The weekend has come and gone, and I have my new netbook.. woohoo!

I started this adventure in Germany... searching all over for a shop that would sell me a netbook with an English keyboard.  None would, with most giving the excuse that their distributors didn't have anything but German keyboard layouts.

Well... neighboring countries seem to have no problem with ordering netbooks with English keyboard layouts... so I did a quick roadtrip over the weekend to go pick up the netbook I ordered.

Due to a bit of a mixup, I ended up with the black EeePC 1005HA-H instead of the blue one, but that's a minor oops.  I also bought a 2GB SO-DIM as well, so I could bump the RAM up from the 1GB default to 2GB... an upgrade well worth the 30€ extra it cost.

This netbook only comes with Windows XP... yuck!!  So the very first thing I did on boot was repartition the hard drive and wipe that broken old OS off and install Linux.  I set up for dual boot, with Eeebuntu and openSUSE.... but how well does Linux actually work on a netbook? Was that a good idea?

The install of both Linux distros went smoothly.. .mostly.  A few bumps along the way.

The first install I did was Eeebuntu.  No issues at all to install.  I booted for a few seconds to test, and then moved on to openSUSE.  This install also went smoothly - except on reboot, I could no longer start up Eeebuntu.  Not sure why, and I didn't spend any time sorting it out.  I redid my installs (needed to change the partitioning layout anyway), and did openSUSE first, then Eeebuntu.  This order worked - the problem the first time around is something to do with how the openSUSE installed finds the existing Ubuntu install and sets up GRUB.  Maybe I'll revisit this later to sort it out... dunno.

Anyway.. booted up openSUSE, and bumped into the first big-ish issue... no network.  A little digging and I discover that the WiFi card drivers are in a newer kernel build.  ooops.  Sigh... switch over to Eeebuntu... same problem.. no WiFi, no wired network either.  Well.. that's annoying.  Ok, it's because I have a new netbook... new WiFi card etc... the older netbook (Eee 900) my friend has worked first try on Eeebuntu...

The solution to the network issue was fairly simple.  Find a newer kernel, copy the deb to a USB stick... copy to the new netbook, install the kernel and reboot.  Once I was running on the new kernel I could run the updates, which included the backports for the default kernel... which include the WiFi drivers.  Yay.  Boot to the updated stock kernel and I've got WiFi there too.  Remove the temp kernel... download and install the wired network card drivers and that's it... fully functioning netbook running Eeebuntu. 

I have to say... I'm impressed with the capabilities of this little computer too.  I've got a full desktop with Compiz running... it has no problems with the fancy animations etc.  The full OpenGL screensavers all work smoothly.  I've even installed a few games just to try it out, and so far... they all work.  Haha.. I'm almost temped to install World of Warcraft just to see if it'll work too

I still have a few things to sort out.  I want to get openSUSE working - I prefer it over Ubuntu anyday.  I also have to sort out the microphone.  There are apparently 2 microphones, one to the left and one to the right of the webcam.  They are noise cancellation/stereo mics, and Linux doesn't handle this particular setup very well... the result is that they end up canceling out all sound picked up by the mic.  There is a quick fix that I can use though... a tweak to the sound config that I plan to try later today.

Other than that... it was definitely a good idea to drop XP and install Linux. I'm a happy camper now