EEE PC 1201N vs Macbook Air
I've been trying to use the 1201N as my daily machine, at least in place of my Macbook Air. There are several advantages the 1201N has over the Air, and several disadvantages
Pros
- 4GB of RAM
- Plenty of disk space
- Smaller size
Cons
- No wifi after sleep, or sometimes after disconnecting from network
- Short Battery life
- Can run Omnigraffle
- Funky trackpad
The biggest issue with the Air is the the measly 80GB hard drive, it just isn't enough space. Upgrading it in this 1st gen Air is not financially feasible, as the HD costs as much as the 1201N itself. Not having Omnigraffle is forcing me to go back to the Mac for that one app. So far OpenOffice has been great at editing the various file I'm forced to deal with at work.
EEE PC 1201N Motherboard Photos
Some photos I took when upgrading the HD on the EEE PC 1201N.
There is a spot for a 3G connector on the MB, but nothing is soldered onto the MB to accept a SIM chip.
1201N Motherboard top:
This is what you see after you remove the keyboard, unscrew the screws for the shield underneath the keyboard, unscrew the 4 screws at the bottom holding in the top of the case, and gently pry apart the top of the case all the way around the edge as it has little tiny legs on the top of the case that lock in with friction to the bottom of the case.
And a close up:
Flash 10.1 Beta2 plugin for Chrome Browser in Karmic
So if you have the 1201N you really should have the Flash 10.1 Beta2 plugin, which supports the ION chip in your Netbook and plays back flash video content near flawlessly and with minimal CPU overhead.
After you download the flash beta, you extract it and run a simple installer from a shell that wants to know the lib dir of your browser. It won't recognize Chrome's installation dir (in /opt/google) and so it' won't install directly to Chrome, but you can install for Firefox first and just copy the player over to Chrome.
Running the Flash Player installer, it will ask:
Please enter the installation path of the Mozilla, Netscape,
or Opera browser (i.e., /usr/lib/mozilla):
For the Karmic Firefox 3.5.x you would use:
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7
and the installer will install the player into
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7/plugins/libflashplayer.so
Chrome
To get this to work in Google Chrome, you need to do a few manual steps.
First, copy the flashplayer from the FF installation into /opt/google/chrome/plugins (you may need to create the dir):
# mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins
# cp /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7/plugins/libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins
Then you have to make sure the Nautilus Launcher launches Chrome while telling it to check for plugins:
[RIGHT-CLICK]Applications/Edit Menus
Select Internet/Chrome, click on the Properties button
add the text --enable-plugins between the chrome and the %U.
Now close eveything and then launch Chrome from the Applications/Internet/Chrome menu.
Here is Hulu:
And there you go, Flash with accelerated ION video in Chrome.
Source: HowtoForge
ION, Xinerama, Xwindows and Multiple Monitors on 1201N
The EEE 1201N has both a VGA as well as HDMI out. In X on Ubuntu Karmic I wanted to start with just using the VGA to connect to an extra panel I have. It's older and doesn't have HDMI. There were just two issues with this however.
1. The Nvidia Control Panel in Karmic couldn't parse the xorg.conf file that was built by the Karmic installation process (and was working fine as best I could tell).
To resolve this, I had to run (as root) the nvidia-xconfig app which wrote out a more complete and parseable conf file for me. I had to logout and back in to restart xwindows (and now I see the Nvidia splash-screen)
Next, since I was running the Nvidia Control Panel as my user it wasn't able to write out the new xorg.conf file that it wanted to write (which had my 2nd monitor enabled and postitioned where I wanted it). Simply writing this file to /tmp and then moving it over via the shell worked. I had to logout and back in. But now my 2nd monitor worked! And I enabled Xinerama on this monitor.
Xinerama is an nice extention to have, it makes the extra monitors act like you'd expect them to coming from XP or a Macintosh- that is, you can freely drag and drop apps across monitors, and the multiple desktops spann the multiple monitors.
