BOOT CAMP 532 (08/07/08) – Tweaking the Eee PC part 2
Straight out of the box the tiny Asus Eee PC is a really
useable little computer, able to do most of the routine tasks its larger and
more expensive cousins can do, but that’s not to say there is not some room for
improvement. Over the next three weeks we’ll look at some simple tweaks,
culminating in upgrading the basic user interface to a full-blown Windows-like
desktop.
But first, this week a quick orientation course for new
users, accustomed to Windows. In fact it is mostly very straightforward. If you
want to browse the web select the Internet tab click the Web icon and up pops
Firefox. To send or receive emails switch to the Work tab and click the Mail
icon to open Thunderbird, which looks and works pretty much like Outlook
Express. If you want to create or edit a document stay with the Work tab and
click Documents. This launches Open Office, which is fully compatible with
Microsoft Word (and several other popular word processors). But how do you get
documents and files in and out of the Eee?
That’s easy too, it has 3 USB ports and a SD Card reader
slot, however, things are a little different when it comes to opening and
viewing the contents of drives and folders. This is Linux and it uses different
conventions so there are no alphabetically ordered drives (A:, C:, D: and so
on). Fortunately this version of Linux takes the sting out of it with an
excellent utility called File Manager, which is Windows Explorer by any other
name. You’ll find it on the Work tab and it opens with the familiar looking
two-pane directory tree and folder view. At the top of the tree is My Eee PC
and if you click around I suspect that much of what you see will look strange
and unfamiliar but there’s no need to worry.
The Eee has a My Documents folder that’s almost exactly
the same as the one in XP (and the User folder in Vista). Inside you’ll find
sub folders called My Ebooks, Music, Office, Pictures and Videos where you can
store all of your user files. In File Manager you’ll find it listed under My
Home, or you can get to it from ‘All File Systems’ by double-clicking the
unnamed folder icon and going to Home > User > My Documents.
Eee PCs come with 2, 4 or 8Gb of hard drive space and
with up to 500Mb used by the operating system and programs there doesn’t seem
to be a lot to spare. In practice it’s not a problem since you are unlikely to
want to keep bulky files on the machine. In any case you can easily expand the
machine’s storage capacity by slotting in a SD card, and with 8Gb cards selling
online for less than £25, it’s not going to break the bank. Memory cards and
USB drives work in exactly the same way on the Eee as they do in Windows. They
appear as named drive icons in File Manager and files can be copied and pasted,
and dragged and dropped to and from the card or main drive using exactly the
same methods and keyboard shortcuts as Windows (i.e. Ctrl + C to copy and Ctrl
+ V to Paste), so you should feel completely at home.
The one area where the Eee PC and Linux can prove a bit
tricky is installing new programs. Unlike Windows, where all you have to worry
about are the differences between XP and Vista, there are hundreds, if not
thousands of different versions or distributions of Linux. The Eee uses a
variant of Debian, called Xandros and many applications written for standard
Debian won’t run on the Eee. But even if they did installing software under
Linux can be horribly complicated.
Fortunately there is a solution and it’s a system
specially developed for use with versions of Linux like this one, called
Software Repositories. These are basically Internet libraries of programs
dedicated to a particular Linux distribution, and since its launch several have
sprung up specifically for the Eee PC, in addition to the ‘official’ ones,
operated by the Asus.
Adding, updating or removing software has been
transformed by this method, though it does have its limitations, but more on
those in a moment. If you want to make changes to the programs on your Eee open
the Settings tab and click on the Add/Remove Software and it immediately goes
on line to check if there are any new additions or updates. When it has
finished all you have to do is decide what you want to install, update or delete
and click the appropriate button. The obvious drawbacks are that you need a
fast Internet connection and there’s only a relatively small selection of
Asus-approved programs on offer. It’s obviously meant to protect users from
dodgy or flaky software but it also means you’ll be missing out on some very
interesting and useful software, including the KDE Desktop, which will be the
subject of the final instalment in this series. In the meantime if you want to
try a quick, simple and very safe upgrade tweak to improve web browsing see
this week’s Top Tip.
Next Week – Tweaking the Eee PC part 3
JARGON FILTER
KDE DESKTOP
K-Desktop Environment, Windows-like graphical user interface for
Linux computers
SD CARD
Secure
Data memory module used to store and move data between digital cameras, MP3
players and PCs etc.
THUNDERBIRD
Open Source email program, very similar to Outlook Express, from
Mozilla, the people who bought us the Firefox browser
TOP TIP
The Eee PC’s small screen can make web browsing hard going so it’s
worth installing a Firefox add-on, called miniFox, which
reduces the size of toolbars and toolbar icons. Simply visit the site on your
Eee, click on the Add to Firefox button, then Install Now and when it appears,
click Restart Firefox. To switch it on Go to Tools > Add-Ons, click Use
Theme, restart Firefox and enjoy the extra centimetre or so of screen space.
Don't forget, there's a
full archive of previous Boot Camp Top Tips at www.pctoptips.co.uk
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© R. Maybury 2008, 1106
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