I picked up an Asus EeePC 900 from ZaReason and it arrived today. Now, on the order form it says Xandros but I mentioned in a comment that it would soon be running Ubuntu. Within two minutes of placing the order they replied saying they can put a basic Ubuntu install on it, so I said “heck yeah!”. So, today when I opened it up, it booted Ubuntu out of the box. 
By all accounts they did a great setup but this isn’t ready for anyone other than an experienced user for certain (e.g. if you install the kernel upgrade from the repositories it breaks wifi so you have to recompile it.) If you happen to go this route, here are some tips.
- You need to set the bios to power saving mode for CPU scaling to work properly. Mine now runs as 112 idle and 900 max. CPU scaling is a MUST for battery life.
- Following this guide will help a lot. In fact, you can even run this script (after you audit it of course so you know what’s going on) and it will finish the setup for you (except for all of the CPU scaling so make sure you do those changes by hand). Note that you must revert the audio driver back to “mode=auto” as it says here.
- For additional information you can visit our own help wiki entry.
- Optional: Install and run powertop to make your system use less energy.
So, after all that, how does it work? Great! Any issues? Yeah, the keyboard is too darn small to touch type. If you are a “hunt and peck” person, you’ll do fine. Also, you’ll have to watch kernel upgrades as you’ll need to rebuild wifi modules and re-enable the ACPI fixes.
Anyway, obligatory pictures!
p.s. For fun, I set my hostname to “ubuette”.
May 28th, 2008 at 07:18
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May 30th, 2008 at 12:25
ps. You’ll also want to probably install the gsynaptics driver and add “Option SHMConfig “true”" to your xorg.conf file.
June 3rd, 2008 at 06:54
[...] Stanford writes about his new Eee PC 900, on which ZaReason installed Ubuntu 8.04 for him. (”On the order form it says Xandros but I [...]
June 10th, 2008 at 06:32
Hey Joey
I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my ASUS EEE PC 900 and I am having a few problems.
I cannot connect to the Internet via the Ethernet port and so I cannot run the scripts which fix various bugs upon installation as it uses apt-get to install some fixes and my machine is unable to connect to the Internet.
I am able to view and download small files from the Internet but I am unable to browse properly or install anything of matter because of this.
My friend has told me it is something to do with my MTU value as it is set to 1320 whenever I plug my Ethernet cable in and he cannot seem to change it.
Can you help me please?
Thanks in advance, Chris