After spending the better part of this afternoon battling with various cd’s, dvd’s, and flash drives, I am unfortunately no closer now to having XP on my EEE than I was this morning. Actually, in some ways I’m further from it. I’ve basically concluded that I’m going to need an external dvd drive and a fresh copy of XP Pro SP2 if I really want to get it done. That being the case, I’m now looking at doing EEEXbuntu. It is a build of the Ubuntu Linux distribution that has been optimized for the EEE. Part of why I want to get over to XP is that I have to either change to a different OS or upgrade the current Xandros kernal if I want to take full advantage of the 2gigs of ram I installed. As it ships, the EEE only recognizes 1 of the 2 gigs.

If neither of those OS changes is feasible, I’ve at least been able to tweak the Xandros desktop to the point that it better suits what I want it to do. After some digging around the internets I’ve cleared enough space off the taskbar that it is now useful. I just finished replacing the normal launch “start” button with a smaller one that clears more space too. I also got the clock switched over to 12 hour mode rather than military time. I think there are a couple other small tweaks that I’m forgetting. I’m still not happy with the current desktop themes and I wish I could find a better one but so far no luck. Anyway, that’s about it for now, I’ll be sure to post again if I get XP or EEEXbuntu up and running. Ciao!

Filed under: life by Jonathan Assink