Tech and life

Image credit: cellanr

I run a Windows 7 PC, an Ubuntu desktop PC and an Acer netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10. It’s important to keep my data and services synchronised between them so each machine is up to date with the latest files and cloud services, and so I thought I’d run through the software and services which I currently use:

Google Chrome

This is my browser of choice. You can use Chrome to keep your tabs, bookmarks and extensions synchronised. I’m using Chromium (the open source version of Chrome) on my Ubuntu netbook and Chrome on my Windows desktop and everything syncs just fine. To start syncing between Chrome/Chromium on your different devices, just go to the spanner/wrench icon at the top right of the browser on each of your machines and choose Options then the tab marked Personal Stuff. Click Set up sync and when it’s done you’ll see

At the moment you can choose to keep everything synced or choose to sync any or all of Apps, Autofill, Bookmarks, Extensions, Preferences and Themes.  Doesn’t have password sync yet but I believe this is coming in the next Chrome version. Of course, the Chrome Xmarks extension will also allow automatic synchronization of bookmarks, passwords and open tabs between Windows and Ubuntu machines.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s possible to run a small office/home office (SOHO) set-up with a completely free operating system, software and internet services… but do you? Are there any commercial packages or paid online services you consider ‘must-haves’? I thought I’d quickly run through my paid/free stance and I’d love to hear your thoughts although I don’t think we need to get into a discussion on ‘acquiring’ commercial software for free.

Free operating system

If you run a Linux system, you’ll be familiar with free operating systems and open source software. I run Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my Acer Aspire netbook and I’m just about to try out Linux Mint on my second desktop. What holds me back from completely moving to Linux is my day job where I have to be able to work on Microsoft Word files. More on that later. I’m running Windows 7 on one desktop. Of course in the Windows world, once you’ve bought the OS, you can run a completely free set-up too.

Free software

I run a small office/home office (SOHO) set-up and work from home. Pretty much all the software I use is free or open source. However, I do some work in the publishing sector and they still rely very much on Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. Many authors submit work in Word doc format (rarely docx I find) and authors and publishers usually expect work to be returned in doc format with Track Changes turned on. It’s a real shame that open source software hasn’t really caught on in the publishing field yet. So I have to use Microsoft Office to cope with clients who use commercial software. Yes, you could convert Word doc format to Open Office Writer odt format, turn on track changes in Open Office Writer then convert back to doc format but there’s always a worry that some formatting/changes will be lost in conversion. So for work, I have to use MS Word on my desktop running Windows 7. There’s a good recent discussion on office software, free and commercial, at How-To Geek.

The only other paid software I use on my Windows system is an old copy of Serif PagePlus for DTP and Serif PhotoPlus for photo editing. I haven’t upgraded these in years – the old copies I have are just fine. But a quick look on the AlternativeTo website shows that I could move to Scribus as a free alternative for DTP and there are lots of free alternatives (software and online services) for photo editing.

But for many working from home on a Windows system, I’m sure it’s possible to find all you need if you look at free software alternatives and online services. By the way, I don’t believe it’s necessary to pay for security software either. If you’re running a Window system, Microsoft Security Essentials is free for you and is probably all you need for real-time protection. If you’re running a Linux system, you probably don’t need any antimalware software.

Free services

Every online service I use is free…so far, although I don’t expect it to remain that way in the future. We’ve had it good so far. Like many of you I’m sure, I use a good spread of Google apps. Yes, they’re free but the downside is targeted ads, which I don’t mind, and the knowledge that they’re building up a fair old archive of information on you. So I try to use good alternatives to Google services when I can.

So over to you. Do you use a free OS? Is there any commercial software you must have on your Windows system? What about online services – anything you’re paying for? Drop a comment below.

Do you pay for software and online services is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

I’ve had my Acer Aspire One netbook running Easy Peasy Linux for just a year now. During that time I’ve always run Firefox as my browser mostly to trawl through my feeds in Google Reader. Up until about a week ago I found I got an error message about an unresponsive script in Google Reader at least once during every session and often when scrolling. Easy enough to clear but quite annoying. I thought this was probably due to memory issues and Firefox – I guessed the Reader webpage was heavy going for a netbook.

So I thought I’d try Google Chrome on the Linux powered netbook to see if it would be any better. I figured that the Google Reader/Chrome combination should have better luck – you’d think that Chrome should have been well tested on Reader by Google.

So I installed Chrome (version 4.0.295.0) easily using instructions I found here. Absolutely no problems with unresponsive scripts when browsing – but as with Firefox, occasionally when scrolling it would lock up for 5-10 seconds and then proceed without problems. So I thought I’d write a post singing the praises of Chrome and slating Firefox for its errors. Problem is that when I went back to check if Firefox was still issuing those error messages, I found that the latest version of Firefox (version 3.0.17; for Ubuntu) which downloaded last weekend seems to have cleared the problem. Both browsers are now running fine on my netbook.

So what about browser speed? Is there a difference there? Well, I set up both browsers with Google Reader as home page and with no other tabs and checked times for clean loading of Firefox and Chrome separately just after booting the netbook. I have 257 Google Reader subscriptions at the moment. Firefox took 48 seconds and Chrome 24 seconds to load the page. Then to reload Firefox again, that took 33 seconds, while Chrome reloaded in 13 seconds.

Google Chrome has gained considerable momentum recently with a growing number of extensions available. Even though Firefox is better than it was in terms of browsing on my netbook, it’s much slower than Chrome for me. So I’m going to move over to Chrome on my Linux netbook and give it a thorough work out.

Incidentally, for anyone interested in keeping up with the latest at Chrome, Lee Mathews at Download Squad has been doing a weekly Chrome Corner post since the end of December last year.

I’ve already done a post on Some Linux Resources for Beginners so I thought I’d round up some great resources specifically for those starting out with Ubuntu. I haven’t included many blogs here where posts are put up regularly, only if they’ve mentioned a good Ubuntu resource in a blog post. Mostly these are just Ubuntu reference/resource sites with tutorials, guides, how-tos, forums, etc.

General Ubuntu resources

Going Ubuntu: Getting Started

Ubuntu Guide

Ubuntu Documentation

Ubuntu Linux Resources

Hardware Support

UbuntuHCL: Ubuntu Hardware Compatibility List

Gnome-Look: Eye Candy for your GNOME desktop

Ubuntu Brainstorm: submit your ideas for inclusion in future Ubuntu versions

Ubuntu FAQ Guide

Ubuntu Installation Guide: One of the most comprehensive guides on installing Ubuntu I’ve seen

Ubuntu: search resources

Ubuntu Search Engine

Ubuntu Search

UbuntuWire Search

Ubuntu cheatsheets and shortcuts

Ubuntu Linux Cheatsheet

Useful Shortcut Keys in Ubuntu

Ubuntu ebooks

Download Ubuntu Installation Guide and Cheatsheet Now

Ubuntu Linux Bible

Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

Ubuntu forums

Ubuntu Forums

Ubun2

Ubuntu how-tos and tutorials

Ubuntu Geek: quick tips and how-tos

Ubuntux: a community for beginners and experts

Ubuntu Linux Help

Useful Links for Ubuntu Beginners

Learning Ubuntu

Addictive Tips: Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu Tutorials

Ubuntuts

Useful links: Ubuntu post-installation tips

Ubuntu software

GetDeb

SourceForge

Ubuntu Software and Tweaks: The Best List Ever

Ubuntu magazines

Full Circle Magazine: free downloadable magazine

Ubuntu User: subscription magazine

This is just the tip of the iceberg and I’m sure I’ve missed many important Ubuntu resources here. Just drop a comment below with any you’ve come across that you find really useful and I’ll add them.

Related posts

Great Ubuntu and Linux blogs for beginners

Photo credit: k40s

I’ve already done a post on Ubuntu and Linux blogs for beginners so I thought I’d round up some great resources for those starting out with Linux. I’ll do a follow-up post on Ubuntu Resources for Beginners a little later. I haven’t included many blogs here where posts are put up regularly, only if they’ve mentioned a good resource in a blog post. Mostly these are just Linux reference/resource sites with tutorials, guides, howtos, forums, etc.

