Crunchbang Linux - Rip audio CDs

One use for a Crunchbang Linux computer maybe to store audio (mp3) files. Perhaps you've always meant to rip your CD collection into digital files? Here's a brief look at installing and using one CD ripping program.


Asunder
I found that Asunder is a simple yet powerful program with a graphical interface that will, when you insert an audio CD, download the album and track titles for you. When you start ripping it will  create the music (mp3) files in a folder structure for you automatically. You can also change how it does this and where it stores the audio files using the Preferences menu. Asunder will save in WAV, MP3 or OGG format.


Install Asunder
Right click on the Crunchbang desktop

Click Terminal

At the $ prompt type:
sudo apt-get install asunder   [Enter]


Using Asunder
To start Asunder type: asunder [Enter]

The Asunder interface is refreshingly simple. Insert an Audio CD and it automatically checks the internet for the name of the album, artist, genre, etc. The following is an example - I've blurred the artist, title and track names but of course you will see them in all their glory:

The default setting is to save to OGG files.

If you want to change this or other settings click the Preferences button.

Click the Encode tab...

You can change to MP3 as shown above.

NOTE: OGG is a compressed audio file format, it's similar to MP3, you might get smaller files if you use it. However, if you want to copy your music to an MP3 player, very few support OGG but nearly all support MP3.

The General tab is where Asunder will save your audio files, by default to your home folder. The Filenames folder let's you decide the names of the artist and album folder names. The default is fine for most purposes.

When you are finished changing preferences click OK to save and close this window.

On the main Asunder screen bottom right click the Rip button to start ripping (saving) tracks.


Conclusion
The nice thing about Asunder is that it's simple, it does just what it is supposed to. There isn't a music player or any other fancy feature, it is what it is. If you want to rip one CD after another, this could well be the solution.


References

Asunder
http://www.littlesvr.ca/asunder/downloads.php

OGG file format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_file

MP3 file format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3

Crunchbang Linux - remote desktop

If you are using a Linux computer as file storage when it's in another room or headless (without a monitor) it would be good to remotely control the Linux desktop from your Windows computer. You could use Putty as explained in a previous article. However Putty only gives access to the remote Linux computer's command prompt, not to the desktop.

This article explains the basics of setting up Vino, it's a service on Crunchbang that'll allow for remote connections from a Windows computer (and other computers too). On the Windows side we can use a VNC client, more about this later...


Install Vino on Crunchbang Linux
Right click on the desktop

Click Terminal

At the $ prompt type:
sudo apt-get install vino  [Enter]

When it has finished type the following:
vino-preferences  [Enter]

At the top of the window it explains the 'Sharing' information - here you can see how you will be able to connect to your remote desktop. It's always the host name of your Crunchbang Linux computer with .local at the end. In my case it'll be crunchbangT42.local

Security is important but your level will depend on your circumstances. Don't choose 'You must confirm each access to this machine' because that will mean every time you connect to the Crunchbang remotely you'll need to physically go to it and press Enter to accept the remote connection. I do recommend you set a password, that way every time you connect you must enter this password. It will stop anyone else on your network connecting. 

When you've finished click Close



To make Vino start automatically every time you restart Crunchbang, do the following:

Right click on the Crunchbang desktop

Click Settings 

Click Openbox

Click Edit autostart

Scroll to the bottom and add the following:
# Start Vino
/usr/lib/vino/vino-server &

Save and exit the text editor.

The Linux side of the configuration is complete.



UltraVNC Viewer for Windows
Vino is compatible with VNC - in other words, you can use any VNC compatible program to access your Crunchbang Linux computer. I decided to use UltraVNC. It's a nice simple program and there's even a portable version available. In our example here, this is what we'll install:

From your Windows computer, click here and click the download button:
http://portableapps.com/node/2031

Once it has finished download run the exe file, it will extract the files.

Copy the UltraVNCViewer Portable folder to a USB flash drive, your desktop or wherever you want to store it.

Using Windows Explorer browse inside the folder and double click UltraVNCViewerPortable.exe

Enter the host name and .local at then end - in my example I've entered crunchbangT42.local

Click Connect

Enter the password you specified before (in vino-preferences) and click Log On

You'll see your Crunchbang Linux desktop!

References

Help on Crunchbang's website:
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=362

UltraVNC Portable
http://portableapps.com/node/2031

UltraVNC Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraVNC

TightVNC
http://www.tightvnc.com/

Crunchbang Linux - connect with SSH

SSH allows you to connect from a Windows computer to a Linux computer. This is useful for administration, it means you can access the Linux computer without having to go to it physically. You can have access to the command prompt and transfer files to/from it (for administration or for other purposes). SSH is very quick to set up, in this article I'll run through the basics and a couple of essential Windows utilities you'll need.