About Xinerama & Twinview
The NVIDIA Linux Driver supports GLX when Xinerama is enabled on similar GPUs. The Xinerama extension takes multiple physical X screens (possibly spanning multiple GPUs), and binds them into one logical X screen. This allows windows to be dragged between GPUs and to span across multiple GPUs. The NVIDIA driver supports hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across all NVIDIA GPUs when Xinerama is enabled.
There is more info about Xinerama and Twinview at Phoronix.
Karmic PAE Kernal and 4G Ram, Wifi on 1201N
I recently added more RAM (4G) and a new HD (320G, 7200rpm) to the 1201N. This required re-installation of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic onto the 1201N. The installation went without a hitch- I had previously re-installed Window 7 Professional, and Ubuntu went in and found it. Ubuntu also correcly detected the 4G of RAM and install the PAE kernel, which allows the use of a 32bit kernel with the extra RAM.
The PAE kernel is working fine with the Nvidia ION drivers, suspend and hibernate.
I found more information about a wifi driver, and this post at the Asus forum has links to an actual Linux driver. Using this driver doen't require the NDISwrapper, but I have noticed that the wiki will not re-connect after suspend, which the NDISwrapped, Win2K driver did. However, I've been hibernating (due to the bad batter life on the 1201N) and the wifi works fine after a hibernate wake-up (which is decently fast, especially with BootBlaster for the BIOS).
The opening of the 1201N to replace the hard-drive is a bit more than just opening a panel in the bottom, but it's fairly easy, given you take your time in cracking all the little pressure-tabs which hold the top and bottom of the case together. The new HD and the extra ram are making Ubuntu much more responsive and snappy.
BloGTK – Using in Karmic
A nice GTK application for blogging is BloGTK. It's written in python and it's fast and a decent replacement for MarsEdit when not on my Mac (not that there are many choices for GTK blogging apps). The 2.0 release is available on LaunchPad, but it requires a few extra python packages to run on a fresh Karmic installation. I've outlined what you need to do below.
The BloGTK 2.0 tarball (itself a python package that needs to be installed as root) will install alright, but it won't run, instead you'll may this:
dillera@granite1201:~/Downloads/blogtk-2.0$ blogtk2
Xlib: extension "RANDR" missing on display ":0.0".
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/blogtk2", line 6, in <module>
from blogtk2 import main
File "/usr/bin/../share/blogtk2/lib/blogtk2/__init__.py", line 35, in <module>
from blogtk2.main import main
File "/usr/bin/../share/blogtk2/lib/blogtk2/main.py", line 22, in <module>
from gdata import service
ImportError: No module named gdata
- Grab BloGTK 2.o
- Grab Python GDATA
- Grab Python feedparser
In your shell, expand them, then as root run the installer....
unzip -d feedparser2 feedparser-4.1.zip
tar xvf gdata-2.0.6.tar.gz
then as root:
# python ./setup.py install
in both of the expanded directories
Finally you'll also need to have the python gtk-spell package installed. This is available in the repo.
# apt-get install python-gtkspell
Now you can run BloGTK.
dillera@granite1201:~$ blogtk2
Xlib: extension "RANDR" missing on display ":0.0".
/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/gdata/tlslite/utils/cryptomath.py:9:
DeprecationWarning: the sha module is deprecated; use the hashlib module instead
import sha
/usr/bin/../share/blogtk2/lib/blogtk2/main.py:63: Warning: g_set_prgname() called multiple times
program = gnome.init('blogtk', '2.0')
Pros:
- It is very fast
Cons:
- There is no way to specify new formatting types, what is available is just Paragraphs, Blockquotes, unordered lists (and this cannot detect multiple lines of list items)
- There is no image uploading
Alternatives:
- ScribeFire - a nice blogging app that is Firefox Plugin (it does image uploading)
EEE 1201 – Configs to Set
Now that you have Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) installed on your EEE PC 1201N, there are a bunch of little things you can do to make it a much more useable system. This post will keep track of these little things as I come across them.
