Julianna Yau’s blog

Because I need to feed the geek in me.

 

Xandros on Asus Eee - “Easy mode” vs “Advanced mode”

The Asus Eee runs on Xandros, which is a Linux-based operating system which branched off from Debian.

“Huh?”, you say?

In layman’s terms, the Asus runs on something that isn’t Windows or a Mac interface.

The factory default settings use what they call “Easy Mode”, which is a tabbed view of the desktop space with easy access to common applications:

Easy Mode on Xandros on Eee

I actually quite liked the Easy Mode because it did everything I needed it to do… which was basically launch Firefox and OpenOffice. But I was curious about what this “Advanced Mode” was all about, so I followed some instructions on enabling Advanced Mode on the Eee. The result? I unlocked the KDE interface, which is what I’m using for openSUSE in my full-sized laptop:

KDE on Xandros on the Eee

For someone who is used to the KDE or Windows desktop, this is much less frustrating. I was able to get rid of some of the stuff I never intend to use, like the games and the somewhat puzzling CD and DVD writing programs (the Eee does not come with an optical drive, but I suppose it can accept external ones).

With the full KDE desktop, the startup and shutdown times are a bit slower, but still much better than a traditional laptop:

Startup Shutdown
Eee - Easy Mode approx 29s approx 9s
Eee - KDE approx 41s approx 17s
Toshiba M300 - openSUSE approx 1m 39s (but 1m 48s for the hourglass to disappear) approx 55s
Toshiba M300 - Windows XP approx 1m (but 2m 15s for the hourglass to disappear) approx 34s

The time comparisons are actually quite surprising because I didn’t expect Windows to be faster than openSUSE (the first time for Windows and openSUSE mark when the start menus became accessible).

Tags: , ,

Related posts

Filed under : reviews, technology
By Julianna Yau
On January 13, 2008
At 3:20 pm
Comments :
Print This Post Print This Post

 
 

2 Comments for this post

 
David Goemans Says:

You can very easily install openSUSE on the eee! I did it yesterday, borrowing an external dvdrom from our system admin at work. Its quick too, although a little bit bulky. If you want I can post the boot and shutdown times, but just from memory boot into KDE is probably less than a minute and shutdown is about 30 seconds, but these are guesses. Running openSUSE allows you to take advantage of the one-click install, which I love!

 
 
David Goemans Says:

Here’s the stats:
Boot into KDE in 1 minute, 1m15s for the session to finish loading Opera and Kopete
Shutdown from click of the button takes 30 seconds.
I’m still greatly impressed. I replied to the comment you left on my site, with a link to an openSUSE article. That article has a link to a zipped file which is a flash drive boot image for the EEE. I don’t have the bandwidth to download the 700 odd mb, but if you don’t have a dvd rom it might be an option.
Great blog btw :D

 

Leave a Reply

For spam filtering purposes, please copy the number 1032 to the field below: