[SLL] Netbook?

[Vernon Van Steenkist]

> Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:35:45 -0700
> From: Glenn Stone <technoshaman at liawol.org>
> Subject: [SLL] Netbook?
>
> I'm in the market for a netbook.  The big things I'm looking for (aside
> from
> the obvious, lightness (although relative smallness isn't nearly as
> critical; we can trade thin for more real estate)) are keyboard
> size/usability, screen size/pixels, and obviously, Linux compatibility.
> (Although one is semi-tempted to get one with XP and leave it mostly
> generic
> for various and sundry approprite occasions....)
>
> Recommendations?

In January, I finally succumbed to buying a netbook. Best Buy had the
ASUS 900A with 4GB SSD, 1GB RAM, Xandros Linux, Intel Atom CPU, no web
cam on sale for $200. I could not resist. It is important to look at
the model number carefully. For example, the ASUS 900 does not have
the Intel Atom processor whereas the 900A does - pretty important for
power consumption and performance. The ASUS 10000 contains the
Broadcom Wireless chipset, crap in my opinion, whereas the ASUS 900A
contains the Atheros WIFI chip set - the best Linux support and best
performance in my opinion.

I initially thought of the ASUS 900A as something to play with but it
became my work laptop. It is much lighter than my Dell Latitude and
is small enough to fit in my man purse. Since it has a VGA port, I
can easily use it for presentations.

I do not touch type so I can not comment about the keyboard in this
respect. However, I am a key banger and the keyboard has stood up very
well. The WIFI is the most sensitive of any of my machines. My only
complaint is the mouse click buttons which are located below the
touch pad. On the ASUS 900A, the left and right mouse click buttons
are covered by one solid piece of plastic with a rocker in the middle.
This makes it very difficult to generate a two button mouse click
(there is no middle button) for Xwindows pasting purposes. Therefore,
I use a wireless mouse whenever possible.

The Xandros Linux distribution has some faults, but it also did some
things right. The main thing did right is how it handles the SSD. My
4GB SSD is divided into two partitions; 3.5GB for the system and
500MB for the user. On boot up, the 3.5GB partition is mounted
read-only and the 500MB partition is mounted read/write. Both
partitions are then mounted using union fs (aufs to be more precise)
which make both partitions look like one file system. So, if a user
screws something up, the xandros distribution contains a recovery
boot mode which then reformats the writable partition and you are
then ready to go again. Even as root, you can't screw something up
because if you delete everything in /usr/bin, it only appears deleted.
The union fs magick only marks it as deleted. All the contents of
/usr/bin are still there in the write-protected partition. If you
write something to /usr/bin, it only appears that you wrote it to the
write-protected partition. You actually wrote it to the read/write
user partition. Union fs magick makes it look like it went to the
/usr/bin in your write protected partition.

One of the nice things about the ASUS 900a is that it has a dedicated
SD/MMC slot reader. This can be used to increase the disk space
cheaply. I bought a 4GB Class 4 SD card from Bartell's for $15 dollars
in January because I wanted it quick (8GB Class 6 cards are available
on Amazon for the same price). I have not noticed any speed problems
using this card as an SSD. With the SD card always inserted, you can
modify the boot process so that the SD card is mounted as the user
read/write partition instead of the SSD. This has many benefits:

1) No more wear and tear on the SSD since now only the read-only
   SSD system partition is mounted.
2) If you have kids (or a wife), they each can have their own SSD
   card which contains their preferences, games and applications.
3) SD cards are cheaper to replace than worn out SSDs. Note that I
   have not had any SD card fail on me yet.

A good tutorial on how to do this is available at the link below:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=7694

When you are done, your mount command output should look something
like this:

rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /.ro type ext2 (ro)
/dev/sdb1 on /.rw type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)
none on / type aufs (rw,xino=/.rw/.aufs.xino,br:/.rw=rw:/.ro=ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw)
automount(pid1303) on
/.rw/_eb6113ea-88ed-458c-8677-a39d1d78a4e9_/chroot type autofs
(rw,fd=4,pgrp=1303,timeout=10,minproto=2,maxproto=4,indirect)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /ro type ext2 (ro)

The SSD is /dev/sda1 and the SD card is /dev/sdb1

In short, I would not buy any netbook without a dedicated SD card
reader. I would also not buy any netbook with a Hard Drive since this
has always been the failure point for all of my laptops.

The Xandros distribution comes with what they call a simple desktop
which is basically an application launcher with big buttons running on
IceWM. I never used iceWM before and I am very impressed with its
efficiency and capability (I have uses GNOME, KDE, fluxbox and
blackbox extensively). Unfortunately, Xandros chose to disable many of
iceWMs features by default (for example, multiple screens and a screen
pager) so I had to look through the iceWM configuration to enable
them. Once I enabled these features, using the simple desktop became a
joy. I also kept the simple app launcher since it is nice having those
big buttons to click; especially if you are on a bumpy bus.

Unfortunately, i haven't seen the ASUS 900a for $200 since. However,
I have seen the Dell Mini 9 advertised for $200 periodically preloaded
with Ubuntu Linux. They give you an 8GB SSD (mine is only a 4GB SSD)
but they only give you 512MB of RAM (mine has 1GB). You may want to
get 1GB ram if you do not have swap enabled (I do not have swap
enabled on my ASUS 900A and have had no problems with many apps open).

Any way, sorry for such a long post. Hope someone finds it
interesting.