LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

PCMan · 2008-06-12 03:12:32

Hello, I installed ArchLinux with our LXDE http://lxde.org/ desktop on it and its super fast!
(If you don't know what's LXDE, it's a fast, lightweight, beautiful, and fully-functional desktop environment.
See the screenshots here: http://lxde/org/screenshots.html)

After some upgrade, optimization and stripping unnecessary packages,
I made a backup for the system so other EeePC users can put my
pre-installed files on their EeePC without going through the long process of
installation + optimization.

The file: http://people.linux.org.tw/~pcman/arch-lxde.tar.gz ( 185 MB )
user name: user, password: user
root password: lxde

The most important thing, LXDE is correctly configured so it works perfectly.
Also, I set up auto-login. So, after power on, you'll enter the desktop directly.

I replaced the original kernel with kernel26-eee along with most of the modiciations
of some config files listed on Arch wiki to make the hardware work, and all hardware
should work without problems.
The only thing that doesn't work for this system is ACPI and Fn keys.
I didn't know how to use the scripts posted on the Arch wiki.
So, help is needed here.

This is a optimized base desktop system without unnecessary packages.
So you can start tweaking and installing other programs with this to save a lot of time.

Installation guide:
It's a tar.gz compressed archive for my system, so just untar them into any existing file systems.

1. Get a working live usb. If you already created one for arch installation, use that and skip this step.
Otherwise, I suggest xPud: ftp://140.128.36.142/devel/xpud-0.4-liveusb.zip.
Just unzip all of the files into your usb disk, and run: syslinux -s /dev/sdx1 (for example: /dev/sdb1) on your usb device and it works.
By default this live usb will give you X + firefox. Please edit boot/finit to comment out xvesa and sudo ubuntu lines to get pure console.

2. Put my arch-lxde.tar.gz inside the usb disk.

3. Boot your eee with the usb disk. Delete all of the existing partitions on the Xandros system.
Recreate the file system on your HDD with cfdisk and mkfs.

4. Mount the newly created partitions, and untar my files to your root partition on the SSD (/dev/sda1).

6. edit /etc/fstab provided by me since I use ext2 but you might use others.

7. Run grub-install /dev/sda. Sorry grub is not included in xPud...
If you are lucky, you already have grub in your mbr, then this step can be skipped.
I assume that you can install grub with other live usb. Since you guys use Arch,
you are experienced Linux users and this is quite easy.

8. Done! Play with your Arch + LXDE now and showoff to your friends!

Last edited by PCMan (2008-06-12 05:02:45)

ise · 2008-06-12 05:27:33

PCMan wrote:

The only thing that doesn't work for this system is ACPI and Fn keys.
I didn't know how to use the scripts posted on the Arch wiki.
So, help is needed here.

Hi,
you can install the acpi scripts from here: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~ighea/eee/acpi-eee/ or from the AUR (they are the same)
Read carefully the install post messages:

To use this package, you will have to change your events handler
in /etc/acpi/events/anything to be /etc/acpi/handler_eee.sh.
See /etc/acpi/eee.conf for configurable options.

That's all. After this restart acpid and you are done. Don't forget to set some options in the /etc/acpi/eee.conf, but it isn't necessary, the defaults are working fine. Don't be weird of /etc/acpi/handler_eee.sh, it doesn't exists, it just point to something, that the other scripts get the acpi signals.

Daniel

EDIT: Maybe you can share or post your config of LXDE, then other people (who already installed Arch on their EEE) can test it without deleting their installation.

EDIT #2: The links are wrong, it should be: http://lxde.sourceforge.net and http://lxde.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

Last edited by ise (2008-06-12 06:11:27)

abhidg · 2008-06-12 07:48:41

lxde.sourceforge.net redirects to lxde.org

ise · 2008-06-12 07:55:47

Strange...then my internet connection has some problems at the moment. If I click to lxde.org, a website about a company (lxde corp.) appears.

Nevermind, the internet connection of my employer has often such problems.

shining · 2008-06-12 08:16:47

There is still at least one wrong link : http://lxde/org/screenshots.html should be http://lxde.org/screenshots.html

vuboy · 2008-06-12 12:46:53

Although documentation for LXDE is lacking, it really does fly!
I have LXDE installed on an old Toshiba Satellite Pro PIII 700 with 256M Ram, it runs circles around kdemod on the same machine.

@ISE chances are it's your company's DNS servers causing the issue.

VB

ClaptonOrient · 2008-06-20 11:20:32

Nice work PCMan!