General Linux resources

Maximum PC: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Linux

Linux frequently asked questions for newbies

Get to know Linux: Terminology

Linux Migration Guide: Finding Linux Equivalents to Your Favorite Windows Programs

Best resources for Linux

Best Web Resources for Linux

Helpful Linux URLs

Linnewbies

Layman Linux

NewLinuxUser

Linux Home Networking

17 Essential Linux Resources That You Shouldn’t Miss

10 of the Best Online Resources for Linux Beginners

tuXfiles – the Linux newbie help files, tutorials and tips

Tuxfreaks: Tips for Linux Beginners (1st part in an ongoing series)

Linux for Beginners

Linux User Groups

Top 10 Linux Support Questions & Answers

Hardware for Linux: look up and report hardware compatibility and incompatibility with Linux distros

How to be Your Own Linux Tech Support

Linux cheat sheets

All the best Linux cheat sheets

10 Essential UNIX/Linux Command Cheat Sheets

Linux-Unix Cheat Sheets -  The Ultimate Collection

Linux command line

I know, this is a post for beginners so why’s he mentioning the command line? Don’t be afraid of the command line. You can get a lot of useful things done there quite quickly once you get the hang of it.

Linux command line directory

Introduction to Linux Commands

LinuxConfig

20 Useful Linux Commands

The 10 most useful Linux commands

Common Linux Commands

Highly Useful Linux Commands and Configurations

FLOSS Manuals

Linux ebooks

A Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux

Top Nine Free Linux EBooks for Newbie

10 Free Linux Ebooks for Beginners

5 Excellent Downloadable eBooks to Teach Yourself Linux

The Linux Cookbook

Introduction to Linux – A Hands On Guide

Linux Forums

LinuxQuestions.org

Linux Forums

Linux Home Networking

Linux howtos and tutorials

The Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide

HowtoForge

5 Best Places to Learn Linux – Linux Tutorial Sites

5 Great Linux Tutorials

Linux Knowledge Base and Tutorial

Linux for Beginners Free Online Guides and Tutorials

ReallyLinux

Linux software

Softpedia

SourceForge

LinuxSoftware.org

Reference Guide to Finding, Installing and Running Linux Applications

Linux podcasts

Unfortunately, there isn’t much choice for beginners and intermediate users. Many Linux podcasts are quite geeky and just not aimed at beginners. These are probably the best around at the moment

Going Linux

Linux User Podcast

Linux magazines

LINUX Format This is the best I’ve seen for anyone just starting out with Linux through to more advanced users.

Twitter

Twitter accounts about Linux and free software

I’m sure I’ve missed many important Linux sites here. Just drop a comment below with any you’ve come across and I’ll add them.

Image credit: brunkfordbraun

I’ve been following the tech scene for about 2 years now since I discovered tech podcasts. Although I had reasonable tech knowledge before this, mostly from browsing tech forums, I found that listening to tech podcasts and subscribing to tech blogs in Google Reader uncovered many tech tips and great advice, and some of the best tips keep coming up again and again. I’ve tried to gather together some of the best that I can remember. If you’re a geek you’ll have heard most before, but for the tech beginner, hopefully there’s some useful advice here. I’ve tried to keep each tip as short and concise as possible. Just use Google to get lots of additional info.

Essentials

1. First and foremost, back up your data regularly. This can’t be stressed enough. Sooner or later, your hard drive will die and you don’t want all your photos, etc to die with it. Back all your data up to an external drive, or to one of a host of free online services like DropBox. If you’ve a lot of data, have a look at Carbonite, a paid service. Better still, image or clone your hard drive regularly onto an external drive using a product like Acronis True Image so you can quickly get back up and running after a disk disaster. I’ve written a how-to on avoiding a disk disaster.

2. Second and also really important, always use secure passwords online: long and with a combination of numbers, letters and symbols, never dictionary words. Don’t use the same password on multiple sites. Use a program like LastPass to manage your passwords. It’s free and will also help with filling out online forms.

