EeeXubuntu developer oasisbob has released the third version of his custom Ubuntu distribution for the Eee PC. The main improvements in eeeXubuntu r3 are support for additional Fn hotkeys. In r2, you could use the Fn keys to adjust the brightness, but that was about it. Now everything except for the WiFi toggle switch seems to work. Oasisbob has also made it easier to create a bootable flash drive from the live CD.

If you're already running eeeXubuntu r2, you can upgrade to r3. But be forewarned, the upgrade process has not been thoroughly tested, and you could wind up messing up your system.

For more info about installing eeeXubuntu, or info on what works and what doesn't, check out the eeeuser wiki.

Yesterday I spent the day installing Windows XP on my Eee PC. Today I figured I'd show you the results. This video shows how long it takes to boot and shutdown Windows XP. And then as a bonus I boot Xubuntu off an SD card. Xubuntu would probably load a bit faster if it were installed on the SSD, but I figured this was the easiest setup for now. In the future I may try to install both operating systems to the 4GB SSD and use my SD card for storage.



As you can see, it takes about 45-50 seconds to get a usable Windows desktop after pushing the power button. It takes a good 30-35 seconds to shut down, which is a little disappointing, but not a deal breaker, especially since the Eee PC goes to sleep just a few seconds after you close the lid. It takes about a minute to boot eeeXubuntu. Neither OS loads quite as quickly as Xandros in Easy Mode, but I can get Windows up and running in about the same amount of time it takes to boot Xandros in Advanced Mode. I think upgrading the RAM to 1GB would probably speed things up a tiny bit as well.

Want to see what eeeXubuntu can do before downloading the 570MB ISO file? Here's a video showing the boot time, shutdown time, and some of the applications that come preloaded including AbiWord (for word processing), Gnumeric (for spreadsheets), GIMP (for image editing), and Firefox (for well, you know).



This video comes courtesy of carmelo.violon.

So it turns out that that there's a way to boot a live Ubuntu environment from a USB flash disk without spending six minutes waiting for your Eee PC to be ready. OasisBob over at EeeUser has put together a handy little Xubuntu LiveCD designed specifically for Eee PC users. Basically, its just a regular Xubuntu installation disc/LiveCD, but with a few Eee friendly tweaks like:

• Adjustments for the low resolution desktop
• Native WiFi drivers
• WLAN support

In other words, once you boot EeeXubuntu you should be able to get online within a matter of seconds, making EeeXubuntu almost as easy to use as the Xandros environment that ships with the Eee PC.

Although the Eee PC is more than capable of handling the Gnome desktop environment that ships with the standard version of Ubuntu, Xubuntu uses the light weight XFCE interface which should stress the Eee's resources a bit less. But make no mistake, under the hood, this is still Ubuntu. For example, you can still access all the same software and OS updates using the Synaptic package manager and Ubuntu repositories.

Now, the astute reader will note that I said this is a LiveCD, but the Eee PC doesn't have a CD drive. If you happen to have a USB CD drive, you could pop the disc in, plug the drive into your Eee, hit Esc when the boot screen pops up, and select your external drive.

But if you don't have a USB CD drive, here's how you load eeeXubuntu onto a USB flash drive. Just pop the CD into your PC. It doesn't matter if you're running Windows or Linux or something else altogether. Reboot your computer and make sure to boot from the CD drive. A few moments later, you'll be running Xubuntu. Now all you have to do is plug in your flash drive, follow the steps on the download page, and in about two minutes you'll have eeeXubuntu loaded onto a flash drive.

When you're done, just unmount the flash drive, plug it into your Eee PC, and hit the Esc key during when the boot screen pops up to select your boot device. A little over 90 seconds later, you'll be running Xubuntu on your Eee PC.

If you want, you can click the install button on your desktop to load Xubuntu onto your main memory. Make sure you know what you're doing if you go this route, as you will wind up erasing Xandros. You can also choose to install Xubuntu to an SDHC card or another flash drive, but to be honest I haven't had much success with that yet.

I'm impressed enough with eeeXubuntu that I'm seriously thinking about replacing Xandros. But I'm not quite ready to make the jump yet. And eeeXubuntu is still a work in progress, so odds are if I wait a few days things will only get better.

Update: eeeXubuntu r3 is out, now with better support for the Eee PC's Fn keys.