Netbook

On March 28th I purchased a netbook, an Asus Eee 1001. I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on it. This page documents some of the things I am doing with it.

Ubuntu

This section describes how to install Ubuntu 12.04 on the Asus Eee 1001 netbook.

One of the first things to do when I received the netbook was to install Ubuntu on it. I did this by creating a bootable USB drive with Ubuntu, then booting the netbook fom that USB drive.

This was a little bit tricky, as the only computer available was a Mac. Creating a bootable USB for Linux from a Mac requires a couple of extra steps. I've documented everything here, along with references.

Obtaining a Linux USB Image

You can obtain an .img file for the Ubuntu live CD/USB installer at the Ubuntu website.

I actually typed my computer's make and model and the word Ubuntu, and was directed to a Ubuntu page that recommended a specific OS version for my hardware.

Creating Linux-Bootable USB fom Mac

Making a FAT USB Stick

The first thing you have to do is to wipe you USB drive, and format it as an empty FAT dive with a master boot record.

To do this from a Mac, open Disk Utility and pick the USB disk.

Partition the USB disk with a single FAT partition. Pick Options and make sure that Master Boot Record is slected.

Make the Master Boot Record Active

The instructions on this page were useful, up until step 4, where they recommend downloading syslinux (don't do that): http://tech.anoj.net/2013/01/fixing-unetbootin-on-mac-os-x-to-create.html

Mac's Disk Utility won't make the Master Boot Record active by default, so your USB drive won't be bootable unless you activate the partition. In Mac, here's how you do that:

First, determine the name of your drive:

diskutil list

Mine was called disk2 (alias rdisk2). Now unmount the disk from Mac:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/rdisk2

Make the partition active using fdisk, then unmount it:

sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdisk2
print
f 1
write
print 
exit

Now unmount the disk:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/rdisk2

Copy the Linux Image onto the USB

You can now copy the .img image onto the USB partition you've created. This can be done using the dd utility:

sudo dd if=/path/to/ubuntu.img of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=8192

Now you can eject your drive, and you've got a Linux-bootable Ubuntu USB:

diskutil eject /dev/rdisk2

Booting the Asus from USB

To boot the Asus from the USB drive, we've got to modify the BIOS to tell it to start from an external drive like a USB drive, instead of the internal hard drive.

When you start up the computer, immediately press Func + F2 to enter the BIOS.

Go to Boot tab, and remove all startup devices except the external device. This is shown in the Youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9V0uEiBT2A (there are plenty of others too)

Insert your USB drive, then save your BIOS settings, and exit. You computer will restart. Hit escape to get to a boot menu where you can select what device to boot from. You should be able to select you USB drive.

At this point, your Ubuntu live install should wok like a charm. If not, you may see one of two things:

• An extremely barebones shell called a BusyBox, using the ash shell. If you are here, it is because your USB drive was bootable but is not playing well with your hardware.
• A two-line message that the BIOS cannot find any bootable media. If you are here, it is because your USB drive is not bootable, and there was an error in the process of creating your USB drive.

With enough effort and Googling you can get everything working just fine.

New Software

Note Taking

Installed everpad

Had issue with syncing

https://github.com/nvbn/everpad/issues/201

Had to install buncha stuff, cmake, qt4,

It all took a very long time