So, here are the steps I took to turn a stock Eee into the perfect machine for writing on the move.

1. Enable Advanced Desktop Mode, because Easy Mode is just silly.
2. Add extra repositories, from which to download applications not provided by Asus.
3. Install SSH server, so you can connect your Eee from other computers: sudo apt-get install openssh-server
4. Install Subversion, to keep all your files in sync: sudo apt-get install subversion (setting up a Subversion repository is left as an exercise for the reader).
5. Install AbiWord, because OpenOffice is too slow on the Eee: sudo apt-get install abiword.
6. Install VLC, for playing telly programmes on the train when you can’t be arsed working: sudo apt-get install vlc
7. Tweak Firefox to make it more Eee-friendly:
   1. Install the MiniFox theme.
   2. Install the Fullerscreen add-on.
   3. Install the Google Browser Sync add-on, to keep your bookmarks, passwords and history synchronised with your main computer (optional, but well handy).
8. Remember to keep all your stuff on a removable SDHC card, not on the Eee’s internal memory card.

That’s it. The whole procedure takes under ten minutes, most of which is spent waiting for the list of repositories to update and the 15MB AbiWord to download.

I’ve been running the Eee like this for ten days now, and haven’t missed any of the gizmos I’d installed over the last few months. More importantly, the Eee is now as fast as crikey, and I haven’t had a single application crash on me yet.

Just in case anyone thinks I’ve lost the will to tinker, I feel moved to point out that I wrote the above while waiting for a Puppy Linux CD to burn.

For transferring files, I’ve tried SMB, NFS and WebDAV, which have all worked, pretty much, but were all also fiddly to set up, unstable and generally bloody annoying. (Interestingly, most of the problems have been on the Mac side.)

Today, I happened upon ExpanDrive, a new application for OS X that installs, and provides a simple setup interface, for MacFUSE and SSHFS. In plain English, that means I can mount the Eee PC - and any other computers on my network - just like an external disk drive, SMB or AFP, so that it is completely integrated into the Finder.

Setup is easy.

If you haven’t already, install openssh-server on the Eee PC:

1. Install it: sudo apt-get install openssh-server
2. Then start it up: sudo /etc/init.d/ssh
3. Then make it start up whenever you switch on your Eee PC by opening /etc/fastservices in a text editor - eg. sudo nano /etc/fastservices - and adding a line that says ssh.

Then, back on the Mac, install and launch ExpanDrive, and fill in your server name, username and password. For some reason, your username for SSH purposes is ‘user’, not your actual username, though your password is the same one as usual (I have no idea why, and it took me bloody ages to guess that it is when I first started using SSH to log in to the Eee PC).

That’s it. As far as your Mac is concerned, your Eee PC is now part of the filesystem, so you can open and edit files on it, move stuff between the computers, even play MP3s stored on the Eee on your Mac. Very nice.

As well as the simple setup - especially when compared to getting MacFUSE and SSHFS set up using more manual means, which is a right sodding chore - ExpanDrive scores points for speed and stability. In terms of speed, I really can’t tell the difference between working on a file stored locally and one on the Eee, which wasn’t the case when using other protocols. And ExpanDrive is rock solid, much better than the Finder when it comes to dealing with stuff over a network: you can put your Mac to sleep, or disconnect from the network, without having to fear the spinning beach ball of doom. ExpanDrive will just silently reconnect when you wake up the computer or rejoin your network. Very clever.

When it comes to keeping stuff in sync, I’ve taken a slightly peculiar route: Subversion.

This is a very clever synchronisation thingy, usually used by groups of people who write code, so that they can all make changes to files they’re all working on without buggering everything up. It’s probably overkill for one person writing reviews for the paper, but I’ve really taken to it.

Subversion works by keeping all your files on a server in a “repository”¹. You can then “checkout” the files, work on them, and “commit” your changes, which updates the copies on the server. It doesn’t matter what computer you’re on when you do the checking out/editing/committing routine, as long as Subversion is installed, which it is by default on Macs running Leopard. To get it on the Eee, you just do the usual sudo apt-get install subversion thing. And, because your files are living online too, you can access them through a web browser on any old machine you happen to be sitting in front of.