3. Have a rescue CD to hand so that if you are caught with a non-booting drive, you can at least try to get your data off. A Knoppix CD or the Ultimate Boot CD may do the trick. And before disaster strikes, make sure your PC will boot off the CD drive when a CD is inserted at boot-up. You may have to change the boot order in the BIOS so that the PC boots off the CD first.

4. Make sure you always have a firewall enabled on your PC.

Hardware

1. If you’re using the default router username and password, change them immediately. The default settings are all commonly known and listed here or here. So anyone with this knowledge can effectively hack into your PC if you have a wireless router and they are in range.

2. Uncheck all unnecessary programs launching at startup. To do this in Windows XP, click on Start, Run and enter msconfig in the box. Then click the Startup tab and uncheck any programs you don’t need at startup. Google any you are not sure of. Or use the excellent free utility CCleaner to disable startup programs. Click the Tools tab on the left then the Startup button. Revo Uninstaller can also disable startup programs through its Autorun Manager.

3. Get as much RAM as you can into your PC, 2GB or more if possible. Use the Crucial System Scanner to check what type of memory you need and how much you can fit.

4. Disable the annoying Caps Lock key. Here’s a short how-to.

5. By all accounts, many PC users, particularly in the US, seem to suffer from dust and dirt clogging up the fans, etc. and causing overheating problems which can damage your PC. It’s well worthwhile unplugging your PC, removing the side panel, taking it outside and carefully blowing out all the dust and dirt before you do permanent damage to your system. If you found a lot of dust, clean it regularly.

6. When using you laptop with the mains cable plugged in, take great care not to strain or loosen the power jack by for example by tugging or tripping over the mains cable. Treat that connection with great care. Once the connection shears from the motherboard you’ll only have hours of battery life left before a trip to your local computer repair shop is needed – and they mightn’t be keen on doing this type of repair.

Software

1. Firefox is a great multi-platform browser, particularly because of the vast amount of extensions which improve the user experience. Don’t load up too many plugins though or you’ll slow it down.

2. Don’t use the bulky Adobe Reader to open pdfs. Lightweight, free Foxit Reader is fine.

3. Thunderbird is a great multi-platform email client.

4. If you haven’t tried Skype, sign up for it. You can make free calls from PC to PC with this. If you both have webcams you can make free video calls – excellent for keeping in touch with friends and family abroad. Our daughter is away at college now and Skype is invaluable for keeping in touch.

5. VLC is a great multi-platform media player. It’ll play virtually anything you throw at it.

6. You don’t have to spend money on commercial software. Products like OpenOffice are really excellent, multi-platform free solutions and suitable for most things you might want to do. You can even open and edit pdfs in OpenOffice Writer.

7. There are many free utilities to convert Word documents to pdfs. I use doPDF which effectively prints your doc to a pdf file.

8. CCleaner is an essential free utility for a Windows PC for deleting temporary files, history, cookies, etc. Use BleachBit on a Linux machine.

9. Use the free utility Recuva to recover deleted files.

10. Revo Uninstaller is a great free utility that does a thorough job of getting rid of installed applications and the junk that they can sometimes leave behind.

11. Two great Windows anti-spyware programs are SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes. Free AVG is a good antivirus program, but if you’re careful where you go on the net, you may not need any of them – particularly if you’re using a Linux distribution as your OS.

12. Evernote is great for collecting web clippings, etc. Give it a try. Doesn’t support Linux yet though.

Online services

1. GMail is a great spam filter. Route all your email account inboxes through GMail. I’ve been doing this for over a year now and I find it almost never puts genuine mail in the spam folder and is brilliant at filtering out any imported spam emails. In addition, it won’t import any email when it identifies a virus in an attachment. Excellent.

2. If you’re search on Google isn’t getting the results you wanted, try searching for exact keyword phrases by putting your keyword phrase in inverted commas – or use the exact phrase box in Google Advanced Search. I use this a lot so I always have Google Advanced Search loading up in one tab when I launch Firefox.

