Ubuntu 8.04 on the Eee

Recently I saw a website about Ubuntu on the Eee PC, and I thought hey, why not install it? They said two weeks ago that they will release the whole package, but then they got wifi driver problems and so the release was delayed.
I grew really tired of using my Xandros-based system, with upgrade-complicated unionfs and quite old software, thus I was really willing to do the switch to anouther operating system, especially Ubuntu.
Anyway, now I am using it, and I can really recommend it to others. There are (at least on my Eee) no problems whatsoever, and even Compiz works very nice out of the box, which was impossible with Xandros.
Anyway, once I installed it, I also had to do some tweaks to make it perfect for my Eee (most of the stuff can be found on the hardy configuration page, but still look for what you really need when doing the configuration), and that used up a half hour of my time, which is quite fast for a complete configure for a PC. Then I could start the tweaking, which I personally looove.
Even though it is awesome, the better system does not come without a price. The system loads up significally slower, but not as slow as some youtube videos where Ubuntu loads almost 2 minutes. The system is still usable after a short amount of time, and it works really nice.

That makes me think.. Why even bother with the default system and not install a system, one is familiar with like Fedora or Ubuntu. With some simple tweaks you can get not a crippled system, but a full working, complete system, with a real good userbase and regular updates (unionfs made updates eat up too much space). After my install of Ubuntu (I made a 256MB swap), I had 1.5GB free space, which was even a bit more than Xandros gave first. With removal of additional programs, I had now even more space, which was impossible on Xandros.

Anyway, as you can see, I am quite happy that I installed Ubuntu, and I recommend it to any other EeePC user, who is unhappy with his default system.

Right now I am at Ubucon'08 in Lithuania, which is quite a nice experience. I haven't thought there were so much Open Source supporters here, and I will probably go again next time. I even got a free CD with Baltix, which I will try at home, just to see how different it is from the standard Ubuntu distribution.

Next time I will finally talk about my mapeditor. (screenshot above)

(logo made by waffel)