ricardocabellov5.5

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The iBook G4 was not pleasing me anymore. Because not many Linux distros support PowerPC anymore I was stuck with MacOS (which, remember, I'm not a fan of). So it was time for a replacement.

After looking up some netbooks I decided to go the Asus EeePC route. The 1101HA to be precise. I found it quite cheap for the features it has (Decent resolution, 160gb, 10hours battery... all for £256). Bought it from Amazon and in a couple of days it was on my desk already.



Unfortunately it comes with a bloated Windows XP. I don't mind Window XP, but I don't like having Microsoft Live, Office Student Edition and all the ASUS crap installed. So first thing you end up doing is uninstall all that. Unfortunately again, the recovery mode comes with all that crap. Then I uninstalled too many things and had to learn how to reinstall the system from a USB key.

Anyway, the biggest disappointment was the graphics chip (GMA 500). The hardware side of it seems to be good, but the software side (drivers) seem to be poor. Basically, the chip supports OpenGL 2.0, but the driver doesn't. And you're not able to play HD videos. All because shitty drivers. Lame.

Not much you can do on Windows but wait until they release proper drivers (I won't even go into details of why they are not doing it). So next thing was installing Ubuntu on the side of Windows XP.

I installed Ubuntu 9.10. The process was as simple as it always is. However, once installed, the resolution wasn't 1366x768 as it was supposed to be. It was 1024x768 instead and no option to change it. So I assumed a couple of tweaks needed to be done. Here they are:

Steps

1. Install poulsbo graphics driver. Just use the PPA script from here.
2. Replace NetworkManager with WICD. With NetworkManager, the wireless stops working randomly. WICD can be easily installed from Synaptic Package Manager.

And that's it. The result is a very robust system. With 2D (HD videos play smoothly) and 3D Acceleration (OpenGL works). Funny that, for first time, Linux performs better than the OS that came with the device. Things are changing!