After watching them for months, I bought an Asus 8GB eeePC from amazon.com. I want it for two main reasons:
The first reason is for efficiency. When I visit a customer's site for a computer-related problem, I currently make paper notes about everything I do, and then transfer them later to my Confluence customers site. This helps me remember what exactly went on, and I'm actually building a reference library of solutions as I go. I want the eeePC to replace my notepad, so I can just copy/paste to Confluence later (or enter the information directly to Confluence from the customer's site).
The second reason is that I want the eeePC to help me introduce people to Linux, and Ubuntu, specifically. It's size and presentation are absolute attention-getters, and once people are drawn in, I hope to hear reactions like “well that looks just like Windows” and “that doesn't look so tough”. I can't think of a better way to get Linux in front of people.
Anyway, I owned the eeePC for about 4 hours before deciding I would install Ubuntu as a replacement for the default Xandros installation. There are basically two options...install from a USB hard disk (or thumb drive) or install from a USB CD/DVD drive. I found this great article on the Ubuntu Community forum, which served as my general guide during installation. For tweaking some of the hardware items that don't quite work after a default Ubuntu installation, I pretty much followed this guide; even though it's written for 7.10 (Gusty Gibbon), most of the fixes applied nicely to Hardy.
The Installation
I ran into some problems installing Ubuntu from an external CD-ROM drive, but there's a decent chance the problems were with the drive...I took an extra IDE CD-ROM drive from the shelf, plugged it into the cage for an external USB hard drive, and installed from there. I can't think of why this wouldn't work, but I can't discount the idea that my problems might have come from there...
Initially, I tried to install Ubuntu from my trusty old Gutsy Live CD. I selected the 'Install or Run' option from the main menu, and Ubuntu loaded nicely. Problems arose, though, when I tried to install Ubuntu from the disk...I always ended up with an IO error (Err5, I think it was), and couldn't complete the installation. I downloaded a new copy of Gutsy, tried the alternate installation CD, and verified MD5 hashes where I could, but it still didn't work.
On the Hardy Live CD, you can choose the 'Install' option directly from that menu. Booting the Hardy disc from my make-shift external CD-ROM and choosing this option went perfectly. I chose the EXT2 format, based on this recommendation only. I didn't allow it to set up a swap partition, and forced root (“/”) to take up the entire drive.
I also followed that same article to fix the wireless (MadWifi) and Ethernet...my system had to be powered down, battery removed, replaced, and powered back up to get the LAN working.
I followed the guide for the resolution fix, but it didn't seem to work. In fact, it didn't seem to do anything at all...just walked me through a keyboard setup wizard, but nothing to do with display settings. Display resolution is still a problem I'm dealing with...albeit a small one (no pun intended).
I did not try the overclocking instructions, or any of the stuff in the bottom of that article.
I followed the audio issues, Suspend/Resume, and Shutdown/Power Off Solution fixes prescribed there, and they all worked perfectly.
Somewhere around this point, I noticed that the wireless antenna started responding to the keyboard shortcut for it again...it was stuck 'on' before...
I also installed the Wicd network manager, since things were going so well.
[update]
In the month or two since I did this installation, I noticed the suspend power management feature was pretty flaky. I can't be sure now (because I didn't pay close enough attention), but it may have gotten goofed up with regular Ubuntu updates - I'm thinking the updates wiped out the eeePC-specific packages that made everything hold together.
I just followed the Ubuntu customization instructions for the eeePC over at array.org, and all the peripherals are working very well (at least for now). I'll try to resist updating Ubuntu from here on and wrecking things again. [/update]