After a little tustle with GRUB - solved via the Arch wiki - your system works fine. Just two minor issues to expose my newbi-osity:

- I'd like to change wifi 'always on' to 'on request' - I'm thinking WifiRadar for this, as NetworkManager scuttled my wifi (doubtless I misconfigured something) and I had to go back to your default set-up

- how do I configure the lxde panel - in particular there are 3 grey blobs that don't seem to do anything

These are pretty minor issues, on the whole Arch is doing a good job, many thanks!

PCMan · 2008-06-20 15:42:45

ClaptonOrient wrote:

Nice work PCMan!
After a little tustle with GRUB - solved via the Arch wiki - your system works fine. Just two minor issues to expose my newbi-osity:
- I'd like to change wifi 'always on' to 'on request' - I'm thinking WifiRadar for this, as NetworkManager scuttled my wifi (doubtless I misconfigured something) and I had to go back to your default set-up
- how do I configure the lxde panel - in particular there are 3 grey blobs that don't seem to do anything
These are pretty minor issues, on the whole Arch is doing a good job, many thanks!

1. As for the wifi, I don't have good suggestions. However, Fn + F2 can turn on/off the wifi. Wifi-radar looks good, but it doesn't work well for me. The panel has some built-in wifi support but it's not working for Arch now. We'll fix that in the future.
2. That useless three blobs are for keyboard indicators. They are CapsLock, NumLock, and Scroll Lock. EeePC don't have those on it keyboard so the panel provide this. Turn it off, if you don't care about the CapsLock status.

ClaptonOrient · 2008-06-23 11:03:42

Thanks again PCMan,

I'm also finding Wifi-Radar troublesome: if I put it in the daemons array in rc.conf it has trouble closing; and just when I run it as an application it has the same trouble. I'll put my old rc.conf back, and try the Fn-F2 approach. As for the blobs, now I know what they do I'll leave them, but the "scroll lock" doesn't seem to work and changing the panel settings has no effect.

edit:

wicd seems to do the trick - make sure you follow the instructions re rc.conf at the end of the install.

Fn keys are still a non-starter, but that's not concerning me too much as everything else flies along quite happily.

edit #2:

how did you get the webcam working ?

Last edited by ClaptonOrient (2008-06-25 07:47:31)

ClaptonOrient · 2008-06-25 08:32:30

* bump *

zodmaner · 2008-06-25 13:19:07

The instructions on how to enable webcam and Fn keys are on the wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … sus_EEE_PC.

Last edited by zodmaner (2008-06-25 13:22:24)

ClaptonOrient · 2008-06-30 10:44:27

Downloading and "tar -xvzf"ing eeemodules seemed to do the trick

christian · 2008-07-03 06:21:23

I have seen that the logs are been writen to disk, contrary to what point 4 of "pitfalls to avoid" says. It is important that anyone that have installed this image fix this.

Piilen · 2008-08-19 15:41:07

I would like to dual boot with Windows so I would like to put this image on sda4 - is this possible?
What would I have to change? I'm hoping it's just a question of changing a few configuration files.
I have a arch linux already on sda4 that I would overwrite with this image (as I have so far been unable to get X running properly), so I guess that the grub thing should be OK as the current Arch boot loader (on sda4) can boot both Windows (on sda1) and eeeubuntu (on sda2) and arch (on sda4)
I'm hoping that all I will have to do is expand the menu.lst on this image with a slightly altered version of my current file?
I'm a complete newbie Arch user, so please excuse my dumb questions.

Piilen · 2008-08-20 09:42:16

Thanks PCMan!

You can move it to a new partition, this is what I did to get it running:
in /boot/grub/menu.lst I changed the following lines:
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuzeee root=/dev/sda1 ro

to
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuzeee root=/dev/sda4 ro

and in /etc/fstab I changed:
/dev/sda1 / ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1

to
/dev/sda4 / ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1

after that the system boot into the graphical lxde, perfect !
The tree's don't grow into the heavens just yet though as I'm having trouble connecting to my wpa enabled wi-fi network...

Aeonhuang · 2008-08-27 03:24:13

I am using icewm+pamanFM now,but I will try LXDE,thanks PCman.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-06-12 03:12:32

LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#2 2008-06-12 05:27:33

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#3 2008-06-12 07:48:41

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#4 2008-06-12 07:55:47

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#5 2008-06-12 08:16:47

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#6 2008-06-12 12:46:53

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#7 2008-06-20 11:20:32

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#8 2008-06-20 15:42:45

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#9 2008-06-23 11:03:42

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#10 2008-06-25 08:32:30

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#11 2008-06-25 13:19:07

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#12 2008-06-30 10:44:27

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#13 2008-07-03 06:21:23

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#14 2008-08-19 15:41:07

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#15 2008-08-20 09:42:16

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

#16 2008-08-27 03:24:13

Re: LXDE on ArchLinux pre-installed optimized image for Asus EeePC (185MB)

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