[Tweaking for] Absolute Beginners

This is a guide which is intended primarily to help those setting up a brand new out of the box Asus Eee PC, particularly those with Windows experience who want to change the look and feel of the Easy Mode desktop without having to configure everything manually.

There are other articles on this wiki and elsewhere which can assist the true beginner with coming to grips with Linux. This article on monkeyblog.org is a particularly good introductory graphical guide for all new users with a Windows background about installing programs in Linux. It is specifically geared to Ubuntu but a great deal of the information therein is equally applicable to the EeePC's stock OS.

Before starting any steps, please read the whole article first to get a feel of what it is about. If anything is unclear or to report any errors please post on this thread on the forum.

IMPORTANT: While it is believed that the steps below work, this article comes without any guarantees and following it is at your own risk.

Note: It is intended that the first FOUR steps of this guide should ALL be completed sequentially and before any of the later steps are attempted.

You should also read the web pages of the authors of the various tools. If you experience difficulties with any of the tools, the threads on the forum started by the authors are invaluable references and a good place to ask further questions about specific tools.

The purpose of this tutorial is to enable new users of the eee and, more particularly, new users of Linux to adapt the basic Easy Mode interface the eee is supplied with to a look and feel they are comfortable with. If something is not clear in this wiki, please use this thread on the forum to post queries, so that all the issues can easily be found and read by other beginners. It is highly recommended that all new users read the manual which is supplied with the eee as well as the HELP file which can be opened by clicking on the word HELP to the right of the tabs in Easy Mode.

Most of the steps in this wiki involve using a number of tools which have been created by users of the forum and a special roll of honour should be created for the following: SublimePorte, Coyotee, marf, derred and YurenJu.

To keep this article to a reasonable length, many of the steps will not be explained in detail and, ideally, the text of this article should not be amended merely to explain those steps. Any such explanation should be by way of links to other wiki pages, forum threads or, as a last resort, footnotes.

Text in green or purple are links to more information on the topic under discussion. Some you need to click on to download programs, others give more information. It should be obvious which is which. If you are not directed to click on a link, this should mean it is not necessary for you to achieve the steps of this tutorial but it is likely that clicking on it will give you background information which will make following the article easier.

It is recommended that you follow the steps in the order they appear in this article as some of them are required to be done first to enable the following ones to work. Others are there to give you some protection in case something goes wrong.

However, if something does go drastically wrong, Asus has made it very easy to restore the original default set up merely by rebooting the eee and tapping the F9 button, details also on Page 109 of the manual.

If you are an experienced computer user and comfortable with the idea of downloading an iso and burning a DVD, you may want to consider lazyfai's XEPC.org upgrade disc before you make any other changes to your eee. If you do not understand what is being said in the linked thread, this is not for you.

When you first switch on your eee, your desktop will look like the one below. You can get a clearer feel for this from the online demo on the Honeypothack website:

Niel1952, the original author of this article, mainly used the tools in this article and 128×128 icons from the Crystal Project and the wiki to make his desktop look like this:

• To see the pictures in this article in full size, just click on them.

A large number of users have had problems setting and keeping their eees connected to their home and work networks. In many cases this was because they connected using the Wireless Networks icon on the Internet tab or in the taskbar. Therefore the first thing any new user with a Wireless Network should do is to set up a connection with the Internet using the Network icon on the Internet tab.

Clicking on the Network icon starts a wizard which should be easy to follow but before you start you need to know what the SSID and the passphrase of your WiFi router is and whether the passphrase is WEP or WPA. If your passphrase contains spaces or any characters other than ordinary alphanumeric characters, and you can change it, change it now to a passphrase that only contains ordinary alphanumeric characters.

