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Asus Eee PC 900

So I got mine! Actually, I am typing this post on it. It’s not available in Norway yet, but a traveling colleague got one for me in the Netherlands. Damn this thing is tiny, and oh so sexy. Of course I got the 20GB Linux version, running a custom Xandros Linux.

This machine really is a beauty. Weighing in at under a kilogram, it’s so tiny it’ll almost fit in your coat pockets. Working with the tiny keyboard takes some getting used to but once you get the hang of it it’s really quite refreshing. You don’t have to move your hands at all while typing for one…

Of course, leaving this thing in it’s pristine factory default setup would be a complete waste, so the first thing I did when I had unpacked it was to tweak the hell out of it. Read on for some of the things you may want to do to yours when you get one, as you should!!

The Desktop

Well the default fisher-price desktop with big colorful icons kinda annoyed me. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to enable a full KDE desktop instead, the so called “Advanced Mode“. Once that was done, I had to tweak some themes and config files to free up some screen realestate. The Eee has a tiny 9″ screen, so you’ll need all the space you can get. And of course, with the advanced mode you will also get access to virtual desktops! Even more space.

KDE

There aren’t really all that many packages in the default repositories. Adding Xandros or Debian Etch repos to your sources.list will expand your selection somewhat, but at the risk of completely hosing your system since there will be conflicts. My solution was to grab individual .debs from the etch repos, creating a few dummy packages to satisfy some unnecessary dependencies.

Now I have some of my favourite tools such as Yakuake (the console), and the kde bluetooth utilities etc.

…and more!!

I’ll update here if I find some other nuggets to share. For now I am too busy having fun with this baby!