eeepc learnings

Well I’ve had Asus eeePC for several weeks now (maybe even a month). I thought it was about time to share what I’ve learnt so far:

• Increase storage – the 2G Surf (700) only comes with a 2GB SSD, which has 300MB free space left out of the box. So the first major thing I did was move the user space (anything after the OS has booted up which includes stuff like /etc, /usr, etc). This gave me just under 3GB of free space. In the process I also learnt how create a USB bootable version of Linux, it basically involves running syslinux on the USB flashdrive.
• Mobile net access – one of my first goals was to be able to surf, check emails, twit you know the usual schtuff. I managed to bodge something together using a USB cable and the N95, but I don’t do cables. So with the help of a bluetooth dongle, the installation of the bluez-utils (not bundled w/ 2G eeePC) and the 3epc’s GPRS Configuration utility I was able to do this wireless. I’m not sure if its just user error on my part, but I found I needed to pair the eeePC and mobile phone using rfcomm before anything worked. Also I think you need to start syslog if you want any logging to the various ppp.* log files to occur. Oh if you’re stuck on GPRS or you don’t have HSDPA enabled 3G phone do yourself a favour and install Toonel (which requires java, and yes, you’ll also need to install java on the 2G, see the next tip on how to do this).
• Arduino – As you may have gathered from the previous posts I’m currently dabbling in electronics using a Arduino prototyping board. In addition to the packages listed you’ll also need to install the Xandros package Java run time. I also found a reboot fixed the segmentation fault that keep occurring when I tried to run the actual Arduino binary.

Okay I’m bored now, if I can be arsed I’ll post some more.