EEE PC Linux Reinstall Guide ? Windows version |Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna| {Via USB Pendrive/Flashdrive}

EEE PC Linux Reinstall Guide – Windows version |Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna| {Via USB Pendrive/Flashdrive}
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Since this is my first guide ever, please don’t be too harsh on me =] I do have some smartass comments, because I felt like it - at the time of writing

I got an Asus EEE PC not long after the “Galaxy Black” was officially announced. I personally can’t stand an OS that won’t let you change the wallpaper. And besides I don’t like the default UI – I’m not a 4 year old kid anymore .

There are plenty of distros out there. I’m using Linux Mint on my EEE, and so far I’m quite pleased with it. It plays all my files [.avi, .mkv, .divx] without any extra addition on my part. Since I don’t have the money to go and get an external CD-ROM, I couldn’t just straightaway throw n amount of distros at it to see which works best. If you have an external, feel free to skip reading the rest and let your drive spin

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Things you will need:
A Flashdrive 1GB [or more] (surprise!!) [ :blank: ]
Linux Mint 4.0 (HA! Betcha I totally caught you off guard!) [ .torrent ]
Fixmint [Helps you make your FD (Flash Drive, not Floppy Drive) bootable!] [ Fix That Mint! ]
Wifi XP Driver [You’ll be using ndiswrapper for wifi, dear reader!] [ Go get ‘em! ]
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Good! Now you have everything. Let’s get a move on now, shall we?

Code:

1)	Format that drive of yours to FAT32.
2)	Make a “LinuxM” folder on the root of your drive. Copy your Linux Mint ISO into this folder.
3)	Extract fixmint to LinuxM [It’s a self extracting archive – well so long as you click Extract]
4)	Run fixmint.bat and obey it’s orders
5)	It’s going to make a “mint” folder and magically create some files and hide it there. It’s no longer hidden since I’ve told you where it is.
6)	Now take everything that’s there and dump it in the root of your drive [I keep saying Memory stick. Sony should die]
7)	Now you run “makeboot.bat”, and obey it’s orders too.
8)	ZOMG You’ve a bootable drive that can run linux!!ONESHIFT1. Now go threaten some people by saying you’ll wipe their hard drive minty clean

But wait! We haven’t finished our evil plans! Stick it in your EEE PC before it’s too late! Make sure it’s powered down, though. Otherwise you’ll have to reboot.

Press escape when you see that grey “Eee PC” bootup splash. You should eventually get a blue screen [Not a BSOD. You’re not running Windows.] and press down to choose the flash drive which has Linux Mint. If you have other flashdrives sticking out, remove them. They don’t deserve to be there for now. And get rid of that SD card too. You don’t need that now.

So you look at the screen, and it says “Ubuntu”? If it does, then you’ve downloaded the wrong ISO. Heh, no. Linux Mint is Ubuntu + moar stuph. Good stuph, at that. Press enter and let it boot.

You can play around in the “Live CD” environment [except that you’re using Live USB. Good job, fooling the OS ], but just click on “Install” so that we can be done with it. If you don’t like how Linux Mint interacts with you, I’m sorry to say that you’ve wasted your effort and you’ve wasted enough to stop you from reading the rest of this guide. Alternatively you can waste more effort and hope you gained something from the experience.

Now that you’ve clicked Install, it’ll tell you to choose the language. But wait, you can’t see the “OK” and “Quit” button! What do you do? Press “Enter”. Does it ask you if you want to Quit? Press escape, hit tab, and press Enter again! Does it take you to the next screen? [If not, work on it until you do].

Again, here you enter values [oh, choose to format as ext2, if possible - it'll reduce teh number of writes onto your 4GB drive thereby prolonging the life of your EEE], and keep hitting Enter till the installer starts doing what it’s supposed to do – install. Wait till it ends. And now you can choose. Follow the rest of the guide once you’re done rebooting. Oh, and remove that flash drive please? You don’t necessarily need it.
So you see that screen with beautiful stuff on the top right, and it doesn’t boot properly? Don’t worry – press down twice, until you get to choose between 3 options listed in a blue box against a black background. Choose the first one. Let it work its magic and boot.

So now you have everything. Except wireless you say? We can fix that too! I’ve repackaged the needed driver for your convenience, and it’s available here. Oh wait, I should’ve mentioned that earlier for your convenience, eh? I did that too!

Now we copy that folder to the desktop. Or anywhere else really. But I’m using the desktop.