This is, obviously, fabulously convenient, and for a basic user like myself, there’s only a handful of commands to remember. On the Mac side, though, after the first time you import your files into your repository and check them back out, you don’t even need to open a Terminal, let alone remember any commands, thanks to three of my fave applications, Path Finder, TextMate and Quicksilver², all of which have Subversion support built in.

So, it’s taken a while, but thanks to the release of ExpanDrive, and the (er, relative) ease of use of Subversion, I have everything set up to easily share and sync files between my Eee PC and Macs over the network.

The days of walking around the flat carrying an SDHC card like some primitive data-ape are over!

Now, I really must start reading up on rsync and Unison…

1. Donny very kindly made me a repository on his server, but I only saw his email after I’d set up my own. Cheers Don!↩

2. Textmate and Path Finder both cost money, Quicksilver is open source. Free alternatives to using Path Finder’s Subversion support include SvnX, SCPlugin and this collection of AppleScripts ↩

I think this post sets a new record for TLAs and other acronyms on Submit Response!

Using The Eee PC

• Writing on the Eee PC is do-able, but impractical when it comes to longer pieces. When writing anything over a few hundred words, I tend to have two text files open and visible on screen, one full of notes, half-formed paragraphs jotted down as they pop into my head and a rough outline, the other for the actual business of writing the piece. This is impossible on the Eee PC’s little screen, and I found it very hard to adapt to flitting between two fullscreen documents, rather than having both available for reading and writing simultaneously. When it comes to the final pass, which for me tends to involve a fair bit of cutting, pasting and rewriting of the first draft, the Eee PC’s small display is even more bothersome: I had no idea how important it is for me to be able to read large chunks of text in their entirety on screen, but it turns out that all the to and fro of scrolling required, even when using AbiWord in fullscreen mode with a display font set at the limits of legibility, really gets in the way of finishing a piece of work.

• That said, it’s amazing how quickly one can adapt to writing on the Eee PC: I now type almost as quickly on the dinky keyboard as I do on my MacBook Pro, though with many more errors, and have absorbed a huge number of keyboard commands. This is a problem as much as a positive, though - every time I switch between the Mac and the Eee PC I spend five minutes or so adrift, stumbling over the Command and Control keys, and some things are so ingrained (triggering Textexpander macros or launching Quicksilver for example) that I suspect my brain will never override my muscle memory.

• Web browsing is just fine. The overwhelming majority of sites I visit render perfectly on the dinky display, and the scrolling side of the trackpad makes navigating pages a cinch. I have noticed one big difference in my browsing habits, though. On the Eee PC, if I come across a page of interest, I’ll print it to a PDF file for later reading, rather than leave the tab open. On the Mac, I would routinely have 20 or more tabs open, something the underpowered Eee just can’t handle, but I’ve now ported the habit over: it’s better to have an easily searchable folder of PDF print-outs than grub around for that tab I opened last Tuesday. Flash-heavy sites, and too many open tabs bearing YouTube videos will cause Firefox to choke on the Eee PC, but since I avoid the former, and could do with watching less of the latter, this hasn’t proved to be a problem.

• Managing images is tricky. I had thought that the Eee PC would be ideal as a photographer’s companion, so to speak, but the small screen makes even light editing - croppping, resizing, etc. - a chore, and the tendency of Firefox to have a fit when uploading more than a couple of full-size images to Flickr is frustrating. Still, for dumping images off your camera’s SD card for later processing or quick uploading, the Eee PC is a lot easier to lug around than your average laptop (it fits in the front pocket of my camera bag, with room to spare).

• Everything else is on the web. As I mentioned before, using the Eee PC often feels like using a client to Google’s various services (or other web services and hosted applications, like Backpack and its sister apps). This feels like the realisation of a long-predicted trend: the iPhone, the Eee PC, the Newton and the better UMPC type things really are a new class of networked portable device, I think, capable of changing the way we use computers and the web. If only the network was ubiquitous, and if only I were willing to trust all my data to third parties.

Hardware

• Wireless networking is solid, but not perfect. When out and about, the Eee PC picks up more available networks than my MacBook Pro, but sometimes has trouble connecting and maintaining connections, especially to those with a weak signal. (After an annoying afternoon in windswept Leeds trying to get online, getting the Eee PC to dial up via my Nokia N95, or even investing in one of those pay-as-you-go USB 3G modem thingys has become a priority.)

