Alternative distributions for the EEEPC: PupEEE

I decided to give a look at some Linux distributions designed for netbooks and alternative to Ubuntu. I'm not going to replace Ubuntu any soon, even if I don't like the latest version, the one I have installed is going to be supported for a long time. I'm simply curious to see what alternatives are available, for netbooks, and to test how they perform on my EEEPC.

The distribution I decided to start with is PupEEE: the EEEPC tailored version of the famous small footprint distribution Puppy Linux.

Download and install

I downloaded the latest version of PupEEE from its download page. Preparing a bootable media from the downloaded zip is a little different from usual but not difficult. Once I extracted the zip file on an empty SD card I simply executed the “bootinst.sh” script placed in the “boot” folder.

Once extracted PupEEE only takes only about 130MB of disk space (this is a really small footprint), I've been able to install it on an old 256MB SD card that I had left in a drawer with other obsolete or useless things.

Happy New Year!

I learn from Giovanna's Blog that the coming year is a prime number ... will it be also a "prime year"?

 Happy 2011 everybody!

More wireless bridging

I recently had to move one computer to anther room, so I had to connect two rooms with my router placed in the living room. Not willing work with cables across the house I decided to expand the wireless bridging I already had set-up by adding a new access point. This time I double checked hardware characteristics before to buy and I eventually decided for a Netgear WG602 (V4) access point. Using only hardware of the same producer is not mandatory but it often helps.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Synergy: how to make comfortable your netbook at home

Netbooks are, in my opinion, one of the most important innovations in mobile computing: they represent an unique mix of low price, flexibility and mobility. On the other hand netbooks lack a little on the ergonomic side. Netbook's small keyboards and mousepad aren't the most comfortable things to use, often they they are even less comfortable when your netbook is placed on the desk near your desktop computer.

A software solution to a hardware problem

External mouse and keyboard can, of course, be plugged to your netbook but this would mean having to deal with hardware switches, cables or, in case of wireless devices, Bluetooth configurations every time you switch between your desktop and your netbook computer.

Here comes Synergy: a simple utility that lets you use your desktop computer's mouse and keyboard to control your netbook without the need of any extra hardware but a network connection, in the most intuitive way by simply moving your mouse pointer off one side of the screen like you were using a single computer with two displays.