12 Oct 09 Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix on EEE 1005HA
Finally got around to trying to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 onto my EEE 1005HA netbook. I am happy to report that everything works as expected! Wireless, network, sleep, hibernate, the whole 10 yards is working smooth.
I took some notes on the installation process. You can see em after the jump.
What took me the longest time was getting the netbook to boot from USB. I downloaded the Ubuntu Netbook Remix ISO and used UNetbootin to get the ISO installed on my USB thumb drive. That was the easy part, only took the 30 or so minutes to download the ISO through bittorrent. What took longer was getting the thing to boot.
I put the thumb drive into the netbook and booted up. Windows waved hi to me and the system seemed to ignore the thumb drive.
Thinking the bios had the boot order wrong, I rebooted and set removable devices to be the top boot priority. Saved, rebooted, and was greeted by Windows again.
Still thinking I had the bios boot order wrong, I went in and removed the hard drive option from the boot order entirely. Windows was thankfully nowhere to be seen on reboot, but the netbook just sat there and complained that no boot device was found.
Frustrated to no ends, I downloaded the ISO again and setup the thumb drive a second time. The thought was that I had messed up the ISO install. The reality was I had the ISO installed on the thumb drive just fine.
I finally found the problem. It was the bios boot order, but the BIOS does not register the thumb drive as a removable device. It instead is registered as a hard drive. Under the Boot bios screen, you have to set the USB drive as higher priority than the internal drive. Once you have done that, reboot and you’re in business!
Update: As Drognon pointed out below, you can hit the ESC key when it boots to get a one time book menu. When you have the USB drive plugged in, it will appear on this menu.
Now the only thing I need on it is Evernote. That will have to wait till Evernote makes a native Linux client. :-/
TL;DR
To install Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the EEE 1005HA, do the following.
- Download the Netbook Remix ISO. Beta ISOs: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta
- Download UNetBootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
- Use UNetBootin to install ISO on your thumb drive
- Plug your USB drive into the netbook
- Turn it on, hit ESC to get the boot menu
- Pick your USB drive
- Install away!
Reader's Comments
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You can press ESC during the EEE PC boot screen and get a list of bootable devices, instead of going into BIOS.
Thanks! I didn’t know that. I’ll update the above to reflect that.
Does the Wifi device works from the first start?
Yeppers, Wifi works out of the box with Ubuntu 9.10
I’ve tried everything above, as far as rearranging all devices in the boot order, so on and so forth, and getting to the boot menu by hitting escape, and still Windows boots up instead of my USB. Any suggestions?
Does the USB drive show up in the ESC boot menu and in the bios when it’s plugged in?
Did the wireless work in the liveCD environment? Mine doesn’t seem to.
I’ve upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic on my 1005HA, but have a few issues and am considering a fresh install of Karmic — but I’m not sure if it will be any better.
Downloading the UNR iso is the hardest part, I have been trying to download this for days…strangely at 97% the download seem to stop , tried few other mirrors but result is the same.. tragic that i did not even got the chance to start the installation. Any one willing to share your experience please?
wifi does work ootb in 9.10 nbr for me
whoops i forgot NOT.
wifi does NOT work ootb in 9.10 nbr for me
I have good news for you! Evernote works quite well with wine. I have had zero issues. Just install and run.