To use ndiswrapper, first we blacklist the ones that Daryna Is using so that they don’t conflict, and fight for the throne. For that:

Code:

1)	Open up terminal [Right click on desktop; you should see the option there
2)	Type “sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist”; Enter your password – the one that you use to login.
3)      Add the following lines:  blacklist ath_pci
                                  blacklist ath_hal
   
4)      Save!
5)	Restart, since it’s the cool thing to do.
6)	Now open up the terminal once you’ve logged back in, and navigate to the directory where you saved the wireless driver [it should be path/ndis5x IIRC]
7)	Type “sudo ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf”
8)	Then type “sudo ndiswrapper –m“
9)	After that “sudo ndiswrapper –ma && sudo ndiswrapper –mi”

Reboot and you should be computing on a completely newly installed Daryna ‘puter. That’s what the cool kids are doing.
I’ll edit it so that you can get Beryl and stuff running, and make your EEE work hard. Like how ASUS wasn’t planning on doing.

And feedback please

< Greetz to: |EEEUser Wiki|Pendrive Linux|>​

 

When you say to move everything from the mint folder to the root of the flash key, do you mean within the LinuxM folder of outside of that? After completing the moving and running makeboot.bat, where do you put the iso file? Can we use a different image in place of Linux mint or the fixmint.exe only work for Linux mint?

Sorry, try to follow your guide and could not boot from the drive. Also, is there any dos program for ubuntu? I had to use a window machine to run those .bat files. Thanks.

 

Hey FFZERO,

When I said root, I mean outside of teh LinuxM folder. Basically if F: is your drive, then it's in F:\<files go here>.

The .iso remains there, in the LinuxM folder. I see that I didn't mention that; I apologize. The guide has been edited =)

I haven't tried with another version of an .iso file. It does work with Gutsy Gibbon[Ubuntu 7.10]. I can try and let you know though.

The makeboot.bat runs on Windows inside the flashdrive. Just run it from where it is.

Hope that helped!

 

Great guide, and fun to read!

 

Good work Amol

 

Thanks guys - for a while I've been thinking that it's a waste of effort. I hope people find it useful one way or another.

 

Got the drive working, thanks and oh, +rep . Now if my eee and sd card come any earlier.

 

Hey, let me know how it goes, please. I'd love some feedback

[whoa, 1000 posts!]

 

Amol, many thanks! Great advice and directions. Per your instructions, I had no issues at all loading Linux Mint on my Black 4G EEE PC. It's already been two days and it's running solid. The basic standard install of Daryna left me with about 45% free drive space after I got rid of the stuff I wasn't going to use - (45% is not bad considering I only use this thing for email, surfing, IM, and occasional snooping). Has anyone tried loading the "lite" edition?

Thanks for the wi-fi driver as the EEE pc is kind of worthless without wireless.

 

According to the website:

The purpose of the Light Edition is to bring a version of Linux Mint which doesn't contain:

* Proprietary software
* Patented technologies
* Support for restricted formats

In some countries where the legislation allows software patents to be enforced the Light Edition provides a way for users to legally download Linux Mint.

The following components are not present in this Light Edition:

* Macromedia Flash
* Support for encrypted DVDs
* Windows codecs
* Support for restricted multimedia formats
* Unrar
* Sun Java (replaced by GIJ)

 

Great job! I have been considering purchasing the EEE, but don't want to stick with the built in Xandra distro. How does all teh hardware work with mint (esp. flash memory)? How quickly does it boot up? Does the swap work fine?

 

humm, please just tell me how to install it on COMPAQ V3000Z

 

Well first get teh bootable flash drive with Mint on it, and do the basic installation first. Troubleshoot after you have base system installed

If you try not to mess with fancy stuff like Compiz Fusion, it actually holds up real nice. If you install using default/automatic, it'll allocate 256MB of swap automatically.

 

Just remember with the Eee, to partition your system using ext2, and not to use a swap partition. This will cut down on write cycles to the Eee and make the flash memory last longer.

 

Well, this was what I tried. But V3000z freeze at the start point. My BIOS is in F.34. I don't know if this is matter.

 

What do you mean by "BIOS is in F.34"?

 

I was curious if you were able to get the webcam working or if you had a model that wasn't equipped with one.

 

have you every try other distro like puppylinux?

 

First of all: I know I'm digging out quite an old entry here. - Sorry for that.

But, secondly: I only registered on this forums to say: OMG thank you so much!!! I just don't know how to express my gratitude and happiness... You wouldn't believe how long I have searched for a solution to my wireless-problem on Asus Eee PC...! (With Linux Mint, not the original OS ... -Mint rocks ^^) And now it finally works!! I still can't believe it o.o
I've been spending hours and hours (and, therefore, days) on searching for a solution; I've tested 3 or four different approaches or so. But none of those worked the slightest bit. And now (I know I'm repeating myself, sorry for that) it's just working fine so easily...
Um, well, to sum this up:
Thank you SO much, Amol!! That howto of yours is great and has helped a Linux newbie like me to solve one of my biggest problems pretty easily :-D