- Setup Nvidia ION Drivers
- Enable Multi-touch on Synaptics trackpad
- Get Wifi Working
- Add Terminal into Nautilus right-click menu
- Desktop switching
- Stop Update Manger
- Tracking 1201N BIOS releases
EEE 1201N – Wifi working in Karmic Ubuntu
To get your wifi working on the 1201N in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) is really pretty easy, once you have the right driver for windows and use the NDISWrapper packages for Ubuntu. I found the critical link here on LaunchPad. The wierd thing is that the wifi in the 1201N is a Realtek 8191, and is mis-reported by the lspci command, since the device is not even registered with the database lspci uses.
So the link on the Launchpad discussion is here. Down load this, it contains the driver for the wifi and the commands to execute as root to install the NDISwrapper packages from the repos. I ran it, added ndiswrapper to /etc/modules so that it loaded on reboot and after the reboot the wifi worked right away and connected to my local WPA2 AP. It also works after resume.
EEE 1201n Ubuntu Karmic – Good Results
So the EEEbuntu 3 install (based on Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty) was too flakey, and while I had the ION working great, I still had no ethernet or wifi. EEEbuntu is working on release 4 (based on debian) but they haven't even released a beta yet. So, being bored I wiped the EEEbuntu and replaced it with a stock 32bit Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 (karmic)good installation.
The good news is that Ubuntu allowed me to install the Nvidia 185.18 driver right after boot (it detected the ION automatically) and this version is working with suspending. The better news is that wired ethernet worked out of the box!
I've since then found some easy directions to get wifi working (using the win2k drivers and NDISwrapper- I'll post this up soon).
I'm much happier with Ubuntu Karmic, and I'll be following up soon with some more detailed posts about what I've done with the 1201N.
Updating Nvidia ION Drivers on EEE 1201n – Ubuntu
Using EEEbuntu (9.04) on the new EEE 1201N with Nvidia ION? You may have noticed that the built-in gfx driver is crushingly slow. But you can grab the latest Nvidia Linux drivers (which support the ION) without too much effort.
Below is exactly what I did to my system to get this working. Do this as root.
# wget http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos/ubuntu-repos.key && apt-key add ubuntu-repos.key && rm ubuntu-repos.key
# echo "deb http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos jaunty release" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/avenard.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic
# apt-get install nvidia-glx-195 nvidia-195-libvdpau
# nvidia-xconfig
# apt-get install vim
# vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
-- [Change Mouse to /dev/input/mice]
# /etc/init.d/gdm stop
# rmmod nvidia
# modprobe nvidia
# echo nvidia >>/etc/modules
# /etc/init.d/gdm start
Reference Pages:
http://ptspts.blogspot.com/2009/08/asrock-ion-330-nettop-with-jaunty.html
http://www.avenard.com/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html
Update: I also updated the BIOS of the 1201N to the latest version; downloaded from Asus website - you can grab it right here- 0318
- unzip the new bios
- stick it on a USB stick
- rename it from 1201N-ASUS-0318.ROM to 1201N.ROM on the USB stick
- put the USB stick in the 1201, remove all other USB devices
To update the bios- power off and hold ALT+F2 as you power on. The 1201N has 'bootblaster' which makes it difficult to do this (it will often just go right into grub), if you can't get the BIOS update utility to come up I suggest you get into the BIOS itself (F2) and then choose to disable Bootblaster then try the ALT+F2. The flash utility will load and read the usb stick and update the BIOS automatically, then restart the netbook.
Removing Blastwave from Solaris
Solaris on spac is a lot of fun, however, sometimes you need to clear the deck of all the fun and start fresh.
With blastwave (CSW) you install pre-built binaries for your system as regular solaris packages. Removing them using pkgrm is a pain if you want to clear blastwave off completely and start fresh. However, there is a solution.
I found the command over at glaasse's blog:
# yes | pkgrm `pkginfo | grep CSW | awk '{print $2}'`
Does the trick, and you can sit back and watch it happen. Be careful using the yes command and pkrm however.
