http://www.jonramvi.com

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Question
How should we distribute this card?

Solution 1:
You get a card if you donate X (50$ ?) or more

Solution 2:
We sell the card for production price * 2. So that you donate the same amount that it costs. The price will then be about 100$ 50$.

Please comment with your ideas and thoughts. Remember to not think about how you can get the SD card as cheap as possible, but how Ubuntu Eee can get as much donations as possible ;)

Do you like this idea? Would you buy it? Do you have a better idea?

Update: Thanks for the comments, but I need even more feedback! I’m thinking about getting these.
Positive? Negative? Why? 18-20 MB/s read speed for 14$ – seems a little too good to be true?

I have to get them to Norway to install Ubuntu Eee on them before shipping. That means we have to pay Norwegian tax (anything with a value above 40$ being shipped into Norway). Is it possible to have Ubuntu Eee be installed somewhere else? Any other workaround?

Move your eyes towards the top of the screen. Higher. There – at the address field with the little e logo – see that it says ubuntu-eee.com instead of ubuntu-eee.tuxfam…..? We’re now hosted by DreamHost because of all the donations we’ve received. Thank you! We now have better uptime and load time :)

2008-06-09 – Ubuntu Eee goes gold!

Third time’s the charm! In December Ubuntu Eee started as a one man project, but the last months several people have joined in on the development. We’re trying to achieve something which haven’t been successful for any other Linux distribution yet: a OS targeting a single computer which includes the best applications available. This means people can buy this really cheap computer and easily get a great OS on it for free. Since Ubuntu is working towards being runnable on every computer in the world it’s big and sometimes slow and the creators are afraid of taking risks with new technology. We do these three points better as Ubuntu Eee is just for the Asus Eee. Ubuntu Eee is smaller, faster and we’re bringing people the cutting edge of technology (while being stable and free of course).

I would like to thank (and you should too) the teams brought you Ubuntu Eee 8.04 and I would like to thank the leaders of the teams: Waffel, leader of the Editors, Jeff Shaw / vader, leader of the Coders, and Martin Lettner / Lukeen, leader of the Artists.

Ubuntu Eee 8.10 will be even more customized for the small screen and maybe take in use the great Netbook Remix interface.

Changelog and known bugs

2008-06-02 – Release Candidate

As soon as this has been tried out for a few days Ubuntu Eee 8.04 is released.

Try it today – Didn’t work at all

2008-05-14 – Sorry! Ubuntu Eee 8.04 isn’t ready yet

Sorry about the miscalculation of the Ubuntu Eee 8.04 release date. Work has really accelerated behind the scenes – just take a look on the great new design of the front page. If you want to peek in behind the curtains, take a surf around ubuntu-eee on launchpad.

The reason Ubuntu Eee 8.04 isn’t released is because we’re having trouble with getting wifi working.
Geeky

The problem is making the madwifi driver
into a kernel module package.
If we don't do this, and just install the driver,
it will stop working when Ubuntu pushes a kernel update
(which is what happened to the beta).
If anyone is able to compile it,
please contact me!

The blueprint

Again, sorry…

2008-05-01 – Ubuntu Eee 8.04 ready within a week

It’s the international Workers’ Day and Ubuntu Eee 8.04 is beginning to take form. It will probably be released within the next week. We have some new contributors that have really accelerated the work.

• x2on have done a great job making some debs:
  • http://www.x2on.de/eeepc/eeepc-acpi-module-2.6.24-16-generic.deb
  • http://www.x2on.de/eeepc/eeepc-wlan_1.0-1_i386.deb
  • http://www.x2on.de/eeepc/eee-osd-ubuntu-2.1.1.deb

• Vader’s work on the applet for the Eee is going steady.

• We finally have some artists and some logo submissions. FlameForge has begun development for a nice logo and is offering his time to make a theme for our web page.

I would like to thank x2on, Vader, FlameForge and everyone else who is making Ubuntu Eee 8.04 possible. If you’d like to contribute, please do! ;)

2008-04-04 – Ubuntu Eee 8.04 beta ready for download

I’m happy to inform you that the Ubuntu Eee 8.04 beta is finally ready for download! I don’t know how to share it, so I’ve uploaded it to Filefront. If you’ve got a better hosting idea, please share it with us on the discussion page (I can not host it with my connection). Highlights: Avant-window-navigator, Picasa, Skype and Wine and every piece of hardware working out of the box

Download now

• From Filefront
• Bittorrent

Please read the changelog and known bugs

Update: After installing, if you upgrade, a new kernel will be used and you wifi will stop working. Solution 1: Don’t upgrade. Solution 2: Recompile madwifi drivers

In other news

After the organizational structure of Ubuntu Eee was changed into four groups last week, things have started to take form. About 10 people have applied to join the Ubuntu Eee team in one of the groups (Artists, Coders, Editors, Maintainers). We’re happy to welcome Neil Broadley as leader of the Editors group. Vader is going to make a gnome applet for Eee specific stuff (eg tells you what clock speed you’re running at, and lets you change it etc).