3. XMarks is great for syncing your browser bookmarks between all your PCs.

Operating systems

1. By all accounts, Windows 7 is going to be a great OS. Upgrade to it when you can.

2. Don’t be afraid to try Linux, particularly Ubuntu if you’re a beginner. Although things are done slightly differently from Windows, it really is well worth trying out and it isn’t hard to use. You may well decide to switch from Windows afterwards. You may be able to use Wine to get some of your favourite Windows programs running on Linux.

General

1. If you have to put your email address on your website, make sure to cloak it so it’s not picked up by spammers. Use a service like HideText to do this. Better still, use a contact form on your webpage.

2. Subscribe to @makeuseof in Twitter for lots of useful info on web applications and services.

3. Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog!

That’s all I can think of for the moment – I’ll come back and add additional tips when I think of them. Drop a comment if you have a great tech tip to share.

Oh and by the way, if this article has whetted your appetite for tech tips, have a look at David Pogue’s great article (and the comments) for even more useful tips.

Laptops and more recently netbooks have made us increasingly able to take our digital life on the road. I bought a netbook back in January but as I work from home, I don’t get much chance to go mobile. However, holidays are coming up this week and we’re all off to the west of Ireland. So I’m taking my Acer Aspire One netbook + Easy Peasy Linux with me, not to work, but to try and keep in touch with the tech blogs and hopefully to fire off the occasional tweet.

Problem is, I know there isn’t broadband where I’m staying in Ireland. I’m going to have to look out for wifi hotspots in cafes and bars in the area but I just don’t know how widespread they are yet down Ireland’s west coast. Googling and hotspot locator websites don’t seem to bring up many in the right areas for me. Guess I’ll soon find out.

So I may only be able to connect up say 2 or 3 times in 2 weeks and even then perhaps not for long. So what’s the best solution here to keep in touch? Googling ‘offline browsing’ bring up lots of possibilities but perhaps the most useful to me is Google Gears, particularly as there’s a Linux version for my netbook.

This will allow me to fetch the latest 2000 RSS items to Google Reader when I have a connection and browse through them later in offline mode. When I ran a test of what’s being downloaded by Gears, I noticed that for me, this seems to fetch about a week’s worth of posts. It’s a pity that there isn’t more control on this as I would have liked to fetch a few months worth to be able to browse back through stuff I’d bookmarked but hadn’t really had a chance to read.

So what about the occasional miserably wet days when it’s not possible to venture out into the great outdoors and you’re stuck without a connection? Well, I found this program called HTTrack, again with a Linux version, which allows you to download whole websites to your netbook to browse offline.

Installation was a breeze on the netbook. Just go to the terminal and type:

apt-get update
apt-get install webhttrack

Great, so I’ve picked out three or four great Ubuntu websites which I’ve discovered recently and downloaded them so now I can browse way back to my heart’s content and look at all the earlier posts offline.

So hopefully the combination of Google Reader+Gears and HTTrack will be able to feed my digital addiction while on holiday. What programs do you have on your netbook or laptop for offline browsing and keeping in touch on the road or on holidays? Am I missing anything useful here?

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu for a few months now and it’s running on my netbook and an old desktop PC. Many things are done a little differently in Linux compared with Windows so there’s a bit of a learning curve. I’ve been looking at Ubuntu blogs to try and get familiar with the way Ubuntu works, applications I should install and so on. I’ve already blogged about how I discover great new Linux and Ubuntu content online, and yesterday I came across a great blog for Linux beginners. NixTutor is a relatively new blog by Mark Sanborn – it’s being going since February and there are about 20 posts up at the moment. I went through a number of these yesterday and learned a lot about file naming conventions, directories, keyboard shortcuts and finding files. It’s well worth going through all these posts – they’re all written with beginners in mind.

So I thought I’d list the best of the Linux/Ubuntu/beginner blogs I’ve added to my RSS feed. I haven’t included Linux help sites and there’s a great list of these at Going Linux. I’ve just picked out the beginners’ blogs but I think some verge on intermediate skill. Anyway see what you think:

Ubuntu blogs:

Noobs on Ubuntu

I’ Been to Ubuntu

Jams Ubuntu Linux Blog

Learning Ubuntu

OMG! Ubuntu!

