When ASUS announced its Eee Box B202 back in May, there were going to be three models:

• the base model running Linux version with 1 GB of RAM and a 80 GB hard disk for $269,
• a Windows XP Home version with the same 1 GB of RAM and 80 GB of disk for $299 and
• a Linux version with 2 GB of RAM and 160 GB of disk for $299

Four months later only one of these three versions is available and it’s neither the cheapest nor the best equipped of the three anounced configurations: Only the Windows version hit the stores, at $50 more than previously announced (it’s around $350).

Meanwhile the Linux versions are nowhere to be be found, though rumour has it that they will become available later this year.

Considering that ASUS shipped it trailblazing Eee PC notebook with Linux first, before following it with a Windows version, this turn of events with their desktop is somewhat surprizing. Low prices are a major reason why their machines are attractive, but every Windows machine shipped means royalty payments to Microsoft, which is why the XP version was going to be $30 more expensive than the base model (Linux is royalty-free). By opting for only shipping XP, ASUS is also preventing its customers from buying a 160 GB version, as Microsoft refuses to let OEMs ship XP with machines with more than 80 GB of disk space.

To get a 160 GB Eee Box with 2 GB of RAM and Linux (the configuration I was interested in) you would have to buy an 80 GB model with 1 GB of RAM and XP, only to discard the 80 GB drive, the 1 GB SIMM and Windows XP (which you’ve all paid for) and then install a separately purchased 160 GB drive and 2 GB SIMM and a (free) copy of Linux.

When the Eee PC was launched, I was very excited by the prospect of low-energy, low cost computing, but wanted to wait for the desktop as I would use them mostly as unattended servers and had no need for an LCD screen. Like many other potential ASUS customers, I will keep on waiting now.

I currently use a set of four machines to process external spam feeds for the SURBL Multi JP blacklist. Since these machines are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week I would like to minimize power usage and Intel’s Atom processors with a TDP of less than 5W sounded like a very attractive upgrade path for me. I use some older machines with sub-1 GHz clock speeds that draw relatively little power, but these old motherboards have some drawbacks. First of all they are limited to a maximum of between 256 and 512 MB of RAM, while Atom boards support up to 2 GB. Secondly, their motherboards are 7 to 10 years old and they won’t work forever.

I had a look at Intel’s Atom 230-based Mini-ITX desktop board, which can be found for under $70 and fits existing ATX-based machines like my ancient eMachine eTowers. At first glance that looked attractive. However, even though the CPU is efficient, the Northbridge support chip of the Intel 945GC Express Chipset on that board burns about five times more power than the Atom CPU itself. The Eee Box sounds like a much better choice in the long term, as it uses an Atom 270 with the much more efficient Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset. The catch is, you can’t currently buy an Eee Box without paying the “Microsoft tax”, i.e. a Windows XP license that you pay for whether you have a use for it or not.

The decision by ASUS to push back on the Linux version makes no sense to me. I suspect Microsoft made ASUS an offer they found hard to refuse, in order to establish the Eee Box as a Windows-only machine. It will cost ASUS sales and it won’t make Microsoft any more popular. It’s not good for the planet either if people buy power-hungry desktop hardware instead of one of the more economical computers available.

Last month I upgraded my notebook from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 (“Hardy Heron”). Since then, whenever I tried tried to install the up to 133 updates that had become available, the Update Manager would hang indefinitely instead of prompting me for the user password.

If you’re in the same situation, the following tips might help you. Edit /etc/hosts with an editor of your choice (e.g. sudo vi /etc/hosts). There should be two entries with IPv4 addresses starting with 127.0.x.x, like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 mycomputername.mydomain

Remove the domain name from the entry starting with 127.0.1.1, leaving only the computer name and save the file. Now try again.

When I made this change I got the password prompt as expected and all the updates where downloaded and applied.

The latest version of Ubuntu, the most popular desktop version of Linux on the market, was released on Thursday, 24 April 2008.

New versions are released every six months and labelled after the release year and month, therefore the latest will be known as 8.04, replacing 7.10. The “LTS” suffix stands for “Long Term Support”, as this version will be supported for three years.

The new version, code named “Hardy Heron” bundles the new FireFox 3.0 web browser, updates to photo management and video and music-related features. It can also install on top of an existing copy of Windows without the need to repartition the hard disk. This lowers the barrier to entry for new users who, if they’re not happy with Ubuntu, can always remove it using the Windows Control Panel, just like any other Windows application.

If you have a bittorrent client such as uTorrent, you can download ISO images of install CDs and DVDs via this page:

http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/

Links:

• Canonincal press release

Last week I was on a business trip to the USA and decided it was finally time for me to buy a new notebook computer. Here in Japan it’s difficult to get machines with US keyboards.

My previous one was a 650 MHz Pentium III whose RAM was maxed out at 512 MB while my main desktops and servers have 2 GB or more. Lack of RAM slows down PCs much more than a slow clock speed does. People who buy entry level Vista machines equipped with only 512 MB would be better off with a sub-1 GHz CPU but a full 1 GB of RAM.

