Heres the process in WinXP: The next file you’ll need is the Xandros Eee Pc 701 Edition ISO. Get it from the eeepc 701 community project on sourceforge. Once you’ve downloaded both of the above its all pretty much downhill! Now either burn the ISO to a physical disk, or mount the image using a program like daemontools.
EeePC Documentation Home Launchpad Team
EeePC Users Installing Ubuntu Fixing Ubuntu Using & Tweaking Ubuntu
Get Involved Development Other Resources
Creating a USB bootable installer
*Installation/FromUSBStick documents the process of creating a bootable Ubuntu Desktop LiveCD/installer USB memory stick.
*Installation/FromImgFiles documents the process if you download an '.img' flash image file instead of a '.iso' CDROM image file. This is especially helpful for installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which as of this writing (2009 September) comes by default as an '.img' file.
Installing
You should now be able to boot the USB device(memory stick, external CD/DVD-ROM drive, or external hard disc) and start the LiveCD/installer. You may want to toggle the boot order in the BIOS, or simply hit ESC at the BIOS post to boot the USB device without changing the boot order. When booting from the USB device, you will see the normal Ubuntu Desktop LiveCD boot prompt. Select 'Start or Install Ubuntu' to get started with the LiveCD.
Navigating the lower resolution
(This section does not apply to Netbook Remix)
It should be noted that due to the small display and lower resolution the Ubuntu installer does not fit within the confines of the screen. You'll need to use your ALT key in combination with dragging the mouse to move the active windows around in order to find the 'Next' buttons. Also, as Ubuntu 7.10 activates basic Compiz features by default, the ALT-drag method does not work without de-activating Compiz. Simply navigate to 'System > Preferences > Appearance' Go to the 'Visual Effects' tab and set the effects to none. This will turn off Compiz and allow you to ALT-drag your windows in order to function.
Alternative Method - ideal for 701's
Open a Terminal and at the prompt type:
Substitute the '-- mode 800x480' for your native resolution if using on other Eeepc's (901 etc)...
Installation on the EeePC continues normally.
701 and 11.04 - 'Natty Narwhal'
Installation of Ubuntu 11.04 - 'Natty Narwhal' will fail on 701's due to the installer requiring a minimum of 4.4GB free space. However a workaround is possible.
. After booting the live image, select the Test option to boot into the live environment.
. Open a terminal and copy and paste :-
. Then, once the screen has resized, copy and paste :-
. Gedit will open with a python file for the installer which you need to edit. Navigate to line 310 which will say something like:-
. Change the above line to read :-
. Save your changes and close the Text Editor, then close the Terminal. You can now start the installer with the icon on the desktop as normal.
Note - it is probably best to skip installing updates and the non-free files during the install, as space will be limited on the SSD. It is best to do this afterwards from the installed environment once you have cleared off any unnecessary applications using Software Center/Synaptic.
(tested on 701 4G-Surf - 11/07/11)
Solid State Drive (SSD) and partitioning
You may want to consider a few changes in the partitioning.
The EeePC uses a Solid State Drive(flash-media) for its hard drive. It is in your best interest to restrict the amount of writes to the device helping to prolong the drive life. Based on this the following are suggested guidelines:
Select an ext2 file system. The default Xandros installation uses an ext3 for one of the partitions, but it's argued that ext2 will limit the number of writes to the drive.
Do not create a swap partition. We don't want the machine writing swap to the SSD hard drive. If you really need swap space post-installation that can be achieved via a swap-file. The installer will complain briefly about the lack of swap space, this can safely be ignored.
Alternate viewpoint on SSD writes
Some people consider the risk of prematurely wearing out an SSD to be acceptable, or minimal. See for example this discussion thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1105297 . There are thus people who argue the following features are more important than limiting SSD writes:
Ext3 journaling provides better safety for file integrity in case of a system crash or power loss, than does Ext2 (which has no journaling)
Hibernation, as of this writing (2009 Sept) will not work very well without a swap partition, that is at least the size of your main RAM memory.
Post Installation
Before you dive into the hardware related tweaks and driver additions there are two quick things we'll want to remove so that your installation no longer expects or needs the USB device you installed from.
Remove the reference to the cdrom in the /etc/fstab, as you don't actually have a CD-ROM and it can conflict with mounting devices later:
Remove the reference to the CD-ROM in the /etc/apt/sources.list file if you don't want to plug in the USB installer and would rather just download the packages from the internet.
This can also be accomplished by removing(un-checking) the CD-ROM from System>Administration>Software Sources. This step is not necessary in 8.04 Hardy Heron.
