i have had my pc for over a year
it is a asus 1000 with xandros installed
i use it mainly for the internet and email but
i would like to extend its capabilities
i recently bought a 1 tb external hard drive and
an external optical drive
My idea of extending its capabilities are
by replacing the preinstalled xandros with mepis 8
on my hard drive or on a 16gb ssd on the reader.
I would like to have fluxbox as my main
window manager.
I would like to learn how to make a boot/
rescue/repair disk.
I would like to learn how to record/burn
cds/dvds.
you wanted specs --- here they are --thanks
ASUS 1000
--size 10.2 led backlight
--resolution 1024x600 wsvga
--cpu intel atom n270
--os xandros
--memory 1gb
--storage 40gb ssd
--wireless 802.11 b/g/n
--bluetooth
--webcam 1.3 mega pixel

I want more but this is a start--thanks to all

Delete My account

I hope that 1GB is actually the size of your system's RAM and not its SSD.

First things first - back up any critical data you've got on your netbook.

Then it's time to explore Zandros replacements. If you search the various netbook forums, you'll see that Ubuntu is the most popular replacement distro; it's a good place to start. Now, Ubuntu comes in several variants (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, others?), each of which presents you with a different desktop environment (DE). I've actually tried all five of the variants listed; among them Lubuntu, which uses the LXDE desktop environment, happens to be my favorite. However, YMMV, so try them all!

Once you've settled on a DE, it's time to start adding programs. Although it's certainly possible to add programs not in the Ubuntu repositories, don't do it until you're much more familiar with Linux. The Ubuntu repos are going to have enough apps to keep you occupied for a while. Among the apps I've installed beyond the basics are mplayer for watching videos, conky to display the local weather on my desktop, geany and glade for software development, gnumeric for spreadsheets, abiword for word processing, gimp for photo editing, and gramps for genealogy.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

2 members found this post helpful.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Laptop & Netbook and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

2 members found this post helpful.

Welcome to the forums, Jesse!

linuxquestions.org is a good forum, but I would also recommend you register over at http://forum.eeeuser.com because they have a sub-forum specific to each model of EEE (including the 1000).

The most important advice I can give you is that a netbook is simply a small computer. Therefore any basic "Linux 101" reading material will apply perfectly well to your EEE. In other words, rather than googling "how do I mount an external hard drive on an EEE 1000 running Xandros?" you can google "how do I mount an external hard drive in Linux?" and you'll get a lot more good hits.

Secondly--and this advice comes from anecdotal experience because I have never personally tried Xandros--but you might want to consider switching to a more up-to-date and popular Linux distribution (or "distro"). Xandros is quite outdated and does not enjoy a particularly good reputation these days. Installing a popular, user-friendly distro such as Ubuntu or Mint will make your Linux learning curve much smoother, in my opinion.

Good luck, and please do write back to let us know how it goes!

jesse lara,

Welcome to LQ. Hope you have as much fun here as I do.

Please provide the specs, or a link to them, for your "asus 1000" -- it will help us give you better advice.

About 6 mo. ago I bought an 8G 2nd-hand from a friend. I got it for a toy & test bed, in large part to be able to support the platform in my weekly Linux workshop. I hoped that Asus was sincere in supporting Linux & therefore I would have a number new users new members (of the workshop) to help. W/ their (Asus) move to/toward "Winders" only, that influx of members has not materialized. Still, I am enjoying it & it's compact size.

I just visited the eeeuser forum, & my main reservation is all the M$ related stuff overwhelming the Linux. OTOH, it seems to be populated w/ actual users.

... Be careful following advice from non-Eee users, however well intentioned. -- Note snowpine's "anecdotal experience ..." remark, that is a very good & honest warning, & I have given rep accordingly.

I've heard that Eee h/w needs custom adjustments to the OS, so be careful installing just any distro.

Xandros' (not [zZ]andros) main flaw, IMO, was that they were too tight w/ releasing community editions, so they never caught on, especially w/ opinion makers. I took the position that if I couldn't get a free copy to learn on, then I wasn't going to recommend them to beginners. (As my friend Steve from Brooklyn used to say: "FM?FY!" )

RockDoctor, Your advice is sound, especially the parts about back up & exploring. Are you an Eee PC owner?

Although I backed up my 8G using Clonezilla, I have not (yet) overwritten the SSD. I left the pre-installed Xandros on it, & am doing my experimenting by installing to a 16 GB SD card that I leave in the reader. At the moment I have MEPIS 8.0 running on it. You external optical & HD drives will make back up & experimenting relatively easy.

From the point of view of a KDE power user, the pre-installed Xandros is, IMNRHO, an utter POC. That's why I started my experimenting w/ MEPIS 8.0, which is my current favorite. I would recommend looking at Aurora (formerly named Eeebuntu) & EasyPeasy (formerly named Ubuntu Eee). If you want to be overwhelmed, try Comparison of netbook-oriented Linux distributions .

1 members found this post helpful.

No, but I do have a 2-1/2 year old Acer Aspire One AOA150-1570 (Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD) that accompanies me when I'm traveling.

What do you want to extend about it? To do what?