Install SSH on Crunchbang Linux

Right click on the desktop

Click Terminal

At the $ prompt type:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server   [Enter]

Yes that's it on the Linux side! You can now connect with SSH clients. This is just basic functionality, for more details please see the Crunchbang how-to page: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/ssh


Windows Utilities
To access the command prompt of Linux on your Windows computer, use Putty.
To access the files of the Linux computer use WinSCP.

Putty
Putty is a small exe program that runs on your Windows computer. It allows you to connect via SSH (Secure Shell) to a Linux computer and enter commands at the $ prompt.

On your Windows computer download Putty.exe from:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Double click the Putty.exe file.

In the Hostname box enter the host name of your Crunchbang Linux computer. You can find the host name on the Crunchbang desktop, see below:

Putty will ask you for your Crunchbang login and password. That's it! 

WinSCP
You can download from FTP, SFTP, SSH and more using WinSCP. It's an excellent free utility that if you don't already use it, you'll wonder how you did without it! It can even be driven from the Windows command line. For accessing Linux it is useful for accessing files.

Download WinSCP from here:
http://winscp.net/
There is an installable version and also a handy portable exe you can store on a USB flash drive.

Double click the WinSCP icon

Click New
Enter the hostname (see above)
Enter your Crunchbang Linux username and password
Click Login

That's it! You'll connect to the Linux computer.

NOTE: You can use WinSCP to copy files to/from your Linux computer. However, using SSH it is slow. Instead, if you have a lot of files to copy, I'd recommend using Samba.

References

Crunchbang SSH page:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/ssh

WinSCP
http://winscp.net/

Secure Shell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

Crunchbang Linux - simple file sharing with Samba

Crunchbang Linux is a slim down operating system that works well on older computers. I wrote a previous article about it and how I installed it on an old IBM T42 (with just 512MB RAM!) and a little Asus Eee PC. Crunchbang is great for browsing the web and other light work. Another thing you could do is set up file sharing on your Crunchbang computer. This is especially useful if you have an old desktop with a reasonably sized hard disk. You could use it to share files on your home network or you could use it to store files as a backup.

In this article I'll explain how to set up a simple file share on your Crunchbang computer. We'll use Samba which is the most popular file sharing software for Linux. The commands used here can be used in other Linux operating systems too. I will not go into detail and will explain only the basic steps to get simple file sharing working.

At the end, from your Windows computer you'll be able to browse to and save/open files on your Crunchbang Linux computer.


Crunchbang Linux
To download and install Crunchbang please see my previous article:
http://mgxp.blogspot.ch/2013/03/crunchbang-linux.html


Install Samba
Go to your Crunchbang Linux computer, start it and login as usual.
Right click on the desktop and click Terminal

At the $ prompt type:
sudo apt-get install samba libpam-smbpass [Enter]

Samba will download and install. It will ask you for the name of the network workgroup:

Unless you've changed it, accept the default "WORKGROUP".

Configure File Sharing
Change to the srv folder, type:
cd /srv  [Enter]


Create a new folder called share:
sudo mkdir share  [Enter]



This sets the permissions for the share folder to full read/write:
sudo chmod 777 share/  [Enter]


Make a backup copy of the original Samba configuration file, this is just in case you need it for future reference:
sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.original  [Enter]


Edit the Samba configuration file:
sudo geany /etc/samba/smb.conf  [Enter]

The Geany text editor will open the smb.conf file. Replace all the content of the file with the following:

[global]
disable netbios = no
workgroup = workgroup
server string = fileserver
dns proxy = no
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 1000
syslog = 0
panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d
obey pam restrictions = yes
unix password sync = yes
passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u
passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* .
pam password change = yes
map to guest = bad user
usershare allow guests = yes
security = user
username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
load printers = no
printing = bsd
printcap name = /dev/null
disable spoolss = yes

[share]
path = /srv/share
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
create mask = 6777
directory mask = 6777


NOTE:

• The "workgroup=" parameter is set to "workgroup", this is the default name of the Windows network you are connecting to. If your workgroup name is different, change it here.
• The "server string=" parameter can be anything. It should be something descriptive for this computer. If there are two Linux computers configured with the same "server string=" name, one of them will not appear when you look for it from your Windows computer. Therefore, make sure the "server string=" name is unique on your network.