Tombuntu

Ubuntu Linux Help

Ubuntu Linux Tips and Tricks

Works with U

Linux blogs:

Begin Linux Blog

From Windows to Linux for the Average Joe

gHacks (Linux tag)

Layman Linux

Linoob

Linux on Desktop

New Linux User

NixTutor

Non-Geek’s Linux Handbook

The Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide

Some of these blogs haven’t been updated in about a month but they do have a useful archive of posts so I’ve included them. If there are any good Ubuntu/Linux blogs you know of which I haven’t included please let me know in the Comments below and I’ll add them. I’ll try and keep the list up to date as a resource for beginners. Add the blogs you like to your RSS feed so you keep up with the latest posts.

Please tweet, Stumble, Digg this post to get the word out on these great Linux and Ubuntu blogs. Thanks.

I’m also trying to uncover good Linux and Ubuntu podcasts for beginners and hope to do a post on that in the future. If you can recommend any please drop a comment below.

How do you discover great new blogs and content online? Well of course you can use your RSS reader, Delicious, Stumbleupon, follow links in tweets, or recommendations that a friend has emailed to you. But what about one-off posts from smaller blogs that may be of interest but which you’re missing? You could search for the keywords you’re interested in on Twitter. I blogged about this earlier. Or try subscribing to your topic of interest on Digg. I discovered this recently and it’s a great way to discover new content.

As some of you know, I’m starting out with Ubuntu at the moment and am trying to learn as much as I can from reading content online. I’ve subscribed to a number of Ubuntu and Linux blogs in my RSS reader but I’ve found it’s also really useful to subscribe to upcoming diggs in the Linux/Unix topic under Technology. There’s a button in the top left (not shown in the figure below) which allows you to subscribe to this category in your reader.

Many bloggers submit their latest Linux posts to digg and you’ll find a wide variety of content here ranging from how-to’s to reviews of Linux applications. A lot of it doesn’t get picked up by the larger tech blogs or by Twitter so it’s worth doing. Of course, you don’t have to subscribe to upcoming Linux diggs – pick whatever takes your fancy and add it to your RSS reader.

So how do you discover new content? I’d love to hear about it. Drop a comment below.

I bought an Acer Aspire One ZG5 netbook a few weeks ago. This model has the 120GB hard disk, 1GB RAM and runs Linpus Lite Linux, a Fedora-based Linux distro. Reading around various forums, it seemed a number of people were having problems installing software on their Aspire One running Linpus so I thought I’d install a Ubuntu distro as I already have an old desktop PC happily running Ubuntu 8.10. I had seen a blog post by Knightwise some weeks ago on his favourable experiences installing Easy Peasy Linux on his Acer Aspire One so I thought I’d have a go with this too. Easy Peasy is the new name for the UbuntuEEE distribution. It’s a Ubuntu Network Remix (UNR) of the standard Ubuntu release to enable it to work better on devices with small screens such as netbooks. It installs Firefox with Flash and Java, Skype, Google Picasa, Songbird etc. out of the box and Knightwise had no problems with the installation on his netbook and seemed quite pleased with it.

I’m going to go through the steps I took to install Easy Peasy, aimed at the new Linux user, like myself. I believe quite a few inexperienced users will be ‘sold’ this netbook/Linpus combination because of its price (somewhat cheaper that the Windows XP version) and the straightforward user interface and then may well run into problems when they try to install software. So here goes. It might look a bit daunting but it’s quite straightforward when you work through it.

Before you start, you will need two USB sticks or thumb drives and access to a desktop PC with a DVD optical drive because the Acer Aspire One doesn’t come with an optical drive. The USB sticks must be configured to use the FAT32 file system. If necessary, to change the file system of the USB drive, you just need to right-click on the drive icon in the My Computer screen and select Format, then choose FAT32 for the file system. Of course, reformatting your drive means nuking any data on it, so save whatever you need first. You’ll need a 2GB USB drive for the Linpus recovery drive and another 2GB drive for the Easy Peasy install. Once you are happy with the new Easy Peasy install, you can overwrite the USB stick with the Linpus install. You can always recreate it again from the DVD if required.

