Back to Xandros

Day 77

I have seriously trashed the eee in the past, and I really don't want to have to hit the F9 key at bootup ever again. It just takes too long to get things set up again.
- John MacGibbon

John posted that comment last Thursday, and I know his pain all too well. I have removed gOS from my Eee, and am once again using Xandros in advanced mode. This marks the second time I have abandoned another operating system and retreated back to the default OS for the Eee.

Here's the strange thing - every time I restore Xandros, I fail to reinstall a program that previously had no problem installing. I already lamented in several posts about the loss of kTorrent after I wiped the Eee while trying to install Ubuntu-Eee. I am now experiencing the same frustrations with video/audio player VLC.

I had it installed before, and I know I'm installing from the same source because I used my original post as a tutorial.

So John, consider yourself lucky.

This is what it looks like when I try to install VLC on my restored Eee.

At a Crossroads with gOS

Day 72

My wife is pregnant and ready to burst just about any day. This will be number two for us, and since moving into our new home last summer, I had successfully put off repainting the bedrooms. I came to terms that the task was inevitable, and pulled out my painting supplies over the Christmas break. It is obvious which room is for my daughter and which is for the new baby boy – one is sky blue, the other princess pink.

My wife has gone into full nesting mode, and every day there is a bit more done on the baby's nursery. The room looks great, but I grit my teeth every time I go in there. In one corner, there's an errant brush mark. In another corner, I got a speck of blue paint on the molding. And behind the door there's a spot I missed all together.

No one else would notice these things but me. My wife thinks I'm being neurotic, but I find flaws with my paint job every time I go in there. I know what I wanted the room to look like, and I know the spots that didn't come out the way I wanted.

This is how I'm beginning to feel about gOS on my Eee. If I handed my laptop to someone else, they wouldn't noticed the flaws this OS harbors. But I do, and just like paint on the molding, it drives me nuts.

I reached my boiling point today. Several of my students are planning on interviewing a contestant on this season's Ameican Idol. I was planning on using my Eee to record the conversation. Just a few hours before I was to make the call, I learned that the microphone does not work with gOS. I found some suggestions on the EeeUser forum, but none that guaranteed a quality recording. I had to postpone the interview.

I'm at a crossroads. Do I keep gOS or go back to Xandros? I'm going to try and reinstall Xandros onto an SD card so I can have the best of both worlds, but if that doesn't work, I think gOS is getting the boot.

Keyboard Shortcuts - gOS and the Eee

Day 69

I'm beginning to see why people prefer the Eee-specific distro remixes. While gOS runs well on the Eee, has great wifi connection rates, and is far easier than the default Xandros to find repositories for, it has some major gaps. Perhaps this can be an open invitation for someone to make an Eee-gOS. In the meantime, I keep getting hit with small, inconvenient surprises around every corner. For example, most of the keyboard shortcuts are dead. Only the brightness function buttons work. I missed the volume controls in particular, so I set out to try and reactivate them.

It seemed easy enough. In the Preferences menu, there is a keyboard shortcuts option. When I opened it, I saw that the volume controls were assigned some nonsensical characters. I wanted to change them back to their Xandros defaults – Fn+F7, Fn+F8, ect. Strange thing though – gOS doesn't seem to recognize the Fn key. I settled on changing them to use the Ctrl key instead.


I did a quick test run, and I watched as the icon at the top right of my screen changed according to my keystrokes. How easy is that!?

A little too easy, apparently, because it doesn't actually work. The shortcut commands go through the motions, but it doesn't control the volume. I still have to click on the icon and manually mute the Eee. It's kind of like Bernie Lomax. He walked around. He threw parties. He even had relations with a woman. But he was still dead. And so are my Fn shortcut keys.

This is kind of what my keyboard shortcuts look like.

Themes and Missing Sound Controls

Day 64

For me, Ubuntu is kind of like that first love you never forget. It was my first experience with Linux. Sure, I was inexperienced and not very picky (I chose Ubuntu because it was the fist distro to appear when I googled). I was awkward and kind of clumsy trying to navigate around command lines, tarballs, and repositories - the computer equivalent of hopelessly fumbling to unlatch that first bra. But the time we spent together really opened my eyes to the possibilities of Linux. Sadly, we eventually parted ways.