Save and exit the text editor (Geany).

At the $ prompt enter the following to restart Samba:
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart  [Enter]

Wait for 30 seconds.


On the Windows computer
Go to your Windows computer, browse in Windows Explorer to your Network, browse under Microsoft Windows Network and Workgroup - you should see your Crunchbang computer appear in the list.

In the above example from a Windows XP computer you can see I've found my Crunchbang computer. In brackets you can see it says "Crunchbangt42" - this is the host name of my Crunchbang computer, yours will be different. you can find the host name on your Crunchbang desktop:

On your Windows computer, if you can't find the Crunchbang computer on the network, on the Windows Explorer address bar you can type \\ and the host name directly. In my case I would enter "\\crunchbangT42".

If you are using Windows 7 click Start and enter \\ and the name of the host in the search box. Click on it...

In Windows when you click the share folder you'll be prompted to login:

This is a Windows XP connect box but you will see something
similar for Windows 7 or any other  version of Windows.

Enter your Crunchbang username, password and click OK. If you want this Windows computer not to prompt you for a password next time, click the [ ] Remember my password box.

The above is the result. You can copy files to/from this location.

Finished!

References

The following Youtube video shows in more depth how to set up Samba. My thanks to the author as it what I used as a starting point for this article.
http://youtu.be/P7lvuJdsrMY

Samba
http://www.samba.org/

Crunchbang
http://crunchbang.org/

Crunchbang Linux - change the keyboard layout

When I installed Crunchbang on my Asus Eee PC I made a mistake and selected the UK keyboard layout. I have the US layout. Now how to change the keyboard layout?

Right click on the desktop

Click Terminal

At the $ prompt type:
sudo geany /etc/default/keyboard   [Enter]

The Geany text editor will pop up, look for the following:

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""

Change XKBLAYOUT= to what you want. In my case I changed from XKBLAYOUT="uk" to XKBLAYOUT="us".

Save and exit Geany.

Restart Crunchbang for the change to take effect.


Reference
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1103

Crunchbang Linux - change the time zone

If your Crunchbang Linux has the wrong time, perhaps you have the wrong time zone set? To change time zone do the following:

Right click on the desktop

Click Terminal

At the $ prompt type:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata  [Enter]

A menu will appear:

The mouse doesn't work, navigate using the keyboard arrow keys and Enter to select. In the above, press Enter on your region.

Select the city closest to you

Finished!


Reference
http://wiki.debian.org/TimeZoneChanges

Crunchbang Linux

Crunchbang Linux is an operating system you can download for free from http://crunchbang.org/. It can run on low specification computers. I found it recently and I've been trying it out on a couple of computers I have. In this article I'll go through installation and what is included, with my first impressions.

Crunchbang is based on Debian which is the same base as Ubuntu uses, this means there are lots of software apps ready to be installed on Crunchbang. It uses the Openbox user interface which is minimalistic. If you like clutter, Crunchbang is not for you. The sleek Openbox interface means Crunchbang is simple and easy to use. Also, it's good for small screens because it doesn't take up much screen space with fancy graphics.


Asus Eee PC

Back in 2008 I bought an Asus Eee PC 700 4G with 1GB RAM (upgraded!). This was the original Eee PC, one of the first NetBooks. It was relatively cheap and excellent for casual web surfing. It was from the days before tablets were widespread!

The Eee PC came with a simple Linux operating system that was fine to start with. Later I moved on to EasyPeasy. An operating system based on Ubuntu. Here's an article I wrote about it:
http://mgxp.blogspot.com/2010/07/easypeasy-netbook-os.html
However, it was big and heavy, it kept updating and then would no longer update because my 4GB SDD main storage was almost full.

Some time ago I looked at a number of Linux operating systems but I didn't find anything that worked well on my Eee PC with its meagre disk space (4GB). Even some systems that say they work with Eee PCs actually only work with the later 900 model. I have the 700...


Installing Crunchbang on the Eee PC
Go to http://crunchbang.org/download/ 
Download the 32-bit ISO, it is less than 800MB in size.
Use Win32diskimager to write the ISO to a USB flash drive - I used a 1GB flash drive.

Plug the USB flash drive into the Eee PC.

To boot the Eee PC from the USB flash drive, press Esc as soon as you switch on the Eee PC.

At the Crunchbang menu, select the Text based installation, the Graphical option didn't work on my Eee Pc. I found the text based installation straightforward, it is menu driven so it's still easy. You have to select the language, location, keyboard layout, it'll ask you to partition the hard disk, select the default and it'll set up everything for you.