So first, we have to create the Linpus recovery USB stick should we run into problems with the new Easy Peasy install. You may have already done this when you bought your Aspire One, if so skip to the next section.

Creating the Linpus recovery USB drive

Your Acer Aspire One should have come with a Recovery DVD. Put this in your PC’s DVD drive and plug in the first USB stick. Reboot the PC. Your PC should boot from the DVD (if it doesn’t, you’ll have to change the boot order in the BIOS so that the PC boots from the DVD first). To enter the BIOS, you’ll need to press the Delete or F1 key (depending on your PC) while the PC is booting.

Once the PC has booted off the Linpus recovery DVD, choose the option Create USB recovery drive. Follow the on-screen prompts to select the USB drive. Takes about 3 minutes to create the Linpus recovery USB drive. Then remove the DVD and press Exit. Leave the USB drive plugged in. The PC then reboots back into Windows.

Check the boot order on your Aspire One

To check the boot order so you can boot your netbook off this USB stick, plug the Linpus recovery USB drive into one of the USB ports on your Aspire One. As the netbook is booting, press the F2 key for the BIOS setup. You’ll see the prompt on screen as the netbook boots. Go to the Boot menu, select your USB drive and use the F5 key to move it up to position 1. Press F12 to save this set-up and exit.

The netbook will now boot off the USB drive and you can reinstall Linpus Linux onto the netbook hard drive from here should anything go wrong. If your USB drive is unplugged, your system will boot off the hard drive.

Creating the Easy Peasy USB drive

Now we’re ready to create our Easy Peasy install on the second USB drive but first we have to download the Easy Peasy iso file. Boot your Aspire One with no USB drive attached, open your browser and go to the Easy Peasy website. Download the iso file to your Downloads folder. It’s about 860MB so may take a couple of hours to download depending on the speed of your internet connection.

To install a bootable copy of this iso file on your USB stick you will need a bootloader program. I’ve used UNetbootin and you can download it here. Make sure to download the Linux version. Again, download to your Downloads folder. You’ll need to make UNetbootin executable. In the File Manager, highlight the file and go to Properties, Permissions tab and check the box against Allow file to be run as a program.

Now, when I double clicked UNetbootin, I got the message: UNetbootin must be run as root. Use:

sudo /mnt/home/Downloads/Unetbootin-linux-319

But when I tried this command in the Terminal, I was advised I needed to install the programs mtools and p7zip.

To add these programs, I first enabled right click desktop menus by clicking on the desktop, selecting the Behavior tab and under menus, checked Show desktop menus on right click. Then right clicking on the desktop, I chose System and then Add/remove programs. This runs pirut which needs your admin password. I searched for the software I needed to install: mtools and installed it, then p7zip and installed it. I found I also had to install p7zip plugins before UNetbootin would run.

So back to the terminal window and type:

sudo /mnt/home/Downloads/Unetbootin-linux-319

Click Disk Image, keep ISO in the drop down box and browse to the Easy Peasy iso file in the Downloads folder. Select your USB drive from the drop down box then click OK. Easy Peasy Linux will now be installed on your USB drive. Once installed, close all windows and restart the netbook with the Easy Peasy USB drive in place.

The netbook will boot off the USB drive and you can now install Easy Peasy Linux. On the partitioning screen I chose Guided – Use entire disk as I didn’t want to retain the old Linpus install on a partition.

I’ve been running Easy Peasy for a couple of days now with no problems. Connected to my wireless network without problems and straightaway I could share files with my Windows PC over the wireless network. YouTube videos play without problems and Skype is loaded ready to go.

And that’s about it. Hope this guide is clear enough to get you through the install. If you found problems following it, let me know and I’ll update it. Although I’ve used an Acer Aspire One, the procedure should work to install this Ubuntu distro on any netbook. If you found it useful, please Digg, Stumble, tweet or bookmark on Delicious using the links below.

Related articles by Zemanta