How Not To Set Up Beryl on the Eee

Day 88

One of the things that originally hooked me on Linux was the eye candy of Compiz-Fusion. It didn't really make me more productive or the machine more capable of doing anything, but it sure was cool to show to friends and then mockingly compare to their lame Windows computers.

Today I decided to get Compiz working on the Eee. I checked Synaptic and Compiz was listed, so I installed. No errors, no dependency issues, no problems. Until I tried to configure it. In Ubuntu, Compiz-Fusion would install an advanced desktop settings panel, but this was missing in Xandros. I've already had to restore my Eee 3 times due to botched experiments, so I decided to play it safe and head to Eeeuser for some advice.

I found directions for Beryl that seemed pretty easy to follow. I'm not real clear on the difference between Beryl and Compiz, but I know that they are both a fancy windows manager and that was good enough for me.

I went through all of the instructions and ran into zero snags. The last step was to change a file to start Beryl instead of the regular X window manager. After I did that, I crossed my fingers and rebooted the machine.

I must have crossed the wrong ones because something went horribly awry. I saw the loading screen, but only caught a glimpse of my desktop before the entire screen went grey. I could still see and move my mouse, and it would change from an arrow to the hand when I moused over things, but I couldn't see them.

StEeevie Wonder.

My best guess is that there was a driver issue that wasn't cooperating with Beryl - I could see the screen for about a second before Beryl loaded. I didn't want to restore, but without the display there was no way for me to reverse the steps I had just taken to install Beryl.

Fortunately for me, I have a shortcut to the console on my desktop. I was able to blindly find it with my mouse and open it. I typed xkill and aimed at the Beryl icon in the task bar. The screen flashed and I thought for sure that I would be spending some time digging out the restore disk from under the bed. But then something interesting happened. The computer rebooted into easy mode.

I was able to open the console in easy and retrace my steps. The only thing remaining now is a angry pop up every time I start my computer. Something is still looking for Beryl, but this is better than nothing.

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.

Using Xandros is like Breeding Mules

Day 58

Mules are the result of the love shared by a male donkey and a female horse. These two animals evolved from the same creature so they are still genetically similar enough to produce offspring. Only one problem - horses and donkeys have a differing number of chromosomes (64 and 62, respectively) which means the mule is actually a genetic mess. One major side effect of this darwinistic God-playing is that mules can never reproduce - they are born sterile. 

Xandros is kind of like the mule. It is a derivative of Debian, and the version that ships with the Eee is further customized to fit the specifics of the tiny machine. This means the some .deb packages work, while others either do nothing, or can even brick the computer completely. 

I spent about four hours last night in a semi-circle of laptops trying to get them to recognize each other. Here's my arsenal.

1. Eee PC - Xandros advanced desktop

2. The wife's HP Pavilion - Windows XP

3. Antique Sony Vaio - Originally shipped with Windows 95, currently the only thing I can even get to load on it is Damn Small Linux

4. Dell Latitude - Ubuntu 8.10

My goal is to find a first person shooter game that will run smoothly on all the computers (plus two desktops, but dealing with those are simply too overwhelming right now). Here's where the mule analogy comes into play. Even though Xandros, DSL, and Ubuntu are all based on Debian, it was quite difficult to find a game that would run on the different OSes (especially cross platform). The ones the did load (Nexuiz and Alien Arena, specifically) were unable to find other players in network play. 

So if the mules can't get along, I say put them down and buy horses. I wiped both the Vaio and the Eee with intentions of putting some form of Ubuntu on them. My wife is pro Windows, but I figured she wouldn't mind if I dual booted her laptop with Ubuntu as well. This way all the machines - in theory - would sync nicely. Only one problem - the Vaio never made it through installation, and the Eee gives me about five minutes worth of errors before loading - and wireless doesn't work. 

So basically, last night was a bust. At the very least, I need to pull out my old DSL install disk, and the Xandros recovery CD just to get back to start. 

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.

I Miss Ktorrent

Day 28

I spent some time yesterday and today replicating my original Xandros install that was destroyed during my botched attempt at loading EeeUbuntu. Fortunately, this blog was a great resource. Since I've been reporting everything I do with the Eee, I had no problem re-downloading packages and copying console commands. The only thing I was unable to recover was Ktorrent.

I made the mistake of being quite vague regarding where/how I downloaded it in my original post. I believe I found a tutorial and installed the package using the command line. I may have added a repository, but I can't be sure. Regardless, I couldn't find the tutorial I used, so I decided to take a new approach.

I went right to Synaptic since it is usually the easiest avenue. Ktorrent came right up, along with several other torrent applications. When I tried downloading it, however, I got a somewhere damning error message. Synaptic told me that something called libqt3c102-mt was required but it would not be installed. This seemed like an awfully pissy message to be receiving from a computer. Either my Eee had turned into a temperamental teenage girl, or there was a conflict with the Ktorrent package and Xandros.

The equivalent of the Asus Eee taking its football and going home.

No biggie. I decided to try another application. After all, what difference does it make?

I couldn't tell you. Most of them wouldn't install for me. Some, like BitTorrent and BitTornado required python, which apparently isn't an option on the Eee, and others like Transmission and Frostwire would appear to download, but would never load.