WARNING! Anything you already have on the computer will be deleted forever.

Once it had finished installing you will be prompted to run a 'post installation script'. Before you do that, connect to the internet. Click the wireless icon in the top right and select your WiFi hotspot. Now start the post installation script. It will install updates and additional software apps that you may need such as LibreOffice (a free office suite). In my case because I wanted to keep the Eee PC's little 4GB disk as free as possible, I didn't install much (just press S to skip each time).

Once it has finished everything is working! Yes everything. The network drivers, graphics drivers, everything is installed. A completely painless installation.


Using Crunchbang on the Eee PC
It is excellent, fast and slick - yes even on the little Atom processor of the Eee PC. The best news is that it fits on the small screen. Here's what Crunchbang looks like:

On the top you have two virtual desktops and you see your loaded programs listed. 

On the right you can see System Info and Shortcut Keys. The Shortcut Keys are useful but what does it mean by "Super"? The Super key means the Windows key on a Windows PC. 

You can right click on the desktop to bring up a menu, this is shown in the following screen shot:

In the above you can see I'm about to start Dropbox. This Dropbox app is included as standard with Crunchbang and it works perfectly.

In the above I've opened the web browser and I'm on the BBC News website. As you can see it doesn't quite fit on the small Eee PC screen. But it's usable, it's possible to press Ctrl- to reduce the size of the web page. You can also scroll of course. I can also press F11 to go full screen of course, that gives me a little extra space.

The browser that is included is called Iceweasel. It's a Mozilla based browser so it works like Firefox. If you wish you can install Chrome or Opera - there are menu options to do this. Right click the desktop, click Network | WWW Browsers.


Install Crunchbang on the IBM Thinkpad T42
The T42 is a classic. It's rugged and I have one that still works after many years of use. The battery is dead though, so it's tethered. Still it could be useful for a PC to surf on. The RAM is just 512MB and the processor is an Intel Centrino. There's a 40GB hard disk drive, at least a little more space to play with than with my Eee PC.

I used the same USB flash drive that I'd prepared for the Eee PC.

Plug the USB flash drive into the T42.

Switch it on and press the blue Access IBM button

Press F1 for the Setup

Select Config | Floppy Drives

Legacy Floppy Drives [Enabled]
Press Enter and select [Disabled], you should see the following:
Legacy Floppy Drives [Disabled]
(this is important, if you don't do this then the installation will stop part way through)

Press F10 to save and exit the Setup program

The T42 will boot to the Crashbang menu. You can select the graphical or text installations, both work fine. The rest is just as it was with the Eee PC described above. The installation was smooth, not too many questions. Once it's finished connect to your WiFi hotspot before running the post-installation script. On my T42 I installed LibreOffice and other software because there's plenty of space free.


Using Crunchbang on the T42
It's a pleasure to use! The screen is nice and big, the old 4:3 ratio too. Even though the T42 only has 512MB RAM I've not felt it. It runs very nicely.



Conclusion
I've not been using Crunchbang for long but my first impressions are that it is excellent. It's a perfectly small, neat, tidy and slick operating system. It can breath life back into those old computers you have lying around the house. Certainly if you have an Eee PC I would highly recommend Crunchbang because it fits the screen and doesn't have many dialogue boxes that are too big for it.

Also I found the forum on the Crunchbang site to be useful. People are posting real solutions there.

Recommended: 9/10

FreeNAS - first time setup

Introduction
NAS means Network Attached Storage. It's an easy way to quickly add disk space to a network, without the need for installing a complicated, expensive server with a network operating system. Typically in the shops you can easily buy a NAS, a hard disk in a box that can be plugged into your network. It's like a simple self-contianed server.

FreeNAs is a free operating system that comes pre-configured with file sharing features. You can install FreeNAS on nearly any PC. Typically, if you have an older computer you no longer use, you could install FreeNAs on it, this is because FreeNAS doesn't need a high-spec computer. For more information on the specifications that FreeNAS can support visit the website http://www.freenas.org/

As an example I'm going to take you step-by-step through installing and configuring FreeNAS. We'll assume
this is a typical home network and the computer I'll use is an old IBM ThinkPad T42 with a 40GB hard disk
and 512MB RAM. At the time of writing FreeNAS 7 was the latest version, that's what I'll be using in this guide but the principals should be the same for later versions of FreeNAS too.