• Storage is a big problem. There’s just no room on the Eee PC for many media files, unless you want to muck about removing applications and files the Eee would rather you left alone. The answer? Get a for a 16GB SD card for Christmas!

• Battery life is nothing to be sniffed at, especially if you turn off WiFi and dim the backlight as much as you can stand. I got the train from Liverpool to Glasgow on Monday, and watched two and a half hours of downloaded telly, listened to a bunch of Radio 4 stuff gleaned from Speechification, and read a week’s worth of RSS feeds in Google Reader’s offline mode. The Eee PC had enough juice left for me to check my mail and footle about on the web for half an hour when I got home.

The operating system

• Linux is ugly, and hard to use. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with the inconsistencies of the user interface. On a Mac, I know where certain menu items will be found, and can count on standard command key combos doing what I expect, regardless of the application I’m using. Under Xandros, there are no such certainties, and you have to learn a distinct set of commands, and a new menu layout for pretty much every application you run. Even something as basic as quitting an app is completely inconsistent across applications - Control + Q will work a lot of the time, admittedly, but you can’t count on it. Talking of which, who thought it was a good idea to have applications up and quit when you close a window? That’s just incredibly stupid behaviour (if you’ve been using Macs exclusively for more than a decade). I’ve even found myself abandoning the GUI of some applications in favour of the command line, which is fine by me, but pretty bloody ridiculous.

• Linux also has its strengths, of course! Package management is just the absolute business, a brilliant model for installing, updating and uninstalling applications. Updating all my applications on the Mac to the latest version would take a good deal of Googling, downloading, deleting and installing. Typing apt-get upgrade is a cinch in comparison.

• The twin OS that ships with the Eee PC is a good thing. Kate, James and I got my Dad an Eee PC for Christmas: he’s sticking with the default Easy Mode interface and, so far, the default applications. Admittedly, he’s a geeky pensioner, sorry Silver Surfer — Flickr account, nascent weblog and all — but I’d guess that someone with next to no computing experience would be comfortable with it. In other words, Asus have made a desktop Linux distro that anyone can use out of the box, without even having to look at a terminal window. This does not match my experience with other Linux distros, and that’s putting it mildly. (Of course, they have the ‘Apple advantage’ here, matching their hardware with a bespoke OS.)

So, is it any good?

Yup! In the end, the Eee PC has far exceeded my expectations. Sure, it has its flaws - small screen and keyboard, the lack of polish and limitations of Xandros when compared to a ‘proper’ OS - but it’s a more than capable laptop, ultra-portable and eminently usable. It has completely replaced my MacBook Pro as a laptop, which is now installed in the office as a desktop replacement. At a push, I could even see someone with relatively modest computing needs making the Eee PC their main machine: add an external DVD drive, full-size keyboard and monitor, and it would more than meet the needs of anyone who uses a PC primarily to write, surf the web and manage mail.

See also: Eee PC Setup.

I tired of the standard Easy Mode in about five minutes—it’s perfectly usable, but the toytown icons, awkward tabbed interface and limited opportunities for customisation do what is a fairly powerful device a disservice. So, I switched to ‘Full Desktop Mode’.

You don’t need to be a computer whizz to achieve this, just open a terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T in Easy Mode) and type the following, hitting return after each line, while connected to the internet:

sudo bash

apt-get update

apt-get install ksmserver kicker

Then restart the computer. Getting Full Desktop Mode to stick, and boot as quickly as possible, is a little more tricky, but is explained in detail on the Eee PC User Wiki, and shouldn’t be too much trouble, even for users who’ve never seen a command line before.

Once the Full Desktop Mode is in place, the interfaces of a few programmes need tweaking, so that they suit the Eee PC’s tiny wee screen. For Firefox and Thunderbird (the default mail application), this involves installing new themes, and editing each application’s userChrome.css files.

For Firefox, I went with the Littlefox theme, for Thunderbird, Minibird fits the bill. Easy-to-follow instructions for setting a smaller font size for the user interface of Firefox are available here, while tips to slim down Thunderbird can be found here.

Neither application is much use unless it synchronises with your main desktop or laptop, so I switched all my mail accounts over to IMAP, which caches copies of mail messages locally, but leaves them on the server, keeping all your inboxes in sync.

