Miskatonic University Press

How I put Ubuntu Netbook-Remix on my Eee

unix uses.this

Screenshot of my Eee with Ubuntu Netbook-Remix on it

I have an Asus Eee 701. They keyboard's too small but it's a nice netbook and perfect for travelling. I had Ubuntu Eee (now Easy Peasy) on it, but a couple of days ago I brought it up to date with Ubuntu Netbook-Remix, with Ubuntu 9.04. Here's what I did.

  • Downloaded Ubuntu Netbook-Remix, put it on a flash drive, and installed it. Dead easy.
  • Ran Update Manager to update everything.
  • Preferences: change to standard desktop.
  • Ran into a problem: The window manager stops working if you do what I did and then reboot. Why this hasn't been fixed I don't understand. I searched Google for ubuntu netbook-remix metacity and I found what I needed in the eighth result. The last comment in this bug report says to run gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list --type list --list-type=string ["windowmanager","panel"] and then reboot. I did so and it worked.
  • Copy .emacs* .bashrc .profile .lisp .ssh .themes into my home directory from a backup.
  • System | Preferences | Appearance: set to my Miskatonic theme, change background to solid colour SteelBlue4, turn off icons in menus, make toolbar button labels show text only.
  • Change Workplace Switcher so it has 3x2 windows named A-F.
  • System | Preferences | Keyboard Shortcuts so that Ctrl-arrow moves around workplaces instead of Ctrl-Alt-arrow.
  • Install: GNOME Do (set preferences so it runs automatically), Firefox 3.5, Emacs (snapshot version with GTK), auctex, git, ruby, rubygems, Thunderbird (with the Lightning and Google Provider extensions), and Apache for starters.
  • Change File Browser preferences to use list view by default.
  • Firefox extensions: Adblock Plus, Zotero 2, Customize Google, Session Manager, LibX for York University Libraries, CS Lite, Web Developer.
  • Wonder again what Firefox extension I need that will stop me from having to do this by hand every time I set up a new system.
  • Adjust placement of things in top menu bar.
  • Try to watch a Quicktime file and install codecs when prompted.
  • System | Preferences | Startup Applications: turn off things I don't need.
  • Uninstall Evolution.
  • git pull various things.

I just noticed that the Eee has about 220 megs of swap space. It shouldn't have any, because all that writing will speed up the flash drive wearing out and losing its memory. Hmm, maybe I'll have to reinstall.