I tried every torrent on the list, and the only one that seemed to function properly was Azureus. I hated every minute of using it. So much that I would rather nothing than use Azureus. I miss Ktorrent. Does anyone know how to get it back on my Eee?

EeeUbuntu Frustrations

Day 25 and 26

Things have not gone well so far with my transition away from Xandros. 

It seemed simple enough. Download the .iso and then use Unetbootin to load it onto a flash drive. I first tried this from the Eee - after all, it only seemed appropriate to have the Eee do all the work. I followed the directions to run Unetbootin, but nothing happened. More tinkering, but still no luck. I decided to give in and create the bootable usb from my wife's HP pavilion laptop. 

 

I re-downloaded everything I needed and successfully loaded it onto my Kingston DataTraveler 8gb flash drive. I even rebooted it on the HP and it booted the live version of EeeUbuntu. I was ready to install it on the Eee. 

First, I had to figure out how to boot to a USB. The boot order didn't say anything specifically about a USB, only a generic "removable device." I went to the Eee forums for an answer and learned that there should be a USB boot option during the grub splash screen. Since I didn't see this, it caused all kinds of headaches for me. About two hours' worth, to be exact. In the end, I think I got the USB boot option by powering up the Eee and then holding down both the esc button and the power button, but I did so much random button pressing during start up that I'm not sure what really did the trick. 

So I now had my USB good to go, and the Eee was ready to boot to it. Only one problem - it didn't detect the USB. Apparently the Asus Eee doesn't like Kingston brand usb drives. I went back to the HP and started the process over again with a new flash drive. 

The only other flash drive I had handy was my 2gb watch drive I got for Christmas last year from thinkgeek. I use it constantly for transferring files to and from work. I cleared all other files off of it and reformatted it for good measure, and then loaded EeeUbuntu onto it. After it finished I returned to the Eee and booted it up. 

Running EeeUbuntu from my wrist watch

Ureeka! the USB watch was detected and I was allowed to boot to it. With little success. The grub bootloader started but stopped at what looked like some sort of command line. Posts lamenting about similar errors on Eeeuser resulted in no easy fix. By now it was 4am, so I decided to call it a night. 

This is the mess I left on the kitchen table after I gave up for the night. The next morning I awoke to find my wife setting the table for breakfast around the laptops. 

This morning I decided to give it another go. I had read that Unetbootin isn't completely reliable and can sometimes load files incorrectly onto the USB. I reformatted my watch and tried again. This time it loaded quickly and booted no problem! I was ready to install. 

EeeUbuntu booted nicely on the Eee, and I quickly went through the 6 installation steps. I didn't change any of the settings and just let it go with a default install. It took about 25 minutes for it to finish installation. When it prompted me, I removed the flash drive and rebooted. 

I saw the grub bootloader but then got this message:

Error 21: Selected disk does not exist. 

That's bad. I shut it down, plugged the USB back in, and then restarted and booted to it. It worked perfect. Conclusion - I had accidentally erased Xandros from the internal SD memory, but then installed EeeUbuntu to the flash drive instead of in Xandros' place. Oops. I know some people do just that intentionally by using the removable SD care slot, but a fricken' watch plugged into the side of the lapotp is just a bit more cumbersome. 

To make matters worse, I was generally unimpressed with EeeUbuntu's user interface. It's based on the netbook remix, so it reminded me more of Xandros in easy mode than what I had been using in advanced mode. 

By now, I was feeling a bit desperate. I had a laptop that was essentially useless and I wanted it back up and running as soon as possible. Since I didn't like EeeUbuntu, I figured I'd look into EeeXubuntu. It was similar in layout to Xandros. I found a torrent of the iso and the process began all over again. 

Xubuntu installed nicely, and in the right place on the internal memory. I was pumped. Until I noticed that the wireless wasn't working, and I kept getting repeated warning errors about the battery being dead (I was plugged into the wall, so this didn't make much sense). More dead ends. 

So I give up. During the past two days I kept comparing everything to the Xandros advanced desktop I had running. It made me realize how much I liked it. I plan to pull out the restore DVD and see if I can get it to boot from a usb. 

Lesson learned - If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

Day 24

I spend much of my free time getting wrapped up in viral videos posted on sites like youtube and digg. The relationship between Flash and Linux has been a rocky one, and lagging or choppy videos on the Eee seems to be a recurring topic on Eee forums. Fortunately, that hasn't been the case for me. Instead, flash videos periodically cause Firefox to crash. It isn't any one specific video or site that causes this, so this has to be an issue with Xandros. And it may be a deal breaker for me.

Tomorrow is the 1/4 mark for my 100 days experiment. I think I'm going to celebrate by ditching Xandros in favor of EeeUbuntu. There's not harm in trying - if I hate it, I can use the supplied restore disk to bring back the original operating system.

Here are two of the crash messages from earlier today.

Background Settings

Day 23

Tonight I found a nifty little feature in the background settings that allows multiple backgrounds to be selected as part of a slow moving slide show. I don't think this is a feature available on Windows or even other Linux distros (?), so while it's a small detail, it makes Xandros just a bit more aesthetically pleasing.

Right click on the desktop and choose "properties." Enable the slide show option to have multiple backgrounds rotate on the desktop.