How to Install Fonts on the Asus Eee PC

Day 87

On day 15 I wrote about how easy it is to install fonts on the Eee, but tonight I ran into a little snag. After downloading about 15 zip files from 1001freefonts, I was faced with the arduous task of unzipping each and then manually right-clicking on each font file and installing. Each zip archive had several files (italic, condensed, sans serif, etc), so I was looking at probably close to 50 files that needed to be installed.

Here's how to install multiple fonts on the Eee PC in about 30 seconds.

First, unzip all font files. Mine were saved to the desktop, so my commands looked like this:

cd Desktop
unzip '*.zip'

At this point my desktop was covered with files. Instead of dealing with them, I opened the font installer:

kcmshell kcmfontinst

From there, all I had to do was click on "add fonts" and highlight the files from my desktop. Super easy.

Get Around Flash Videos that Crash Firefox

Day 48

I blogged on day 24 the woes of watching flash videos with Firefox. Every third video or so will cause Firefox (and sometimes the entire Eee) to freeze for about a minute before presenting a pop up asking if you want to terminate the program. Conveniently, when Firefox restarts it asks if you'd like to restore tabs from the previous session. I could live with this if I didn't have to wait for the error message - it feels like forever when you're anxiously waiting to Barry Maniroll yourself.


Here's a simple workaround. Instead of starting Firefox by double clicking on the icon or choosing it from the launch menu, open it using the console. In easy mode, press ctrl+alt+t, or in advanced mode select it from launch-->applications-->systems (I actually have it added to my desktop for quick access). Simply type "Firefox" and hit enter. You can even add a web address in the console to save a step once Firefox is open.

The advantage to this is that if/when a flash video freezes, you don't have to wait for the termination message to display. Simply close the console, and Firefox will terminate. When you reload it, it will ask if you want to continue from where you left off.

This doesn't fix the Linux/Flash problem, but using the console does make it a bit more tolerable.

Problems with Shell Console

Day 41

I was trying to work through some command line tutorials and the console kept messing with the text I was entering. Every few minutes it would start entering text with space between each letter so that it l o o k e d l i k e t h i s. Needless to say, my console commands didn't work very well.

I have no idea why this was happening, and that only added to the frustration. The only way to fix the problem was to close the shell and then open a new one.