We still need members in our groups, so please don’t hesitates to apply for the group you think you can help out in. Especially Artists are important now as we don’t even have a logo.

Working on

• Selling a webshop / eStore solution. I built it for Norwegian non-profit organizations and thought that instead of selling it at a normal eStore price, I could sell it cheaper but to more organizations. It’s not selling as good as I would hope though.
  You can try it out here: http://jonramvi.no/auf (Norwegian)
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• Ubuntu Eee. A customized version of Ubuntu for the Asus Eee. It comes with not only free (as in speech) software but also free (as in beer) software. Eg: It comes with Skype instead of Ekiga. And there are some driver fixes and other customizations. Ubuntu Eee 8.04 isn’t really that different from the regular Ubuntu release, but maybe we will have more customizations ready for the 8.10 release.
  Follow the development here: http://ubuntu-eee.tuxfamily.org/index.php5?title=Community_news
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• A Facebook application. The idea is a kind of hybrid version of Underskog (Norwegian), StumbleUpon and MMORPG.
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Would like to work on

• Write great blog post regularly (once a week?)
• A blog system that allows me to have two front pages. One in Norwegian and one in English. The Norwegian one should show all posts but the English one should only show English posts.
• A dazzling blog design

Og nå har jeg kjøpt toalettblokk / dosåpe – refill. Uten å ville det. Designeren har valgt 5 tekststørrelser. Jif, Vårfrisk, NYHET, TOALETTBLOKK, “Ny og friskere duft” og sist og minst REFILL. Jeg gikk selvfølgelig rett i refill-fellen. Klarer ikke jeg å handle har jeg ingen tro på at besteforeldrene mine klarer det.

Nå som jeg har blogget om dette føler jeg at jeg har tatt et oppgjør med designere og butikksjefer i Norge og forventer forbedring!

I dag ringte 05050 (Netcom). Damen i andre enden lurte på hvilket abonnement hos Telenor jeg skulle ha. Jeg var selvfølgelig kjempeskeptisk til samtalen, men tenkte at det kanskje lå et tilbud i slutten av samtalen ettersom jeg hadde fått det av Telenor da jeg gikk over til Netcom for noen år siden. Hun opplyste om at hun hadde fakturaen min foran seg og kunne se at jeg ringte mye til Netcom-kunder (hun hadde ikke peiling på hvor mye jeg ringte til Netcom-kunder så det var løgn), så hvis jeg la til tilleggstjenesten Venner, kunne jeg spare mye. Venner er en tilleggstjeneste som lar deg ringe gratis til alle Netcom-kunder for 29 kr måneden. Ikke nok med at jeg ville spare på å legge til Venner, men hun ville plutselig gi meg 500 kr. Uten å binde meg. De kunne se at jeg var en god kunde og ville gi meg 500 kr for å ikke miste meg. Dette er åpenbart bare tull siden jeg har vært i Australia det siste halvåret og hatt et forbruk på 0 kr måneden. Men jeg endte altså opp med å takke ja. Da satte hun meg rett over til Telenor som jeg fortalte at jeg ville avslutte overførselen.

Jeg vet ikke helt om hvem som helst som har Netcom kan (late som?) de vil endre operatør og få 500 kr, men det kan altså se slik ut. Gøy om noen forsøker det og gir tilbakemelding her!

I’ve been working on Ubuntu Eee 8.04 beta as promised. It doesn’t build correctly yet though.

In Gutsy news: It’s been reported that wifi isn’t working on the Eee even after installing the Ubuntu Eee script. My guess it that Ubuntu Gutsy have gotten a kernel update and that it has broken the script. It would be great if anyone took it upon them selfs to fix this. I’m working on setting up a git server so that others can help out with the code more easily.

The contributions to Ubuntu Eee hasn’t been overwhelming, but almost 50 000 people have gotten help from us. To try to get more momentum into Ubuntu Eee, I will open four groups:

• Artists – responsible for how Ubuntu Eee looks
• Coders – responsible for the code for both Ubuntu Eee and the Ubuntu Eee script (which will merge)
• Editors – responsible for keeping the homepage / wiki up to date and looking good
• Maintainers – will keep everything running smoothly. That is upgrading the wiki system, fixing the git server, setting up new modoules etc.

Please feel free to join one of the groups!