Then, to keep Firefox bookmarks, cookies and such consistent across different machines, I installed the Google Browser Sync add-on, which, so far, has worked flawlessly. I also installed Google Gears, which allows some web applications to work offline—it works very well with Google Reader, letting you update RSS feeds when you have access to the network, then read them when you don’t. It’s a shame that it doesn’t yet work with Google Calendar. (Google looms pretty large when using the Eee PC in my experience—at times it feels like I’m using the laptop as a client for their web services.)

When it comes to adding applications to the set bundled with the Eee PC, I’ve been fairly restrained:

1. VLC - the stock MPlayer is fine, but I’m used to VLC, and it can play pretty much any video you throw at it.
2. Abiword - the default word processor, Open Office, is a big pile of poo, taking an age to launch, and hogging memory once it has. Abiword launches almost instantaneously, and offers a more user-friendly, stripped-down space for writing.
3. Bittornado - I tried a few Bittorrent clients, but this is the only one that just worked for me, and it does the job (though it’s probably unwise to do much torrent downloading on a machine using with a flash drive).
4. Various odds and ends, like the latest Flash player and browser plugins, and some gubbins to make printing to PDF files easier.

Things I’ve yet to do:

1. Investigate methods of syncing information between my Newton MP2100 and the Eee PC. Not urgent, as the Newton is regularly sort-of-synced with my Mac, which is synced with Google Calendar.
2. Work out if it’s possible to install the OpenEinstein Newton emulator on the Eee PC. This would be spectacularly pointless, but good fun.
3. Get filesharing between my Macs and the Eee PC over my wireless LAN sorted out. I’m getting a bit tired of transporting larger files via a USB thumb drive and emailing myself documents.
4. Buy a whopping great SD card, so I can store more music and video on the Eee PC.

(I’ll post a proper review of the machine and its OS soon—I just wanted to get all this down first in case anything goes horribly wrong and I end up having to start again from scratch!)

From the BBC report:

The laptops will be encased in rubber to make them more durable, and their AC adaptors will also act as carrying straps.

The Linux-based machines are expected to have a 500MHz processor, with flash memory instead of a hard drive which has more delicate moving parts.

The laptop will be more rugged and flexible than ordinary ones They will have four USB ports, and will be able to connect to the net through wi-fi - wireless net technology - and will be able to share data easily.

It will also have a dual-mode display so that it can still be used in varying light conditions outside. It will be a colour display, but users will be able to switch easily to monochrome mode so that it can be viewed in bright sunlight, at four times normal resolution.

From the MIT page:

When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab.

It seems to me that, in designing a low-cost laptop for educational use in developing nations, the folk at MIT have also come up with the perfect laptop, full stop. I wonder if they’ll offer it for sale at a premium — $300, say — to subsidise the work of the One Laptop Per Child scheme, or if the low price depends on huge bulk orders by NGOs and government departments. (And, yes, I do realise it’s a bit iffy getting all gadget-lusty over this project.)

See also: the Simputer, a handheld device with similar aims launched last March, Bridging the digital divide, a Guardian piece on the $100 laptop from last February, A Lesson in Computer Literacy from India’s Poorest Kids, on the Hole In the Wall computer experiment, and, tangentially, On the Joys of Primitive Computing: The AlphaSmart Neo.

S2M-1921 Patrick Harvie: Open Source and Free Software

That the Parliament welcomes the findings of the Office of Government Commerce’s report following proof-of-concept trials of Open Source software; notes that the report concludes that Open Source software is a viable and credible alternative to proprietary software and that its use can generate significant savings in hardware and software costs and reduce licensing costs and hardware refresh requirements; notes the significant financial and environmental benefit that could arise from a policy of adopting Open Source software, including the GNU/Linux operating system; notes the long-term dangers for organisations in becoming locked into proprietary systems; further believes that the principles of free software and concepts such as Copyleft can help to protect important rights and freedoms for people in an increasingly digital age, and urges the Scottish Executive to develop a strategy for promoting the adoption of free software and Open Source wherever workable throughout the public sector and to ensure that all software developed with public funds is copylefted.