Once you are happy with your passphrase and comfortable that you will remember it, move to the next steps:

1. Click on the Network icon on the Internet tab
2. Delete all existing networks
3. Click Create
4. Work through the wizard, selecting Local Area Network - Wireless and then accept the default settings until you get to a request for the Network Name (SSID.
5. To the right of Network Name (SSID) is a link you can click to Browse Wireless Networks. Click on that. A list of visible networks will appear from which you select your network.
6. Select the default wireless channel (Any)
7. On the Encryption Settings page check the box to Enable encryption; select WEP or WPA as appropriate and enter your passphrase. This is why you needed to get them before you started.
8. Give your Network a recognisable name.
9. On the last page, before you press Finish check the boxes to enable Connect automatically at system startup and Remember password.
10. If you are ready to access the Internet, check the box Start this connection when finished.
11. Press Finish

There are numerous threads of people who have had problems connecting to the Internet. Where this happens intermittently or where it has been possible to connect manually but problems occur in connecting automatically, the first steps should be to use cjdshaw's edited wlan_on_boot.sh

Otherwise, try the steps in When a Wireless Network unexpectedly stops working.

• It has been reported that on the 2G there is no box to tick to remember the password and that this happens automatically.

This may sound like gobbledygook and some of the next steps will be scary for many Windows users as it involves some “command line stuff”. Don’t worry about what the commands mean but if you really want to know, read the Guide to terminal and/or Basic Linux Commands.

For the moment all you need to know is that simpleui.rc is a file that contains the information that creates your tabs and icons in Easy Mode. Some of the major steps further down may change the original look and feel of your eee so, in order to make it as easy as possible to restore, you should first create a working version of the simpleui.rc file, leaving the original as a backup.

How are we going to do this? Well, when booting in Easy Mode the system looks in two places for simpleui.rc: first in any /home/user/.Asuslauncher/ directory and then in the /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ directory. On a new eee /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ contains the active simpleui.rc as the /home/user/.Asuslauncher directory does not exist. However, the following procedure will help you create the /home/user/.Asuslauncher directory and in it a copy of the simpleui.rc. This will then become your active simpleui.rc leaving the original file intact in the /opt/… directory for whenever you should need to restore the original settings.

1. Open a terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+t)
2. Execute the following command by typing the code below into terminal (or by copying (Ctrl+c) and pasting (Shift+Insert) it). One of the quirks of this terminal is that Ctrl+v does not work for pasting. Don’t complain about this, just accept it.

   mkdir /home/user/.AsusLauncher/

   Now press [ENTER] (the Return key). If you get an error message telling you that the directory already exists, you can ignore it and carry on with the next steps but, if your working copy of simpleui.rc is already in that folder, you will overwrite it, so you may want to navigate to that folder and check.

3. Still in terminal type the code below (or copy (Ctrl+c) and paste (Shift+Insert) it)

   cp /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc

   Now press [ENTER].

4. If no further error messages appear, your first attempt at using terminal has been successful and you have installed a copy of simpleui.rc under your /home/user/… directory which now becomes the active file as explained above. You also have the original as a backup in /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ directory.
5. Exit terminal by typing exit and pressing [ENTER].

There is a fault in many people's simpleui.rc which causes glitches with some of the tools. It seems, for example, the 'Video manager' entry has duplicate 'icon' attributes. To ensure that your simpleui.rc file does not have this problem:

1. Download fixsimple.zip (1.2kb) from 3eportal.com
2. Open File Manager and navigate to where you downloaded the zip file
3. Unzip fixsimple by right clicking on the zip file and selecting Unzip All
4. Right click on the unzipped file, select Properties, click on the Permissions tab and check the Owner Exec box to enable it
5. Double click on the unzipped fixsimple file to run it

If you ever have to restore your original simpelui.rc file you just need to repeat the step of entering terminal and typing (or copying and pasting):

cp /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc

If you do this, you should run fixsimple again.

In future, before you do any tweaking or whenever you are happy with your setup, you should back up your active simpleui.rc, by typing (or copying and pasting):

cp /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc.backup

then, if something goes wrong you should be able to restore your last backed up version by typing (or copying and pasting):

cp /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc.backup /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc

It seems that the eeepc 900 doesn't use the /usr/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc a work around is shown here:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=34323—-

In this thread you can find the 5 command lines to create a workingcopy and a backup on the 900-901 :\\http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=357472#p357472

• Besides the backups referred to above, it is a good idea to save a copy of your active copy of simpleui.rc as well as a copy of your /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ folder on some form of external storage, like a USB stick.
• If you really, really do not feel up to using terminal, you can move on to the next step without using it but it is VERY important that you make a copy of simpleui.rc, even if you just manually navigate to /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc and copy the file there and paste it somewhere else. Without doing more you won't have rights to paste a copy in the original folder, so just put it in your /home/user/ folder. Restoring it if something goes wrong will probably require you to use terminal, so you are better off using terminal now.

Most Linuxes use packages to install files. These are effectively bundles of files in one large archive file. Xandros, uses the same package format as its parent distribution, Debian. As a result, these packages have the file extension .deb, hence people calling them 'deb files'. These packages are stored in “repositories”, effectively large cataloged download sites full of programs. On the eee the repositories a user wants to download from is stored in a file, /etc/apt/sources.list. When you have multiple repositories the same package may exist in more than one repository. In order to install packages from the most appropriate the order in which repositories are selected for installation is achieved by 'pinning' the repositories in a file called /etc/apt/preferences.

pimpmyeee.sh can create sensible starting versions of the sources.list and preferences files and you should not need more at this stage but, if you really want to know more, see How Linux software installation works, Adding Additional Software Repositories and Installing software on the EEE - quick beginner's guide.

Unlike the other tools mentioned below, pimpmyeee.sh is a script and needs to be run from terminal. This means that it does not have a separate graphical interface but it does have a menu. To run an item listed in the menu, all you have to do is to type the relevant number (or letter) and to press [ENTER].

derred's pimpmyeee.sh was the inspiration for marf's Tweakee.

You can read more about pimpmyeee.sh on the forum

You can download derred's pimpmyeee.sh script here. For the sake of consistency for this article it is suggested that you download it to your /home/user/ directory

Once it is downloaded, you should rename it pimpmyeee.sh (i.e. delete the version number from the name) and then run it:

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) and run:

   sh /home/user/pimpmyeee.sh

   When you run the script it will give you options set out above, including:
   4. Enable extra repositories (overrides custom repositories).I

When you run the script it will give you options to do the following:

1. Enable Full Desktop (KDE)
2. Enable all codec support
3. Disable SCIM (chinese keyboard input option / on by default)
4. Enable extra repositories (overrides custom repositories)
5. Install cool Black theme (ThinBlack)
6. Install cool Mac theme (SmoothyFeelings)
7. Remove the SOS and Eee PC Tips icons from the Easy Mode toolbar
8. Add camera on and off scripts
9. Quit

The numbers above are not representative of the numbers and letters used in pimpmyeee.sh but it should be clear from the context that, to run an item listed in the menu, all you have to do is to type the relevant number (or letter) and to press [ENTER].

1. Press 4 and [ENTER]

This will replace your current sources.list with one containing the following repositories:

# Standard repos
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/ p701 main
deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en/ p701 main
 
# Comunity repos that should be great but just **** with my system
#deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main etch
 
# Xandros repos
deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free
deb http://dccamirror.xandros.com/dccri/ dccri-3.0 main
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 main
 
# Debian repos
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

It will also create a preferences file as follows:

Package: *" 
Pin: origin update.eeepc.asus.com" 
Pin-Priority: 950" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: origin" 
Pin-Priority: 925" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: origin xnv4.xandros.com" 
Pin-Priority: 900" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: origin dccamirror.xandros.com" 
Pin-Priority: 850" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: origin www.geekconnection.org" 
Pin-Priority: 750" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: release a=stable" 
Pin-Priority: 700" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: release a=testing" 
Pin-Priority: 650" 
 
Package: *" 
Pin: release a=unstable" 
Pin-Priority: 600" 
Package: *"

• There is no reason why, when you first run pimpmyeee.sh, you can't, for example, sequentially run Enable all codec support, Disable SCIM, Enable extra repositories, Remove the SOS and Eee PC Tips icons from the Easy Mode toolbar and Add camera on and off scripts. You could, in theory, run all of the menu itemas but it is suggested you leave the ones not mentioned above till later.
• You should run sudo apt-get update in terminal before installing a program to ensure you have the most up-to-date software available.
• When run sudo apt-get update, you may get some messages that appear worrying. In particular using the sources.list set up by pimpmyeee.sh you may get ones beginning W: and containing the phrase “The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available”. If you are only using the trusted repositories above, you can ignore these. If you get messages starting E: you may want to search the forum or ask on the forum before proceedings.
• As you can see from the above, derred does not like the Community Repository and has commented it out. If you need to use that repository, you can edit sources.list to delete the # in the line #deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main etch.

At this stage you are just going to download these tools but, to whet your appetite, there is a brief description of each with the download details. You can read the relevant websites and forums for more information about what the programs actually do.

Please also check the copyright notices and other terms for using these tools. In particular note that all of them are provided WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.

It is highly recommended that you install ALL these tools and that before you attempt any of the later steps you add repositories using pimpmyeee.sh as explained in step 3 above.

SublimePorte’s tools, Coyotee’s AsusLauncher Advanced Editor (EmEditor) and marf's TweakeeeEach are all deb files to install these you need to click on the relevant link on the page below, find the relevant file and download the file to your eee, say to the /home/user/ folder. For each of those tools you need to follow the instructions for installing DEB files below. derred's pimpmyeee.sh and YurenJu's lazyeeepc are not deb files and the instructions for them are different.

1. download the appropriate deb file from the relevant link (save it to your /home/user/ folder.
2. open File Manager, go to the directory where you saved the deb file
3. right-click the deb file and select Install DEB file…
4. to test whether it is working, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t)
5. type the program's name and press [ENTER] to start the application
6. When you are satisfied the program is properly installed you can delete the deb file to reclaim the space
   

Note: There are other ways to install deb files but, for the moment, stick with this one.

According to SublimePorte’s 3epc User Portal the Launcher tools comprise “three tools, the first is an icon adder/remover, so you can easily place icons in your AsusLauncher tabs and remove them. The second is a tool to reload the AsusLauncher GUI without closing all your programs. ie. to refresh the AsusLauncher and the third is a utility to generate AsusLauncher compatible icons from standard icons” and Theeemer “is a utility to select and load IceWM themes and the new EasyMode Themes which I have developed to go along with Theeemer”.

The final version of Launcher Tools 0.4 includes the three utilities, but the original Icon Adder tool has grown into a fully object-oriented editor for the simpleui.rc file. SimpleUI Editor gives you a realistic model of the AsusLauncher that allows you to edit Tabs, Folders and Parcels (icons). The icon-set creator (previously called LaunchIcon) now known as Iconifier supports more image formats than before and now offers the ability to resize and reposition the icon within the templates.

Note: You should install these Launcher tools first because doing this creates a sub tab on your Settings tab which is a sensible place to move all the tools you are downloading.

Download SublimePorte's Launcher tools and Theeemer from the 3epc User Portal website by following the easy instructions there. Issues with the Launcher tools are discussed on this thread on the forum.

• In order to use LaunchTools to add icons to your desktop you will need to enter the full path of the program; in the majority of cases this will be /usr/bin/programname (where programname is the name of the program). If you type in the name of the program and press [ENTER], it will run the 'which' command in the background to find the correct path for you.
• To add icons, you need a source of, preferably png format graphics (with transparent background). These should ideally be sized 80×80 but slightly larger can work as well. One useful source is the Crystal Project and their 128×128 set can, for example, be stored on an SD or USB drive and sourced for the tool to create the necessary icons.
• There are also Alternative Icons for Common Applications created by eeeusers which need to be saved to /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ to be able to be accessed by the various tools.
• The Iconifier tool saves the icons to the default icon folder on the eee and will overwrite any icon with the same name without warning (Iconifier now warns before overwriting). It is therefore a good idea to copy the folder /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/ elsewhere as a backup. You can also use this feature (bug?) as a means to develop a theme by creating new icons with the same names as the ones originally in /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/.
• The ThinBlack theme installed using Theeemer is the one used in the example of Niel1952's desktop. It has a different home button and shutdown button from the ThinBlack themes installed by the other tools which use the default shutdown button.