Looking back, there were things that I disliked about Ubuntu, but I was too clouded by puppy love to acknowledge. Aesthetically speaking, the default brown and orange color schemes are ugly. I like the green gOS theme much better. It doesn't look like the couch my parents got as a wedding present, and the icons are sleek too. GOS is like upgrading on that first love to find something that makes you feel good and makes for some nice arm candy.

The only problem with the default gOS theme is that the volume control faders are mysteriously absent. Volume can be adjusted by clicking on the + and - buttons, but it's clear something is missing. Apparently the faders are invisible in the gOS theme. Here's how to fix that.

1. Go to system preferences --> preferences --> appearances and choose a different theme. Doesn't matter which - it can even be ugly Ubuntu orange.
2. Open Synaptic and search for gos-theme. Mark it for removal and apply changes.
3. In Synaptic go to settings --> repositories --> third-party and add a new source - "deb http://software.thinkgos.com gadgets main"
4. Reload Synaptic, then search for gos-theme and reinstall. I was also prompted to update my system with a few additional files.
5. Go back into the appearance menu and select the default gOS theme. Your laptop will look just like it did before, only now your sound drop down will be equipped with a little green control orb.

A lot of work for a little green button.

Making Good on the Asus Eee PC

Day 63

During my recent attempts to begin networking my Eee with some other machines around the house, I decided to try and streamline the various operating systems that were in use. I have six machines running four different flavors of Linux, and two different versions of Windows. I read some release notes on Linux Mint, and thought to give that a go, but it was a catastrophic failure. I tried it on two different CDs as well as on a usb drive, but all of them froze up on each computer I tried. I was in the process of downloading the most recent Ubuntu .iso, when I stumbled upon Thinkgos. I have an older version of gOS on an old Compaq desktop, and it has always done the trick. The newest release, gOS Gadgets 3 looked fancier, so I figured I'd give it a go. And, since it's based on Ubuntu Hardy, I wouldn't be treading on entirely foreign soil.

The Download & Install
The .iso took much longer than I anticipated to download from the mirror link off the ThinkGOS site. Not a big deal – I left the laptop on overnight and started the install process the next morning. Using unetbootin, I created a usb for installation on the Eee. It let me take the operating system for a quick spin before commiting to the full install. I had pretty much bricked the Xandros install after tampering with some repositories and trying to install a Java player, so I just set Good OS, or gOS to install on the main SSD drive.

Replacing the Kernel
After installation, the only major glitch was the lack of wifi access. I found these instructions on how to customize the OS for the Eee by adding a new kernel. I was a bit intimidated by this (I equated it to fiddling around with a flux capacitor on a time machine), but the how-to was clear and surprisingly easy. After rebooting, wifi worked great – and actually connects much faster than it did under Xandros.

Updates and the Consequences
After enabling third party repositories in synaptic (settings → repositories → third-party), I was informed that there were about 200 updates available to my system. One of these was an upgrade to Firefox, which I soon found to be a bit much for the Eee. Firefox 3 (maybe because it's still in beta) was extremely slow and buggy, so I uninstalled 3.0 for the more stable 2.0 (instructions here). I also installed Opera – it's lightening fast, although not as reliable as Firefox. I'm finding myself using it for everything but the sites I know it doesn't load properly (my school email for example – the menus disappear).

Networking
The whole purpose for switching Linux flavors was to get the Eee to communicate with other computers. After installing gOS on two other machines, I decided to test out the networking capabilites. First, I had to allow myself permission to share a file. I went to system preferences → administration → authorizations and added myself to the list. After restarting, it was as easy as right clicking on a folder and choosing “sharing options.” My Eee was able to find and transfer files between the other two machines running gOS as well as the laptop with Windows XP, although the XP couldn't find the Linux machines. And to my advantage, gOS comes with VNC. This is an extremely easy-to-use remote access program. With it, I set up a computer with songbird and some external speakers and the Eee became a remote control for a stereo loaded with MP3s.

Final Thoughts
I gave myself a few days to test drive gOS before writing this, and I'm really enjoying it. Since it's based on Ubuntu/Gnome my comfort level is higher than it was initially with Xandros. Plus, because it's based on a major distrobution, I haven't had any problems finding packages that will run smoothly. It's not without some flaws, however - Firefox and wifi are examples. Because of this, gOS may not be the best choice for all you folks who received an Asus Eee PC for Christmas and are looking to do some revamping.

A view of the Asus Eee desktop running Good OS, or gOS