I picked a Gateway M-6750 with a 1.66 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, a 250 GB 3.5″ hard disk and 3 GB of RAM. It comes with a built-in microphone and webcam, very handy for Skype-addicts like me.

Every single machine at Best Buy and Circuit City that I looked at came with some form of Vista preinstalled. Microsoft sure does not want to give customers any choice whether they stick with XP. Ideally, I would have wiped off Vista and installed Windows XP on it. Until now I had kept my office a Vista-free zone, but knowing that occasionally I will needed to test some software on it, I stuck with it for the new machine.

I spent some time reconfiguring the Vista desktop to be as Windows 2000 and XP-like as possible. The constant alerts to permit some actions I had requested soon became annoying. Often a single operation results in the user having to agree two or three times. Inevitably, agreeing to anything without giving it much thought soon becomes a habit. Does Microsoft seriously believe that training users to constantly click “Allow”, “OK”, “Yes” will lead to a noticeable gain in security?

So far I have seen little reason for anyone to upgrade from Windows XP or Windows 2000 (my favourite Windows version) to Vista. Sure, there is plenty of new eye candy, but who but the makers and vendors of graphics chipsets, CPUs and RAM benefits from that? Users spent countless hours relearning the user interface and getting old application working (or replacing them). Even for upgrades from Vista to Vista Service Pack 1 there were so many land mines that Microsoft decided to hold off general availability of SP1 via Windows Update for several more months.

One of the reasons I picked this model was its large hard disk, because I was planning to also run Ubuntu. I downloaded the ISO image and burnt it to DVD using the burner software included with Vista. Ubuntu initially boots off a live DVD that includes an installer. The installation was fairly straightforward. The installer shrank the Windows NTFS partition to make space for Ubuntu. After the main installation it downloaded close to 200 updated packages and fixes, then it was all done. The default configuration took up only 2.4 GB of disk space.

I was impressed that I can access shared folders and volumes on Windows machines from Ubuntu, as well as being able to read files in the NTFS (Windows Vista) partition on the drive.

There were two driver issues however, which I have yet to resolve [now partly resolved, see updates below!]:

• The sound hardware is missing a driver. The loadspeaker symbol in the top right corner of the desktop is showing disabled and I can’t get sound output on the builtin speakers.
• The builtin wireless card doesn’t appear to be suppported. I can only connect to the LAN and internet by using a wired connection.

In general, driver support in Ubuntu is good, but there are obviously still some rough edges. It would help if Gateway and other manufacturers were to offer pre-configured Ubuntu machines, as Dell already does.

Similar driver issues can occur on Vista. In fact, last week I was helping set up an AOpen MiniPC, which had been upgraded to Vista after a memory upgrade from 512 MB to 1 GB and it also had issues with its wireless, which wasn’t supported until a couple of Windows Update runs.

I think Linux and in particular Ubuntu will become an increasingly serious challenger to Microsoft’s de-facto monopoly on the desktop and not before time.

Update, 2008-03-14:
Ubuntu 7.10 (“Gutsy Gibbon”, released in October 2007) detects the sound hardware on this Intel chipset, but there doesn’t seem to be a driver for it yet. When I enter ” lspci -v” at the shell prompt, it lists this:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Gateway 2000 Unknown device 0380
Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 22
Memory at fa500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [70] Express Unknown type IRQ 0

I checked the sound drivers for Intel chips listed at http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Vendor-Intel and it appears the ICH8 chipset is not supported yet.

Update, 2008-03-18:
The Marvell TOPDOG wireless adapter is now working with Ubuntu, by following the advice given by others and installing the Windows 2000/XP drivers for the hardware using ndiswrapper. I had first tried the Vista driver, but had no luck with that. The Ndiswrapper project page on SourceForge specifically recommended to avoid Vista drivers and use Windows 2000 or XP NDIS drivers. For PCI device ID 11AB:2A08 you need the NetMW14x.inf file which references the two driver files NetMW143.sys (for Windows 2000) and NetMW145.sys (for Windows XP).

The following threads and instructions proved very helpful, please read them both if you have the same problem as I did:

1. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper
2. http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-575785.html

Here is what I did after installing the Ndiswrapper software and copying over the Windows drivers from a Windows machine where I had run the installer:

$ sudo ndiswrapper -i NetMW14x.inf
installing netmw14x …
$ sudo ndiswrapper -a 11ab:2a08 netmw14x
WARNING: Driver ‘netmw14x’ will be used for ’11AB:2A08′
This is safe _only_ if driver netmw14x is meant for chip in device 11AB:2A08
$ sudo ndiswrapper -l
netmw14x : driver installed
device (11AB:2A08) present

After that I followed the instructions for Configuring Wireless Network Settings. Voila! Wireless network connectivity under Ubuntu anywhere in the building!

Update, 2008-04-16:
Drew’s advice on how to get sound working did the trick for me too: I can now use the audio on my Gateway M-6750. I ran this as he suggested:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-generic

and restarted the machine. Thanks, Drew!