Download
Download the latest ISO image from www.freenas.org. An ISO image is a single file that can be written to a CD to make a bootable CD to install FreeNAS. On the FreeNAS website there are two types of file you can download, either X86 or AMD64. For most computers, including the computer I have, the X86 image is the one to get.

Once you've downloaded it, insert a new CD-R 700MB disc. Burn the ISO to the disc, use your CD writing software to do this (CD Burner XP is excellent and free). Write "FreeNAS" on the CD.


Planning and Requirements
Before you install FreeNAS you should plan how you want to install and use it. Here are some considerations:

- When you install FreeNAS all files currently on the target computer will be destroyed. Before you begin, backup/copy any files from your target (old) computer to somewhere safe.

- The target computer cannot use WiFi to connect to your network (at least not initially). You will need a
working RJ-45 UTP LAN cable.

- You may need a USB flash drive, if it has any data on it, back it up first.

Why would a USB flash drive be useful? This is where FreeNAS is clever and where the planning comes in. It is possible to install the FreeNAS system files to a USB flash drive (even a small 256MB one!). The idea
of this is that you keep the operating system (system files) separate from the data. Your data could be stored exclusively on the hard disk drive of the computer. The advantage of this is that it is very easy to upgrade FreeNAS without endangering your data files. It makes upgrading your storage easy too. Let's say you start with a 40GB disk but later you want more space, you can add the extra space or easily replace it without having to worry about reinstalling the operating system (FreeNAS)!

It is also possible to install FreeNAS onto the hard disk or even run it from CD. My feeling is that installing to a USB flash drive is the most flexible approach and probably the most popular so that's what I'll focus on in this guide.


Installation
Insert the FreeNAS CD you created into your target computer.

Restart the computer, it should boot from the CD (if it doesn't, you'll have to enter the BIOS setup and change the boot order).

You'll see the 'Console setup' menu

Select 9 - Install/upgrade to hard drive/flash device, etc.

Insert a USB flash drive - FreeNAS will detect and mount it.

'FeeNAS installation' - select OK

'Choose installation media' - select acd0 (your CD/DVD drive) and OK

'Choose destination media'

ad0 38155MB (this is usually the hard disk, your MB size will vary)
da0 1828MB (this is your USB flash drive, the MB size will vary)

Select da0 (the USB flash drive) and OK

FreeNAS has been installed.
You can now remove the CDROM and reboot the PC.
Press Enter to continue.

Press Enter (as it says on screen)

Remove the CD (leave the USB flash drive plugged in).

'Install & Upgrade' - select Exit

Select Reboot

It will boot from the USB flash drive for the first time. If it does not, check in the computers BIOS setup that the USB flash drive is the first in the boot order.

Plug-in the RJ-45 LAN cable (if it's not already plugged in)

'Console setup' - select 2 - Set LAN IP address

'Do you want to use DHCP for this interface?' - select No (you could select yes if you wish but it's best to set a static IP address for your FreeNAS computer)

'Enter new LAN IPv4 address' - enter the IP address you want for your FreeNAS computer. For example, it should be on the same sub-net and with a unique IP address. If you are on a home network, this is what you can do to decide which IP address to use:

a) Go to your Windows PC
b) Click Start | Run
c) Type CMD [Enter]
d) Type IPCONFIG /all [Enter]
e) Where it says 'IP address' it'll read something like 192.168.0.18, that's the address of your Windows PC. The address you should enter for the FreeNAS should be the same but the last number should be different, like .250. For example, on your FreeNAS computer enter 192.168.0.250

'Enter new LAN subnet mask' - the default is 24, this should be correct in most cases, select OK

'Enter IPv4 default gateway' - enter your default gateway, typically your Router, the same IP address as before but ending in .1. Take a look on your Windows PC, the default gateway is listed on the IPCONFIG
information. In our example I will enter 192.168.0.1

'Enter DNS IPv4 address' - again you can find this in the IPCONFIG information from your Windows PC. Often this is the same as your default gateway. In my example my DNS address is 192.168.0.1

'Do you want to configure IPv6 for this interface?' - select No

Press Enter

The FreeNAS computer is ready!


