eee pc 900 installation of Ubuntu 9.04 (Ubuntu Netbook Remix)

OK, I finally got around to install UNR 9.04 in My wife's eee pc 900. the experience was very similar to my eee pc 1000:

1. Follow this instructions from the ubuntu website:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles

2. Install the eee-control-tray:

http://greg.geekmind.org/eee-control/

3. Install one kernel patch:

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/349314/comments/74

The last step is just temporary until the general release kernel is patched. After that my 900 works like a charm.

Well, one word of advice, both the 900 and the 1000 have a problem with flash. Playing flash video is not a very good experience, it is OK except if you try to watch it full screen then it is kind of jerky, so far I haven't found a solution. Let me know if you have a solution ot the problem.

Ubuntu 9.04

This week ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty jackalope) has been released and I can say with certainty that it is the best version of Ubuntu so far. This time, instead of upgrading my current installation I decided to go re-install from the beginning. Something that I like from Linux is that all your data is in your home directory, making easier to backup and restore. (Tip, if you care about configuration information saved in hidden folder, you will need to use the command prompt).

After backing up my Acer 5315-2153, I place the live cd in the cd-rom and there we went. The installation was a breeze, I went with an standard installation, except for 2 items: I use ext4 instead of the default ext3 (ext4 is faster) and use a different keyboard configuration. It worked without a flaw, all hardware was supported and ready to be used (including my bluetooth mouse!).

It was a great experience, so good that I decided to replace the Asus Xandros Linux in my eee pc 1000 for Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

The experience was just as great as with the full desktop except for the following:

1. UNR can't turnon or off the web cam or bluetooth, you have to do it by using the BIOS.
2. Not all hotkeys are supported.

After some digging I found this neat software that allows me to control the web cam and bluetooth (plus a couple of extra utilities, including the hotkeys):

http://greg.geekmind.org/eee-control/


I am planning to do the same on my wife's eee pc 900, I expect an easier ride since it is an older model but I'll post about it!

One quick note: the 1000 has 2 SSD, once speedy the other not so much, I partition both with ext4 and mounted "/" in the 8gb and "/home" in the 32gb. I left some 2gb in the 32gb for swap space, the rest for "/home".

Internet browsing in my centro part 2

Ok, this week I want to talk about Mobile HTML Transcoders or compressors. These are websites that can take a normal website and transcode for mobile viewing, reducing image quality, change layout, etc. These are extremely useful when you want to see the content of a complicate web site or like I mention last week, if you are using an RSS reader, since you will be able to take the link for the article and using a compressor you will be able to see it in Blazer!. These are my top favorites:

Google

Google is just great at making a web site manageable for Blazer or Xiino, I still don't understand how it does it but in the case of heavy web sites (engadget or lifehacker) it cuts all the links and images not related to the article you want to read, leaving with only the content you were intented to see. The other content is available just a click away. Its only problem is when I try to read pages in spanish using Xiino, the character set that it uses doesn't display correctly in Xiino, I think this is more a problem in Xiino than in Google but it is a problem for me.

Skweezer

Skweezer is another great compressor, the main reason why I love it is because the spanish pages show correctly in Xiino.

As you can imagine I use Skweezer for spanish web pages and Google for everything else.

I hope this helpful in your quest to browse the internet from your centro.

Internet Browsing in my centro

Let's be honest, the only mobile device that offers a great mobile internet experience is the iPhone and to a lesser degree the iPod touch. Safari is a great browser in all its incarnations (Mac, Windows and Mobile) raising the bar for all other devices.

Now I can see a small ray of hope for Windows Mobile (Opera Mobile) and for the next generation of smartphones using Linux in its different incarnations (Nova, Android, etc) but what can we do faithful users of a PalmOS (Garnet) device?

A lot I can say.

First, the time were we just "browse" is over, with our current information overload, it is more important than ever to get what we want/need to read without distracting information and to our rescue we have QuickNews. This incredible piece of sofware is a news reader or rss reader or feed reader, depending on the buzz word of the day, it basically allows you to get only the content that you need by subscribing to RSS Feeds, nowdays almost every website offers this neat tool. With Quicknews you will avoid jump from website to website to check the latest news, weather, industry specific articles, etc. All the information will be in your palm.

