 1Ghz AMD Fusion C-50 APU. It's also equipped with 1GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250GB HDD. I was able to get the laptop for a very reasonable price so I was able to treat it to a 4GB kit of DDR3 and a 60GB OCZ Agility3 SSD. For an operating system I chose Ubuntu 11.04 (before you say I made a typo, keep reading). My first impression with this combination of hardware and software was impressive. I had believed that the 1Ghz processor would hamper performance and that the integrated graphics chip would cause Unity to be sluggish. I was happy to find that I was very wrong. The performance of this little computer couldn't really be any better. You do notice a little lag here and there, but overall, it's very usable. I did find one small annoyance, however. The Radeon drivers included with Ubuntu 11.04 have a bug that prevents the laptop from resuming from suspend successfully. After a bit of digging on the Ubuntu forums, I discovered I was (thankfully) not the only person experiencing this issue and that some had had success upgrading to 11.10 Beta 1. I gave it a shot and got off to a bit of rough start. I had tried installing the proprietary (full 3D acceleration support) Radeon drivers and noticed visual artifacts after resuming from suspend. After removing the proprietary drivers the video never returned to normal so I re-installed. After I re-installed, I avoided installing the proprietary drivers (the default open source ones seem to work just fine) and worked, and is currently working, just fine.
I've been using the laptop for about a week now and I'm very very happy with it's performance. It boots up in just a few seconds and the battery lasts for about 8 hours. I replaced the hard drive with the SSD to increase the battery life and it appears to have had the desired affect as several reviews about the laptop claimed the battery lasted only about 6 hours. There is a little bit of graphical lag from time to time while under heavy processor load, but this was expected given the low end processor. Firefox, however, as well as some of the other commonly used applications open just moments after clicking them open and are just as snappy as my desktop once open.
One of my only complaints about this laptop is that you have to take the whole machine apart and void your warranty to replace the hard drive. Doing this is not particularly difficult but there are several tabs around the edges of the plastic pieces which break very easily while disassembly. I've noticed that the corners of the laptop do not sit flush any more since replacing the hard drive, now, due to some broken plastic clips. I believe Asus could have done a better job of taking a queue from other IBM's T series laptops and skip the clips all together (or just make the laptop more easily removed). Another small annoyance is that the keyboard is held secure underneath by small strips of adhesive padding. once you remove the keyboard once, however, it never quite sticks right anymore and gives the keyboard a slightly loose, almost cheap, feel. This was just yet another disappointment about the build quality of the machine.
All told the laptop is reasonable. While the build quality leaves a bit more to desire. The fact that it came with a price tag of just around $250 ($400 with all upgrades) and was able to replace my T61 for every day mobile computing. It's good for the price and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a highly mobile computer. If you need a smaller footprint Asus also offers a 10" model as well.
I've been using the laptop for about a week now and I'm very very happy with it's performance. It boots up in just a few seconds and the battery lasts for about 8 hours. I replaced the hard drive with the SSD to increase the battery life and it appears to have had the desired affect as several reviews about the laptop claimed the battery lasted only about 6 hours. There is a little bit of graphical lag from time to time while under heavy processor load, but this was expected given the low end processor. Firefox, however, as well as some of the other commonly used applications open just moments after clicking them open and are just as snappy as my desktop once open.
One of my only complaints about this laptop is that you have to take the whole machine apart and void your warranty to replace the hard drive. Doing this is not particularly difficult but there are several tabs around the edges of the plastic pieces which break very easily while disassembly. I've noticed that the corners of the laptop do not sit flush any more since replacing the hard drive, now, due to some broken plastic clips. I believe Asus could have done a better job of taking a queue from other IBM's T series laptops and skip the clips all together (or just make the laptop more easily removed). Another small annoyance is that the keyboard is held secure underneath by small strips of adhesive padding. once you remove the keyboard once, however, it never quite sticks right anymore and gives the keyboard a slightly loose, almost cheap, feel. This was just yet another disappointment about the build quality of the machine.
All told the laptop is reasonable. While the build quality leaves a bit more to desire. The fact that it came with a price tag of just around $250 ($400 with all upgrades) and was able to replace my T61 for every day mobile computing. It's good for the price and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a highly mobile computer. If you need a smaller footprint Asus also offers a 10" model as well.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Diaspora, Coming Soon?
I'll cut to the chase. For those who have not heard of Diaspora, it's a new way of thinking about social networks. While that might be partly (or mostly) my own personal opinion, it's at least partly true. Diaspora is going to allow users to do something that's never been done before in the social network arena, manage their own data. The idea behind Diaspora is that users run their own servers and manage their own data. Think of it like the limewire of social networks (ok maybe a bad analogy). Enough of my idle chit-chat and hyping, check out the project for yourself here at The Diaspora Alpha sign up page.
My reason for bringing this up now is that I just got an email from the development team informing me that I have been chosen to join the beta and would be receiving my invite within the next month or possibly even sooner. Now, not that it's required or anything but I think I may finally jump on the opportunity to also try out one of those Plug Computers based on the ARM processor and running Debian 6 (or Ubuntu if possible).
So, that's all for now. I just wanted to jump in and shout out to the Diaspora team for keeping on top of the project and not letting the incredible amount of work required for this project to keep them from their goals. I also wanted to let those who had not heard of it before or who had forgotten about the project know that they should sign up for the Alpha if they want to try it out, and I think everyone should as it has potentially huge implications in the future of how the world uses social networks.
My reason for bringing this up now is that I just got an email from the development team informing me that I have been chosen to join the beta and would be receiving my invite within the next month or possibly even sooner. Now, not that it's required or anything but I think I may finally jump on the opportunity to also try out one of those Plug Computers based on the ARM processor and running Debian 6 (or Ubuntu if possible).
So, that's all for now. I just wanted to jump in and shout out to the Diaspora team for keeping on top of the project and not letting the incredible amount of work required for this project to keep them from their goals. I also wanted to let those who had not heard of it before or who had forgotten about the project know that they should sign up for the Alpha if they want to try it out, and I think everyone should as it has potentially huge implications in the future of how the world uses social networks.
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