Hands-on Ubuntu Eee

Now, the coolest OS ever made for Asus Eee is on my hands. It’s the Ubuntu Eee. I have not installed it on my eee yet but I will in a while. In the meantime, I’ll try the Live mode.


Ubuntu Eee Live USB boots up in less than 2 minutes on my eee. Although, the “Battery might be broken” warning message always appears on the screen when booted. The looks is really cool for me though the default wallpaper seems to be distorted. Or it’s supposed to be like that? It has panel bars at the top and bottom which could potentially minimize the screen size for other windows. But you can always remove them anytime you want or auto-hide them.

Ubuntu eee comes complete with applications a user needs on a PC as promised. It has the 3 main OpenOffice applications (Word, Spreadsheet, Presentation), plus the Drawing. Evolution Mail and Calendar is also packed into it.

For images, Ubuntu Eee comes with Picasa and Gimp, which you would more probably want your asus eee pc to have.

For internet users, I guess there’s nothing more you might ask since it already comes along with Firefox for browsing, Evolution for checking mails, Pidgin for chatting & Skype if you prefer video calling, and Transmission for downloading torrents.

For multimedia users, it comes pre-installed with Audio CD Extractor, Brasero Disc Burning software, a Movie Player, a Sound Recorder and Rythmbox Music Player.

Ubuntu Eee also comes along with core compiz packages so it can run avant-window-navigator, a stylish application launcher for Linux. The compiz-manager is not pre-installed as well as the emerald theme so I cannot configure the cube yet. Maybe if I already install it on my eee pc.

If you want to run Windows Applications, Wine is there. You can use it to run .exe files you already miss, or if you still hate Firefox, you can opt to run ies4linux. It requires wine, I believe.

If you want to add more applications or want to remove applications you do not like, you can always use the Synaptic Package Manager or the built-in Add/Remove Application utility.

The Ubuntu Eee Live USB .iso file can be downloaded at 768MB, and takes 767MB on the live usb. At least, it’s what it tells when I check the capacity.

All in all, I like to install this on my eee pc. There might still be something I missed to mention here, but I will try to cover more after I installed it.

Related posts:

1. Hands-On: Ubuntu Eee 8.04 Live USB
2. Ubuntu Eee 8.04 Beta (Hardy Heron): My verdict.
3. Ubuntu Eee 8.04: Still no Wi-Fi
4. Installing Ubuntu Eee on Asus Eee
5. Ubuntu Mobile OS on Asus Eee PC

Last updated: April 14, 2008 |

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