2008-03-12

Work is being put into running Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) on the Eee. The new Ubuntu version’s beta is released in 8 days. I will probably get an Ubuntu Eee 8.04 beta out based on that release. One problem is that the wifi adapter still isn’t supported by the drivers that comes with Ubuntu. It would be great if it was, but it seems we will have to compile our own driver. The ideas for Ubuntu Eee 8.04 are now:

• It’s based on Ubuntu 8.04
• It has the Ubuntu Eee scripts installed
• Every piece of hardware will be working
• Installed by default: Picasa (instead of F-spot), Skype (instead of Ekiga), Avant-window-navigator, Wine, Flash, Java and codecs
• Changes in default appearance: glossy theme (blue), glossy top panel, background, nuoveXT icons

In other news, I’ve written some Ubuntu tips and tricks on my blog http://blog.jonramvi.no

2008-02-10

I might wait for the Ubuntu 8.04 release to release a stable Ubuntu Eee. Meaning it’s two months left :)

2008-01-09

Change in plans. Ubuntu Eee will be the standard Ubuntu Gutsy livecd with two main changes:

• New custom made kernel and all that comes with it to make Ubuntu work on the Eee
• Changes in look, feel and applications. Some new, some lost.

I’ve made a “mockup” (it’s how I have it now):

2008-01-07

I’ve been working on making a Ubuntu distribution, instead of just a script. The goal is that it’s extremely easy and just works, so that people who got their first computer can get Ubuntu on it. This version will not focus on being open. It will focus on just working – in the best possible way. This means:

• The iso is minibuntu with additions, not a reduced ubuntu
• Google Picasa instead of F-spot for images
• Amarok instead of Rhytmbox for music
• Optimized Firefox 3 for the Celeron M processor (Swiftfox – made from Firefox 3 beta 2)
• Skype 2 instead of Ekiga
• Codecs, flash and java out of the box

One of the advantages Ubuntu /Linux has over OS X is that it’s possible to run Windows applications. (DMXell: ‘Ever heard of Darwine? … you look like a noob.’ To tell you the truth; no, I haven’t actually. And I don’t want to look like a noob now, do I?) With Wine, Linux users are able to run thousands of Windows games and applications.

Wine is one of the fastest developed open source applications. A new Wine version is released every two weeks. Not only can you run World of Warcraft, but new and heavy games like Call of Duty 4 are also supported. One application that users have been wanting to run on Linux for several years is Adobe Photoshop. We’ve been doomed to use version 8 until recently. Google is helping out with the development to have Photoshop CS3 supported. As for now, Photoshop CS2 runs without any problems.

Here I’m running Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop CS2 on Ubuntu. No tweaking or hacking needed. Just double clicked the exe files

However, a couple of hours ago Louis Lenders managed to install and run Adobe Photoshop CS3. He used the latest available source of wine (from git) which will be released in under two weeks as wine version 0.9.57 0.9.58.

As you can see the GUI is not correctly rendered yet

1. Go to System – Administration – Software Sources

2. Select Third-Party Software and add “deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/blueman ubuntu bluetooth”

3. Close Software Sources. It will ask for permission to update. Yes, you’d like that…

4. Go to System – Administration – Synaptic …

5. Find “blueman” and “obexfs”, mark them for installation and click Apply

6. When done, all open applications can be closed .

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Use Blueman

1. Start Blueman from Applications – Accessories

2. Click Inquiry, select your phone and click Bond

3. Type the same pin on both your computer and your phone and the bonding should be successful

4. With the phone selected, click Other and select “Set trusted”

5. With your phone selected, go to Properties – Get Service List

6. Take note of the OBEX File Transfer channel (ex: 11)

7. Click “Device Information” and copy the Device Address (ex: 00:1D:FD:6C:9B:66)

8. When done, Blueman can be closed

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System changes

1. Click Alt + F2 and the Run Application dialog pops up. Write:

   gksudo adduser YOURUSERNAME fuse && gksudo chgrp fuse /dev/fuse

2. Log out and in again (System – Quit – Log out)

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Create a folder

1. Go to Places – Home Folder

2. Select File – Create Folder and name it Phone

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Make shortcuts for mounting and dismounting the Phone

1. Right click Applications and select “Edit Menus”

2. Click “New Menu”
   Name: Phone
   Click the image and select any icon

3. Select Phone in the sidebar and click “New Item”

4. Name: Mount Phone
   Command: “obexfs -b THEDEVICEADDRESS -B THECHANNEL /home/YOURUSERNAME/Phone”
   (ex: “obexfs -b 00:1D:FD:6C:9B:66 -B 11 /home/ramvi/Phone”)
   Click the image and select any icon

5. Click OK and “New Item” again

6. Name: Dismount Phone
   Command: gksudo umount /home/YOURUSERNAME/Phone
   (ex: gksudo umount /home/ramvi/Phone)
   Click the image and select any icon

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Here’s some icon ideas:

1. http://www.iconfinder.net/?q=phone
2. /usr/share/icons/ on your machine

aUPDATE
There seems to be a bug in Ubuntu Hardy’s obexfs. I’m only able to read files. I’m not able to write files to the phone. This should be working in Ubuntu Gutsy though..? The bug in hardy will probably be fixed soon as well.