Now, an RSS Feed is basically the latest content of the website in text format and most web sites include the full article but some don't, for this you will need to actually go the web site, but what to do when the web site don't offer a mobile version? it can be really annoying to wait for pages whose content is so rich (images, video, etc) that takes forever to load even in the mobile fastest networks. Then what to do?

The solution is simply to use a compressor, compressors are web sites that "compress" the websites to be more useful in a mobile browser (Blazer, Xiino), QuickNews works well with 3: Google, MobileLeap and Skeezer.

OK, after this your browsing experience should be more pleasant but still not perfect, so here are some extra tips:

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal detect when you are using Blazer and they redirect you to the mobile version of the web site. It works for everything except for the NYT blogs.

I am working in a utility which will give you more choice between compressors, the printer friendly version of a web page (for some websites) or the mobile web site directly. I will make it public next week.

I love GTD, to me it is the one technique that click with me and that really has helped me. Now I will not make my blog about GTD but what I have found missing is a comprenhensive compilation of interview of David Allen, for this reason I am creating this post, I will maintenan it and re-post it from time to time, I'll create another one about video interview, this is exclusively for podcasts. I am including the link in text format for each podcast since I found that sometimes blazer doesn't pass the links to Kinoma, if that happens to you, just copy the link and past it in kinoma.

43 Folder productive talk. click here for the mp3.

http://odeo.com/show/3351643/1005364/download.mp3

Accidental Creative. click here for the mp3.

http://www.accidentalcreative.com/podcasts/ac-podcast-57-david-allen

Professionally Speaking. click here for the mp3.

http://www.exec-comms.com/blog/wp-content/audio/David_Allen.mp3

Donation Coder. click here for first part and here for the second part mp3.

http://podcast.donationcoder.com/shows/dcpodcast5p0.mp3

http://podcast.donationcoder.com/shows/dcpodcast5p5.mp3

Precision Change. click here for the mp3

http://precisionchange.com/podpress_trac/web/51/0/PC008_GTD_201_David_Allen.mp3

IMNO.ORG. Click here for the mp3

http://www.imno.org/audio_files/interview_David_Allen.mp3

Productivity Podcast. Click here for the mp3

http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/productivity/tpn_productivity_20050614_003.mp3

The Duct Tape Marketing. Click here for the mp3

http://media.libsyn.com/media/ducttape/davidallen1.mp3

Palm Centro, Bluetooth and Ubuntu.

OK, I received my new Centro and I just finished reviewing what applications to re-install and I make sure it doesn't reset any more, if you want to hear more about my review, you can check this post.

Now, I did all of this in Windows (it was just easier) and now I am trying to work again with Ubuntu, this time with a twist, I want to use bluetooth.

Now bluetooth is something that needs a little more work in Ubuntu, the basic functionality is there but making it work with my centro has not been easy, most people use the networking hotsync, I don't think it should be this difficult, it should be as easy as it is in Windows. My main roadblock right now is the virtual serial port, I am working on this based on some articles I found in the internet, I will update you when I figure it out how to sync my centro with Ubuntu via Bluetooth.

If you have any tips, please post it in the comments!.

My centro died

I know I was supposed to post my impressions on how to sync my centro with Ubuntu but my centro decided to died while I was working on it, I received today so hopefully I can try again in a couple of days, I decided that I will sync mycentro with Ubuntu using bluetooth, so wish me luck!.

One note on the whole ordeal to get my centro to work again, I couldn't and I decided first to call sprint, sprint told me that my phone was dead, then I contact Palm and after a couple of minutes it was decided my phone was dead, I paid for advance exchange (25usd ) to make the process quick and I got it today! 5 days total, not bad and I need to say that even without all the bad rep from sprint and palm support, everyone was very nice and helpful, I hope this is a trend with this 2 companies.