Droid Maker – free ebook
I stumbled across and amazing free ebook recently- DroidMaker (the link takes you to the authors blog, where he's release the PDFs). The story is an amazingly detailed history of the formation of Lucasfilm and the evolution of what became Pixar. I done some 3D modeling and rendering in the past (using Lightwave) and it's amazing to realize that these guys literally had to invent and write this stuff as they went along.
I was initially trying to convert the PDF to an ebook for reading on the iPhone, but found that nothing will convert a PDF nicely-- but that is for another post. What I did find is that the MacAir itself is a really nice ebook reader if you rotate the PDF to the right using Preview, and then hold the Air open on your lap like a book. It's small, light and thin enough that it really makes a great reader.
Amazon EC2 and Elastic Load Balancers – no paid AMIs?
I was setting up a load-balanced pair of Nodes on EC2 and ran into a snag: you can't add paid AMIs (we sometimes use the real RedHat AMIs) with the elastic load balancers!
So I kicked off some Centos 5.2 images from RightScale and moved everything over. This is going to cost RedHat, since now I've used the Centos images and they half the cost and just as nice. I doubt I'll be going back to using the expensive RHEL AMIs.
EC2 and OpenSolaris with EBS
Using OpenSolaris AMIs on EC2, and wanted to use EBS... currently, Elastifox is mute on naming the devices (only gives examples for linux based device names) so I was looking for a read on Opensolaris and found this.
Conficter- sick
Next, Conficker A enters an infinite loop, within which it generates a list of 250 domain names (rendezvous points). The name-generation function is based on a randomizing function that it seeds with the current UTC system date. The same list of 250 names is generated every 3 hours, i.e., 8 times per day. All Conficker clients, with system clocks that are at minimum synchronized to the current UTC date, will compute and attempt to contact the same set of domains. When contacting a domain for which a valid IP address has been registered, Conficker clients send a URL request to TCP port 80 of the target IP, and if a Windows binary is returned, it will be validated via a locally stored public key, stored on the victim host, and executed. If the computer is not connected to the Internet, then the malicious code will check for connectivity every 60 seconds. When the computer is connected, Conficker A will execute the domain name generation subroutine, contacting every registered domain in the current 250-name set to inquire if an executable is available for download.
Hope for Newton – squashing the 2010 Bug?
Mottek: John Arkley was wrong ... Eckhart Köppen has built a Newton patch. So it seems like there are 3 people alive who can do it, despite what John has written. John, Paul and Eckhart. And only one of them is actively developing for the Newton... Which is pretty impressive.
Meanwhile, the excellect Nitch software package, which implements GTD on the Newton has actually made me fire up my 2100 and get it connected to a desktop so that I could install Nitch. Eckhart Köppen has written zn amazingly useful package that really shines on the Newton form factor, and proves that the Newton is relvant even today.
Getting it connected back up to a desktop, to install the software is another story, and is a big issue for anyone getting back into the Newton scene. I'll write that up later.
Picassa Upload Button for WordPress
It's finally been done- ClYang has written the glue to get an upload button in Picassa working with your WordPress (2.7.1) blog. This has been a requested feature for a while. There are plenty of solutions to share a picassa web on a WordPress blog, but this is the first instance (that I can find) of building the upload button - which directly uploads your local photos from Picassa into your WordPress blog, not up into Google's servers.
CLYang has clear directions, they work great and if this is something you are interested in, go get it. I've been using Picassa on the Mac now for a month or so, and I'm very happy with it-- so happy that I haven't even used the new iPhoto 09 yet.
Why the best Newtons could die next year
There is a bad bug in the handing of time for Newton OS 2.1, which is used on most Newtons still around today. Details of the bug have been collected on the 40hz site. There is one 'fix' that doesn't completely work. What is needed is a real system patch, and those are just not possible anymore, not without massive help from Apple itself.
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