Supported by: Shiona Baird, Eleanor Scott, Mark Ballard, Chris Ballance, Mr Bruce McFee, Robin Harper, Stewart Stevenson, Mike Pringle, Donald Gorrie

Great stuff. Patrick is also seeking comments, suggestions and improvements on the motion - I’ll be dropping him a line about Creative Commons - and asks that folk who support it contact their MSP, which you can do via this page.

Thanks to Simon for the heads-up.

This is mainly for my benefit, but since I know absolutely nothing about using Linux, they might be helpful for people in the same boat. Folk who do know something of Linux, feel free to point, laugh or suggest alternative methods.

Anyway, before I installed YDL, my old iBook was mainly used to download files with P2P applications and play MP3s over the WLAN in my house, from the new iBook and the external drive plugged into it, so these are the things I’m keen to get up and running as soon as possible.

First of all, here’s how I’m streaming MP3s over the network. What follows will doubtless be heresy to experienced Linux users, but it works. (Reading forums and mailing lists I am beginning to suspect that anything one Linux user does is considered heresy by all other Linux users, and vice versa).

The following assumes you’re have one Mac running YDL 3.0 and another running OS 10.3.4, though they may well work with other versions of the two operating systems.

First of all, you need to get the YDL computer and the OS X computer talking to each other. There’s lots of ways to do this, but the only one I had any luck with was using Samba which is installed by default with YDL. (And, just to confuse matters, is meant for connecting Linux computers to Windows computers.)

Here’s how to set up Samba so your YDL computer can use files on your OS X computer:

1. On the OS X computer, open System Preferences > Sharing and check the box next to Windows Sharing.

2. On the YDL computer, first you need to make a directory where you can mount your OSX computer as if it were a CD or drive. Since there’s a mount directory already there, it seems reasonable to put it in there. Open up a terminal and type:

   mkdir /mnt/ibook

3. Next, you need to get your mount on. Turn back to the OS X computer, and at the bottom of the Sharing Preference Pane, it’ll say something like this:

   Windows users can access your computer at \192.168.1.2\yourusername

   Take a note of that, and turn back to the YDL computer.

4. On the YDL computer, in a terminal, type the following (all on one line):

   smbmount //192.168.1.2/username /mnt/ibook -o workgroup=WORKGROUP,username=yourusername

   As you can see, that’s the smbmount command followed by the address given in the Sharing Preference Pane, followed by the directory you made in step 2. The last bit tells Samba what workgroup you want to join - wittily called ‘WORKGROUP’ by default on OS X - and your username on the OS X computer.

5. After you type the smbmount command above, some information about the OS X computer will appear on screen, followed by a password prompt. You want the password associated with ‘yourusername.’

6. Now, if you didn’t get any error messages, you’ll be able to navigate into the /mnt/ibook/ directory you made before, and inside will be everything found in your Home directory on OS X. I’m guessing that if you’ve bothered to read this far you’ll know how to do that. If not, to see a list of everything in your newly-mounted Home directory, all ready to be used by the YDL computer, you could type something like:

   cd /mnt/ibook

   ls

With your Home directory mounted, you can now happily add MP3 files from your Music folder to whatever MP3 player you’re using on YDL. I’m using something called XMMS, which isn’t exactly iTunes, but does the job.

If you keep your MP3s on an external hard drive, there’s another step to make them available to the YDL computer. (Never having heard of symlinks, this is the bit that took me a while to figure out.)

1. On the OS X computer, open Terminal, cd to the Desktop and type something like this (again, all on one line):

   ln -s /Volumes/ExternalDrive/MusicFolder/ FakeMusicFolder

   The ln -s bit tells the computer to make a Symlink, which is the same as an Alias but works with all sorts of computers, not just Macs. The next bit is the folder on your external hard drive you want to make a link to, and the last bit is the name you want to give your Symlink.

2. That’s it really. Have a look inside /mnt/ibook/Desktop/FakeMusicFolder, or whatever you chose to call the Symlink, and you should see all your MP3s waiting and ready to be played over the network.

Other options I’m looking into: using web-based streaming apps like Netjuke or Andromeda (which would maintain the playlists I have in iTunes) and getting Appletalk running. Yes, Appletalk.

Next up: installing Bittorrent. I’m finding it increasingly ridiculous that when using Linux I can work out how to stream MP3s over a network with relatively little trouble, but haven’t yet managed to install the one application I really need!