Android, at the moment at least, runs primarily on devices with ARM based CPUs. The ARM CPU is a special low-power, high performance chip designed to run in devices rather than in desktop computers. However, like Linux, it isn’t restricted to only running on ARM chips. It can also run on MIPS (another type of device centric chip) and on Intel x86 chips that are found in PCs.
Although Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was released to the public last year, it has taken a few months to port the current source code to the Intel x86 platform. A few days ago the Android-x86 project announced the first release candidate. The software comes in the form of .iso files and can be used to boot a PC (or better still a netbook) from CD/DVD or to create a bootable USB drive.
The best way to test Android 4.0 for Intel is either boot up an Asus Eee PC netbook or to run it in a Virtual Machine (VM) using the open source VirtualBox software. Which ever method you choose the first step is to download the .iso from the Android-x86 site. Choose the appropriate .iso image, there are images for Asus, MSI 110W and Lenovo, and download. The files are about 190MB and so should only take a few minutes on decent broadband. The best image file for VirtualBox is the Asus Eee PC image.
Laptop
If you don’t have an Asus laptop/netbook, you can try this on just about any laptop, however the level of hardware support (especially for the wireless adapter) will vary. The first step is to create a bootable USB disk using Unetbootin (or to burn the .iso file to a CD). Boot the laptop/netbook from the USB (you might need to go into the BIOS or press F8 or F12 during startup to select the boot device).
At the boot menu select “Live CD – Run Android-x86 without installation” and hit Enter. Android 4.0 will start to boot. Once booted you will be greeted by the ICS Welcome screen.
Use your mouse to click on “Start”. Complete the first-time configuration steps (you can just leave everything at its default. If you choose to sign in with your Google account, Android will first try to connect to your WiFi). Once you click “Finish” you will be presented with the ICS home screen.
To navigate use the mouse like you would your finger. Tap is click, swipe is click, hold and move. Clicking the application menu (in the top right hand corner) will reveal the pre-installed applications. Swiping left (click, hold, move mouse left) shows the next page and so on. When using apps that need keyboard input you can use your PC’s keyboard, you don’t need to click every letter on a virtual keyboard!
Google Play (i.e. the Android Market) is available and a good selection of applications are present including essential apps like DropBox and Kindle. However some important apps like Skype are not available for Android running on Intel yet.
One disconcerting “feature” is that some apps run in portrait mode which means everything flips 90 degrees leaving you twisting your head and trying to work out that up and down are now left and right with the mouse! It is best to avoid these apps at all cost as trying to get the screen back to landscape seems impossible other than with a reboot.
VirtualBox
It is also possible to run ICS in a Virtual Machine using VirtualBox. Start VirtualBox, click the “Machine” menu and then “New…” Step through the Wizard, having entered a name (e.g Android 4), make sure your select Linux as the “Operating System” and “Other Linux” as the version. Set the memory to be 512MB and use the defaults for creating an 8GB hard drive.
Once the VM is created, click the “Machine” menu and then “Setting…” Click “Storage” in the left pane and then click the CD-ROM icon (marked as “Empty”) in the “Storage Tree.” In the “Attributes” panel click the little CD-ROM icon next to the “CD/DVD Drive” drop down list. Select “Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file…” Now broswe to and select the .iso file you downloaded from the Android-x86 web site. Click “OK”.Once you are back in the main VirtualBox window hit the big green “Start” button to boot up Android 4.0.
At the boot menu select “Live CD – VESA mode” and hit Enter. Android 4.0 will start to boot. Once booted you will be greeted by the ICS Welcome screen.
Just like Android-x86 on a netbook, use your mouse to click on “Start” and then complete the first-time configuration. If you don’t see the mouse inside the VM, click the “Machine” menu item on the VM window and then “Disable Mouse Integration.”
There is one major drawback with running ICS in a virtual machine, or in fact in any PC without a WiFi adapter – the release candidate doesn’t support wired networking. This means that you can’t access the web, the Google Play store, you can’t watch YouTube videos and so on.
Hacker?
One interesting aspect of the x86 port is that you have direct access to the underlying Linux operating system. By pressing ALT+F1 you will get a terminal window logged in as root. From here those of you familiar with the Linux command line can start looking at the OS behind the nice Android user interface. Use ALT+F7 to get back to the graphical user interface.
Conclusion
Android 4.0 for Intel x86 builds on the solid foundation of Android for ARM and although it has limited hardware support (not all the popular netbooks are supported) running it on a supported platform could bring a new lease of life to some aging hardware and it could provide an interesting alternative to the Metro interface that Microsoft are pushing with Windows 8. However the screen rotation issue can be very disconcerting and the lack of Ethernet support makes it nonviable for Virtual Machines.
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.