It is very hard to describe marf's Tweakee as, like its almost namesake tweakui for Windows, it takes the Swiss Army knife approach to programming. It has a full GUI Interface, using Python GTK, and numerous tools, including ones to:

• Easily Customize IceWM Interface
• Easily Switch IceWM Themes (Theme selection)
• Easily Change Cursor Appearance
• Backup of crucial files made upon initial startup, as well as incremental backups optional
• Ability to open crucial files for editing without opening a terminal
• Fairly detailed status window and history
• Behind the scenes stdout/stderr file logging for every command ran by the program (Can be turned on and off)
• Taskbar Icon Removal (SOS, EEEPC Tips, etc…)
• Add/Remove SCIM
• Change Shift Key (Remapping keyboard upon startup)
• Restart Asus Launcher GUI and Restart X with an easy click of the button.
• Enable Screensaver LCD Backlight power off
• Change the clock format from 24H to 12H
• Install eeeWeather by Woody Suwalski
• Add Repositories automatically
• Install other programs and appropriate Icons, such as VLC, GIMP, gFTP, PCMan(File Manager), Mercury etc
• Lid Close Toggle Options (LCD Off, Shutdown, or Standby when laptop lid closed)

You can download and read about Tweakeee on the eeeuser forum and on marf's website

Coyotee's AsusLauncher Advanced Editor (EmEditor) is the primary user developed tool for adding, removing and re-ordering programs in Easy Mode tabs.

It has a file manager look which “displays on the left a list with the tabs (the categories), and the available subfolders as subcategories. In the main view you get a list of all Icons configured in the 'simpleui.rc' file for the selected category (or folder) showing the name, command it executes (or shortcut if its with the shortcut attribute instead of the extraargs attribute), normal icon and selected icon filenames. When selecting an item, you will see the actual icon in lower right corner.”

One of the first things you should do after you have installed the tools referred to in this article, is to use EmEditor to organise your tabs and icons into a way that suits you. It is particularly suggested that you organise all the tools into one (sub) tab where they can all be accessed easily.

You can read more about it on the eeeuser.com forum.

Coyotee’s AsusLauncher Advanced Editor can be downloaded fromhere.

Follow these instructions to Add icons with Coyotee’s AsusLauncher Advanced Editor.

• Instructions on how to add icons with this tool can be found here.
• In order to use this tool to add icons to your desktop you will need to enter the full path of the program; in the majority of cases this will be /usr/bin/programname (where proogramname is the name of the program). If you do not know this, you can easily find it, say for gimp, by typing which gimp in terminal.

As the name suggests, lazyeeepc is an easy-to-use GUI scripts collection which can be used to install software and enhance EeePC easily for “lazy” EeePC users.

Developed by Taiwanese EeePC user YurenJu, the lazyeeepc script originally aimed at automating some Chinese customizations, but has now grown to include many common hacks and software installations for the EeePC. And coming up to version 0.0.5.2, lazyeeepc is now available in English.

Currently (as of version 0.0.5.2), the lazyeeepc pack includes the following scripts:

[NB. Those marked in italic are for Chinese end-users only]

To install, simply download the lazyeeepc pack from here, extract it to “My Home” and double click on the script “lazyeeepc.py”.

On the Settings tab there is an icon called Install/Remove Software. This is not a general software installion tool. It merely allows you to install and update the software that Asus wants you to update but you may want to be very selective on the ones you choose. The updates can take up quite a bit of space on your SSD and a lot of people have found that, because of flaws in the way Asus handles the updating, that they lose icons from their desktop when updating their software in this way. This should not happen when you have your working copy of simpleui.rc in /home/user/.AsusLauncher but, for additional security, now may be a good time to back up as explained above by typing (or copying and pasting) in terminal:

cp /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /home/user/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc.backup

The most important of the Asus updates is the Skype update which you should see on the first page when start the tool. This enables you to use the webcam with Skype. All you have to do is press the Update button next to Skype and follow the instructions. You can update all the other items in the same way but.

NB: It is recommended that you DO NOT update the Bios unless you have a need to, so leave that one alone until the need arises. If you are tempted to update the Bios, make sure your battery is fully charged and you are connected to power before you start and don’t touch your eee until it has completely finished.

