Create Ubuntu Live USB Drive easily with uSbuntu

uSbuntu is a tool that let you create Live USB Drive Ubuntu system using iso image files. The tool is inuitive to use and it can be downloaded from any of these sites :

  1. Official website
  2. Mirror 1 (softpedia)
  3. Mirror 1 (4shared)
  4. Mirror 1 (softronic)
uSbuntu

uSbuntu works on Windows XP as well as Vista operating system and can work with any USB drive with 1GB or more space. The creator of uSbuntu has stated that the project would be evolved to support other Linux distribution too under the name LiLi (Linux USB Live Creator) which can be downloaded from LinuxLiveUSB.com

My Experience with Asus EeePC 1000h netbook

Last week I had the chance to use the Asus EeePC 1000h netbook (photo below) while carrying out official duties in my workplace.

Asus Eeepc 1000h netbook Screenshot - mypapit

The Asus EeePC 1000h dimension is roughly the size of an A4 paper. If you happened to have an A4 paper in front of you, then you’ll get the idea of how big Asus EeePC 1000h is. Its 10 inch widescreen monitor offers a compact yet comfortable view for portable operation.

EeePC 1000h keyboard screenshot

The keys on the keyboard is roughly 92% the size of an average laptop keyboard. This is larger than its predecessor Asus Eeepc 1000 and 901. Most importantly, the 1000h also comes with 160GB hard disk (with a modest 5,400 rpm) as opposed to 4-8GB of Solid State Drive (SSD) like its predecessor, allowing you to store more files on the netbook.

EeePC 1000h battery life
One of the thing that I admire most about Asus EeePC is its battery life which was advertised as it could last up to 7 hours. My personal test reveals that EeePC 1000h could last about 5 hours when running with active WiFi connection, which I consider as more than Continue reading “My Experience with Asus EeePC 1000h netbook”

Linux Laptop Hardware Compatibility List

If you are a serious Linux user, probably the first thing that come across your mind when shopping for a laptop is how compatible it is with GNU/Linux operating system.

Fortunately sites like The Linux Laptop Wiki, Ubuntu Linux Hardware Support and Mandriva Hardware Database provides a good starting point to find out about your laptop hardware compatibility with Linux.

As for my personal experience, I find out most hardware incompatibility ranges from unsupported 56k softmodem driver to unsupported hard-disk controller which i consider as the worse case scenario.

So please bear this in mind that not all laptop are 100% compatible with Linux. Do ask around, and check for its compatibility status before you finally made a decision to purchase a new laptop.

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex has been released, but my pc died!

Probably most of you have heard about the latest Ubuntu release – Intrepid Ibex, with all of its nifty features, including :

  • The new Network Manager 0.7 (which supports 3G broadband connection)
  • Support guest login support
  • Encrypted private directory support (via encryptfs)

The only thing that might need a little bit polishing is Cruft Remover tool, which happily classify important files as unneeded files to be deleted (which is dangerous).

but the sad part was….

I don’t know if this is a coincidence or otherwise, but my 7 years old Pentium 4 1.8 GHz died shortly before Intrepid Ibex release. I’m now left with an aged laptop and unreliable wifi internet access at my current workplace to surf the internet.

Bottom line – I might need a new PC.

How to install Ubuntu from hard disk (without CDROM)

There are times when you need to (re-)install Ubuntu on your computer and at the same time you are in situation where booting from CD-ROM is not possible.

Luckily I found a post from Deepblue Spaces: Install Ubuntu 8.04 from Hard Disk that contains step-by-step to start Ubuntu installer from the official Ubuntu ISO.

  • It involves downloading the Official Ubuntu ISO from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
  • Extracting /casper/vmlinuz and /casper/initrd.gz from the ISO file.
  • And modifying /grub/menu.lst file to include the boot the cd image.

For more information, please refer to the original tutorial : Deepblue Spaces: Install Ubuntu from Hard Disk.

This trick is particularly handy when you are installing Ubuntu from a computer with buggy BIOS or where CD-ROM is not readily available