Yesterday I downloaded both the desktop x86 & Netbook Remix ISO’s from the NZ mirror and pretty quickly burnt out the NBR CD and installed it onto the work Asus eee 901.

The popular Ubuntu Linux distribution has received criticism from an unexpected corner and its ASUS Eee netbook users are likely to be left with an unworkable system when Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala hits the Internet later this month.

The team has decided to move away from Ubuntu in its next release. Instead, Eeebuntu 4.0 will be based on Debian Unstable.

eee-control is an easy-to-use utility for controlling Eee PC hardware under Linux. It can toggle hardware (WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) on and off, lets you configure all hardware hotkeys, enables aggressive powersaving, and more

I bought an Eee PC 701 a little while ago, when Catch of the Day had them as their daily special. Since I bought it mainly as a travel computer, rather than one I intended to use day-to-day, I’ve hardly touched it since it arrived and I dropped Ubuntu Netbook Remix onto it.

I’ve been thinking about installing Linux (specifically, Ubuntu) on that new netbook I’m going to get (which is going to be a handsome new Asus EeePC 1005HA, by the way).

Googling “eeepc linux install” quickly leads me to forum.eeeuser.com and thence to installing Ubuntu, which I seem to remember is claimed to be the most idiot-proof flavour of Linux.

It seems to be one of the original 701 models, the label on the bottom says “Eee PC 4G”. It has very small screen (something like 7″), an equally small (Swiss German) keyboard, and a touchpad with NO buttons (!).

Well, I got my wet weekend, so I’m writing this on my Eee PC 701 with Ubuntu replaced by Eeebuntu, a derivative of Ubuntu specially tailored for Eees. So how much of an improvement is it?

And while Canonical was pushing their Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), I recently decided to install the desktop release and have my netbook run the standard 9.04 release of the Ubuntu distribution. Below are the results to my experience.

Eeebuntu is a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for netbooks. And the latest version, Eeebuntu 3.0 is based on the recently launched Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, which means it has all the latest features included in a standard Ubuntu installation.

So anyway, now that Ubuntu 9.04 is out of Beta and has been fully released, I decided to give the 9.04 NetBook Remix (NBR) a whirl on my EeePC 701, for 4GB SSD model.

Last night I downloaded the Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) and installed it on my Asus Eee PC 901. Here’s how it all went.

I wanted to try out the latest and greatest Ubuntu distribution in comparison with my last Ubuntu netbook experience, and thus we have a very brief anecdote of the experience of Ubuntu 9.04 on the 1000 HE, detailed in the below paragraph.

It is with some reluctance that I report that I am giving up on Ubuntu Linux on my Eee PC. I tried every trick I could find on the web to get Skype to use the sound chip properly and nothing worked.

Now, downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 alpha 5 – Jaunty Jackalope for those who don’t like numbers – and I created a bootable USB stick and booted the Asus from the stick.

I chose Ubuntu since it is the distribution I use on my MacBook. I have also tried the Eeebuntu distribution which is expressly written for the EeePC, but I came back to basic Ubuntu since I prefer the standard desktop, both form an aesthetic point of view and because of familiarity and usability.

I discovered recently the truth of the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Yes, I finally did it. I bricked my beloved EeePc.