OK, so maybe that was a bad choice of words, since it was actually an update of the software on my Asus EEE 701 4G that go me in to this mess to start with.
Last night, I decided to update some of the software on the Eee netbook, which in Synaptic Package Manager, means everything that is installed since it has never been done.
It downloaded all of the packages that it needed for Xandros, Firefox updates, Flash, Open Office as well as some of the other software that has been installed from purchase that I’ve never used, but anyway, They all downloaded fine, but the peppy little device ran out of disk space about half way through installing. I had anticipated this and checked how much space was left on the drive and there was a good 1.1GB left clear, apparently I was wrong.
I am now left with a rather funky looking door stop that, when powered up, produces a message telling me that it can’t find the Power tool for the system tray then it stay on a nice, calming icey blue screen.
Rather than look upon this as a bad thing, I have seen it more as an opportunity to install a new OS on the machine.
This is no easy task – just wading through the choices of alternative OS’s for the machine is work in itself. I looked at Xandros again (it had served me well in the past), a native Ubuntu installation, gOS and various others, but in the end I decided to give Easy-Peasy a go.
From what I can tell, it is built on a cut-down version of Ubuntu and, unlike other alternative OS’s for the Eee, this actually told me that it will run on the 701! amjor plus point.
The time is 17:53 on 6th October. I’ll continue on when it’s finished…
After downloading the ISO from the Easy Peasy website I have to install it to my USB pen drive. Time check: 17:57.
18:03 – It has finshed making the image bootable on my usb pen now, lets hope it works in the Eee.
18:04 – OK, it didn’t work. But I managed to fix this. In the BIOS of the Eee 701 you need to disable the SSD drive and make the primary your USB pen. Then set it to boot as the first device.
18:08 – I’m seeing the Ubuntu loading screen. A familiar sight.
18:11 – I just encountered a login screen, wasn’t sure what to put in there, so I just pressed ‘Enter’ – seemed to work. If this screen is a preview of things to come, it’s very shiny.
18:14 – Very shiny indeed.
18:15 – It’s loaded in the very familiar LiveCD edition of Ubuntu, meaning I just double click on ‘Install’ and away we go!
18:17 – Uh-oh, it’s asking me about partitioning… I probably should create a separate partition for my OS and my /home directory, but I don’t see myself switching OS (or trying to upgrade) again anytime soon, so I’ll leave it using the whole disk – it’s only 4GB anyway!
18:24 – And Go! I’ll leave it be, formatting partitions and installing. In the mean time I’ll go and was the pots up and think about what to put with the chicken for tea.
OK, so I watched a couple of episodes of Stargate (sadly not Universe though, not allowed to until we’ve – and by the I mean Liz – finished watching SG1) and then went back to the installation, but after a quick reboot it all worked perfectly. Even the WIFI which I was most shocked about. You could say that it was in fact, Easy Peasy.
I haven’t had a proper play with the new installation yet, just a couple of moments to setup the WIFI and seeing what was actually installed. There seems to be a few things on there that I won’t really need, such as the OpenOffice suite which I’ll remove, as well as Transmission (BitTorrent client) – because piracy is bad.