A friend lent me her Eee PC for a few days so I can replace the default Xandros with Ubuntu. Because this install isn’t for me, I’d like to make this setup the least painful as possible to use. After much experimenting with booting without a disc and fiddling with the tiny hardware, I have found the way to install a pretty good setup. In this noob-friendly guide I will walk you through how to install a distribution of eeebuntu and set it up so that all hardware works (more or less).

Before we start let’s take a look at the specs of the Asus Eee PC 701SD:

900MHz Intel Celeron-M
512MB DDR2 RAM
8GB Solid State Drive
Intel GMA 900 Graphics
Realtek Wifi
Attansic LAN

Preparation

To install eeebuntu, you will need either a external disc drive, a 1GB+ flash drive, or a 1GB+ SD card. In this guide I used an SD card but instructions will be similar if you use a flash drive. I don’t have an external disc drive but I guess you would just burn the eeebuntu ISO to a disc.

First, you will need to grab a eeebuntu ISO. You can choose from the standard edition which features the desktop that we all know and love or netbook remix which has the Xandros interface. Whichever you choose, install steps will still be the same.

While the ISO is downloading, get UNetbootin which will “burn” the iso to your SD card or flash drive and make it bootable. UNetbootin is available for Windows and Linux. I will use the Windows version.

Also, you might as well head on over to array.org to fetch some kernel modules to get WiFi working. As of writing, eeebuntu is at 1.0 which is based upon Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. In this case, you’ll want to click “Hardy” and then click on “Use Alternate Install Method” to see the two packages that you must get. They should be linux-image-*.deb and linux-ubuntu-modules-*.deb. Save these somewhere; you’ll need them later.

When the eeebuntu ISO has finished downloading open up UNetbootin and choose the eeebuntu ISO and the SD card drive or flash drive you like to get it “burned” into. You might also want to format the drive just in case…

If you have any space left on your install medium then you might as well drop the two deb files you got from array.org inside.

We are done the preparation. Let’s move onto the eee…

Installation

Assuming you are ready to say goodbye to Xandros, put in the install medium and power the machine up. During its boot, repeatedly press ESC to launch its boot menu. Choose which drive you’d like to boot. Since I used an SD card, I would choose the card reader.

At this point, you should be in the eeebuntu boot menu. Choose the install option and follow directions. I decided to wipe the entire SSD.

Post-Install

USB/SD Mounting

Upon boot, chances are that SD cards and/or flash drives won’t mount properly. To fix this, fire up a terminal and enter:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Comment out the last line by adding a # as the first character in that line. That line may look something like this:

/dev/sdc1  /media/cdrom0  udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec  0   0

Save and then plug in an SD card or USB flash drive to see it work.

Networking

You may have noticed by now that neither WiFi nor LAN is working. Many guides on the internet say that, these instructions are for eee 1000+ models and totally neglect the 701SD. This is what caused me to despair for several days because I couldn’t find another solution. Anyways, remember those two deb files you downloaded? Copy them over to your home directory and launch the terminal and install them:

sudo dpkg -i linux-image-*.deb linux-ubuntu-modules-*.deb

Of course, you’ll need to replace the above file names with the actual file names. Let it install and then restart. WiFi should now be working.

Adding the array.org repository

Go to array.org’s install instructions for your version of eeebuntu. Click your version of ubuntu (if you are using eeebuntu 1.0 then click on “Hardy”). Follow instructions from “Setup the Repository” to the first step of “Uninstall the Generic Kernel (Optional)” inclusive.

For example, for me I ran the following in the terminal:

sudo mv -v array-hardy.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-apt-key.asc
wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-hardy.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc
sudo apt-key add array-apt-key.asc

sudo apt-get remove linux-generic linux-image-generic linux-restricted-modules-generic

Post-Installation Scripts

A fresh eeebuntu install contains a few scripts that you may wish to run. They are located at /eeebuntu/scripts/. Open up a terminal there and do the following:

sudo ./config.sh
sudo ./config-gnome.sh

This will get a few things working, including the webcam.

Shutdown

If your Eee is not shutting down properly (ie. The LEDs are not turning off when it appears to have powered off) then apply the following quick fix:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/halt

Add the following to the beginning of the file:

rmmod snd-hda-intel

Save and now it should shut down properly.

Caveats

Pressing Fn+F2, which should normally toggle wireless, will toggle wireless and freeze eeebuntu. If you accidentally press it and the whole OS hangs, then do a hard reboot. Once you start eeebuntu again, your wireless won’t be working. Press Fn+F2 again. eeebuntu should not hang when attempting to enable wireless, but it wont work immediately. To make eeebuntu recognize that the wireless is enabled, do another reboot. Clearly, trying to disable wireless using this method yields no benefit. Just don’t do it.

I have tested suspend a few times and it seems to work fine except the volume applet crashes consistently when resuming. Fortunately, it will ask if you’d like to reload it automatically.

Graphics

Compiz is enabled by default and it works smoothly. I haven’t tested second monitor support since I don’t have a VGA cable lying around.

Battery

On a full charge, the battery applet reports that it will last about 2 hours. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be normal for a little thing like this.

Conclusion

Figuring out the networking was the most headache inducing task. Once everything is set up, eeebuntu works nicely, although there are still a few flaws and inconveniences, which is slightly disappointing especially for a distribution that is tailored for Eee PCs. eeebuntu comes with a few apps preinstalled that are not found in an out of the box install of Ubuntu like aMSN, Conduit, AWN, and quite a bit more. Out of the 8GB in the SSD, you might have about only half of it left by now so consider uninstalling some packages.

References: array.org, eeebuntu Forums, eeebuntu Easy Installation Guide, Eee User Forums