Configure and Share
Go to your Windows PC

Start your browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, etc)

Enter the IP address of your FreeNAS (the 'LAN IPv4 address' you entered earlier)
Username: admin
Password: freenas


Disks | Management



Click Disks | Management

Click the + to add a disk

Select ad0 (ad0 is typically the first hard disk in your computer)

Description: DATA

Click Add

Click Apply changes

Click Disks | Format

Disk: ad0
File system: UFS
Volume label: 40GB (I used the label 40GB because my disk was 40GB in size, this doesn't matter, you can enter anything you like as a label)

Click Format disk

Click Disks | Mount Point

Click the + to add a mount point

Type: Disk
Disk: ad0
Partition type: GPT
Mount point name: DATA

Click Add

Click Apply changes

Click Services | CIFS/SMB

[X] Enable

[X] Enable Asynchronous I/O (AIO)

Click Save and restart


Services | CIFS/SMB | Shares


Click the Share tab

Click + to add a share

Name: files
Comment: FreeNAS

Path: click [...]
Click DATA
/mnt/DATA/

Click OK

Click [X] Enable recycle bin

Click Add

Click Apply changes

Click System | Reboot

The FreeNAS will restart - wait for the beep!

Once the FreeNAS computer has restarted, shut down and restart your Windows PC

Click Start

Click My Network Places

Click Entire Network (if you don't see it in the list, click Folders)

Click Microsoft Windows Network

Click Workgroup

Click FreeNAS

Click Files

You can use this just as you would any other drive.


Conclusion
The instructions above are just to set up a simple FreeNAS for sharing files on your LAN. However, I do hope this introduction to FreeNAS has been helpful. As you've probably seen, there are many options, many
ways you can configure your FreeNAS system, you can add users and control what access they have to
different files. FreeNAS is an excellent way to use an old computer you have or maybe to make a robust
file sharing server without having to buy expensive hardware.


References
http://www.freenas.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.qnap.com/
http://cdburnerxp.se/

EasyPeasy netbook OS

I have an Asus Eee PC 700 4G, I got it back in 2008. It was the first popular and truly cheap netbooks to emerge a few years ago. It's a cute little machine that I use mostly for casual web browsing. Originally its built-in 4GB SSD (solid state drive) came pre-loaded with a Linux distribution from Asus specially for the Eee PC. It was ok, I used it for a while but it was clunky and it got on my nerves after a while because it was always forgetting my WiFi connection's WPA key.

I tried Ubuntu's netbook release but it didn't have the drivers included for my old Eee PC. I had a look around and found Eeebuntu (since renamed Aurora), an Ubuntu distribution that came pre-configured for use on the Eee PC with the drivers included for the network, WiFi, webcam, etc. I used Eeebuntu for a while and found it good but it was a little fiddly.

Next I tried EasyPeasy from http://www.geteasypeasy.com/ - again a Linux Ubuntu based distribution. This I have found to be a nice little OS (operating system). It installed relatively easily. I had no driver problems, everything worked immediately. A large selection of popular software is installed such as Firefox, OpenOffice, etc. Unfortunately most of the main storage, the 4GB SSD is taken by all this software but having said that, I never really used the main storage anyway, I always used an SD card for data.

The EasyPeasy interface is excellent, it is clear, easy to use and the mouse pointer travels around it without having to finger the track pad too much. The interface is well designed for the small screen of your netbook, the Eee PC must have one of the smallest and EasyPeasy manages work fine with the limited space. I'm writing this using my Eee PC now, in Firefox on the Blogger online editor. The text is large enough and there is no horizontal scroll bars. My only headache is the annoyingly small Eee PC keyboard, which I can hardly blame on EasyPeasy ;-)

There is a small thin bar at the top of the screen that has a button to get back to the main menu, there are indicators for WiFi strength, battery power remaining, speaker volume, e-mail, date, time and a logoff/shut down menu. This bar is visible the whole time unless you press F11 in Firefox to go full screen.

The only negative thing about EasyPeasy's interface is that sometimes dialogue boxes are too big and the buttons (OK, Cancel, etc) at the bottom of the dialogue window are not visible, they are off the screen and there's no way to move the window up far enough to see them. It is frustrating!

Apart from the overly big dialogue box problem, EasyPeasy is just about flawless. At least it has a very slick looking interface that is easy to use and navigate on a small screen, it boots fast, it can be updated easily (Ubuntu updates and software packages), it's great. I have no problems with the WiFi connection, it automatically connects every time without any fuss. The battery indicator seems to work and the OS rarely crashes.

According to the EasyPeasy website it is for all netbooks so whatever you have try it out.
http://www.geteasypeasy.com/

Of course Aurora is also worth a look, I've not tried it recently. For the time being I'll stick with EasyPeasy as it does what I need which is all you want from a netbook OS. EasyPeasy is again another wonderful piece of open source work. They've adapted the already great Ubuntu so well to the tiny screen of the netbook, especially my little Eee PC.

My rating: 8/10