Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix + ASUS eeePC 900
So over the memorial day weekend, i got a SMS message from Woot on twitter. They were selling a ASUS eeePC 900 for only $150, a deal i just could not pass up.
All was well when i finally received my leet lil netbook hacktop. It came with the typical pre-installed ASUS Xandros Linux OS. Off the bat, i had issues with the slowness of the OS and some update errors. After ironing all that out, i was VERY impressed with how ASUS took their approach to their Linux solution. Not only did everything just work right out of the box (Flash, Java, ect) but one could also simply launch the ASUS Downloader link which brought you to their eeePC app download portal page. Simply click the application you wish to install and a small pop-up window comes up with a java script that installs the application neatly onto the netbook with little to no user interaction. This simple idea is great for non-linux users and i give ASUS props on brining a easy linux solution to the market so smoothly.
Of course, being the geek that i am, i just had to get Ubuntu on this thing. Having heard of the new Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) i decided to give it a try. Installation went flawlessly but i did notice a bit of video lag when using the gnome-main-menu slab. After some brief research i found that this was a known bug which required you to patch the kernel. Now i've never gone as far to do such a task, but i did find some .deb's that did it all for me :)
(9/28/2009) UPDATE: The latest Ubuntu NBR image has these patches already! Yay!
32bit Patches:
linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic_2.6.28-11.43~lp349314apw5_i386.deb
linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic_2.6.28-11.43~lp349314apw5_i386.deb
62bit Patches:
linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic_2.6.28-11.43~lp349314apw5_amd64.deb
linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic_2.6.28-11.43~lp349314apw5_amd64.deb
You should run/install the headers package before the image package then reboot.
Your video issues should be solved now!
Teh haps'
Mon, 08/30/2010 - 17:17
Tim listened to Atmosphere – Wild Wild Horses 5:17pm#- Tim listened to Atmosphere – Free or Dead 5:12pm#
Tim tweeted "Listening to Burningman via Black Rock Cities official radio station, BMIR 94.5 - http://bmir.org/" 4:48pm#- Tim listened to Atmosphere – Cats van Bags 4:43pm#
- Tim listened to Atmosphere – Sound Is Vibration 4:39pm#
- Tim listened to Atmosphere – Onemosphere 4:37pm#
- Tim tweeted "Sneak peak screenshots of my next #Ubuntu Minimal Desktop video - http://ping.fm/FesYZ" 7:55am#
- Tim listened to Digitalism – Departure From Cairo 7:26am#
- Tim listened to The Knife – One For You 7:16am#
- Tim listened to Crystal Castles – 1991 4:51am#
Thanks Tim..
You saved me a lot of time! the deb packages worked great.
keep up the good work! -Mandrivaal
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Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 21:30.Glad this helped you. Make sure you dont upgrade the linux kernel or it will just go back to the way it was
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Submitted by Tim Ashley on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 22:02.Hi Tim,
Thanks for the great tip. Some people (like me) prefer downloading patches from their original locations. This is to be sure that they have not been compromised. (not that I distrust you, but when fetching things from a page here and a page there, it's easy to pick up some malware). For them, might it perhaps be a good idea to post the original file locations?
http://people.ubuntu.com/~apw/lp349314-jaunty/linux-headers-2.6.28-11-ge...
http://people.ubuntu.com/~apw/lp349314-jaunty/linux-image-2.6.28-11-gene...
Otherwise, great that you are mirroring these files in case the original location goes down.
Greetings, Josef
http://www.edenfoundation.org
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Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 02:13.thanks for the original locations (the installer was givingg me some kind of "newer version available" message, but didn't really explain where to look)
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Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 20:55.I may be completely off-base here but i have never heard of malware or spyware infecting a linux based OS before. I guess a package can do strange things to a system without your knowledge, but i would beleive it would be impossible to install malware or spyware on such a system.
These deb's are in fact taken from that location (you can match up the md5 if you wish) but i strive to provide a one stop shop for my readers. Get it fixed and move on with your geekness
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Submitted by Tim Ashley on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 15:42.No offence meant Tim, but this is a kernel update right? I believe modding a kernel is the hypothetically most efficient way of getting a security breach into a linux system. It would require some skill, of course, as the modder would need to understand how to adjust the source code and recompile it. I may be over-concerned, but I think one should be *slightly* paranoid when it comes to security.
As a general principle, I am always particularly careful with where I get my kernel updates from.
That said, I don't doubt your intentions, Tim. Once again, thanks for good work and good help!
Josef
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Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 01:01.After I applied the latest updates on my system the viddeo lag returned
Does anybody happen to have the same problem?
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Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 00:34.I just updated my netbook and had the same issue. The recent ubuntu updates are installing a new kernel version that's unpatched. I actually formatted the netbook and repatched the kernel using the files in this article. I have continued to ignore the new kernel updates that Ubuntu wants me to install. There is a way to blacklist the updates so you dont see them anymore, i'd just have to dig around to figure out why.
What i really want to do, is find a new .deb file that will patch the newest kernel release. I will be posting here again once i do find it.
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Submitted by Tim Ashley on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 10:02.Well, this doesn't actually suppress the kernel updates, but it will serve your purposes I think. (You will not have to pick through your updates to make sure you're not installing a kernel update along with other important updates. Unfortunately, though, if the kernel is updated for an important reason such as security, you won't get the benefit till you update it yourself manually (and patch it)).
The packages in Ubuntu maintained by apt form a dependency "tree". You can imagine eg. a package "car" will depend on "gas", "wheels", and so on. Some of these packages are virtual packages, that is they depend on other packages and don't install any code objects themselves. I forget what the package is called ("linux-generic" or something) but the linux kernel package is such a virtual package. That way the release system (eg. the parent package for ubuntu desktop 9.04) can depend on this package, and when the package is updated, its dependencies are updated also. The way around this is to manually uninstall the parent linux kernel packages, and only install the kernel image and header packages, etc., for the kernel version you want. That package for the specific kernel version you installed will never depend on a later one, and so apt will never try to "update" to the next one.
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Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/21/2009 - 16:42.