Up to now you will have been using xterminal, with its unfriendly interface. If you were to install Advanced Mode, you would find the default console there is called Konsole. In order to make this the default console in Easy Mode too, we will use Tweakee.

If you look at the picture of Tweakeee above, you will see on the bottom right a reference to Default Console. All you have to do is to click on the box below that, select Konsole and press Apply. Exit Tweakeee.

Media files on computers are usually encoded in order to reduce the size of the file. What does this encoding magic is something called a codec, or compressor-decompressor. The version of MPlayer that ships with the EEE can play quite a few different types of movie and audio files thanks to the codecs that are built into it.

However, this version of MPlayer is missing some vital codecs, including ones for playing videos particularly the h264 codec. There is a way to get it back, but it involves downgrading MPlayer to a version that has that codec (and a lot of other missing codecs) installed.

The simple way of doing this is by selecting option 2 of pimpmyeee.sh.

• If you are having problems watching DVDs, read Watch all DVDs

When you have been using your eee for a while and you have inserted an SD card for extra memory, you will find the fact that every time you boot it up, it notifies you that it has found that SD card. This can be very irritating but, if you are now more confident with using the terminal and are prepared to do a little programming, you will find this can easily be tweaked. Just read (and work through) how to disable the Device Detection Dialog at startup.

In Easy Mode there are a number of icons in the task bar including a green square and a smiley. You may want to get rid of these for aesthetic reasons or to conserve screen space.

Now that you have the tools, you should be able to work out how to do this out by now.

If you want to personalise the look of your eee desktop in a systematic way, you can use themes to do this. The tools you have downloaded enable you to do this for Easy Mode although, at present, there are relatively few themes available. Tweakeee, Theeemer and pimpmyeee.sh all make it obvious how to install themes using them.

• Tweakeee can be used to reinstall the default themes

To add dictionaries to Thunderbird (or Firefox) follow these easy steps:

1. Go to Thunderbird dictionary add-ons page
2. Select the language you want, right click on the link, and download file to your Eee
3. Open Thunderbird, and go to Tools → Add-ons menu
4. On the Add-ons (not Themes) tab, click Install, browse to and select the downloaded file
5. Follow instructions and restart Thunderbird
6. You can now delete the downloaded dictionary file

The easiest way to select spell-checking language is to add the spell-checking button to the toolbar of the message editing window. If you click on the little down arrow on it, it will present you with a list of installed languages, and you can choose the active one. You can also enable “check spelling as you type” in the Options menu.

Pretty much the same procedure applies to adding dictionaries to Firefox.

NOTE: This has been written using OpenOffice 2.3, but it should also work for 2.1 which is on EeePC by default.

The first part is common to either direct download from Internet or if you have downloaded language files already and are performing an off-line installation:

1. Open OpenOffice Writer
2. In File menu, select Wizards, then Install new dictionaries…
3. In the DicOOo document that opens, select the language for the wizard
4. Now click on the grey button (in English it reads “Start DicOOo”)

Now if you're installing directly from Internet (you obviously need to be connected for this to work at all):

1. Leave the “Off-line” check-box unchecked
2. You can select interface language again from the drop-down
3. Click Next
4. To get list of available spell-checking languages, click “Retrieve the list”
5. Select the languages you want (hold Ctrl while clicking to select more than one)
6. Click Next
7. Repeat above steps for hyphenation dictionaries
8. Click Next
9. And once more for thesaurus
10. Click Next
11. On the next screen it is OK to leave the check-box checked, as it may reduce the amount downloaded, unless you want to upgrade
12. Click Next, and wait for the download to finish
13. Click Finish, and you're done

If you already downloaded language files you want (e.g. from here, you can use the following steps instead:

1. Check the “Off-line language pack installation”
2. In the field below, browse for the language pack (remember where you put it?)
3. Click Next

Now you can follow the same steps as described in on-line instructions above, starting from step 5, and keeping in mind you don't need to retrieve list from the Internet (the button is helpfully missing, too). I have only successfully tried off-line installation with whole language packs, and can't vouch for the above procedure if your language does not provide one.

The language(s) you just installed should now be available for spell-checking, hyphenation, and thesaurus in the Tools menu.

If you've followed the steps above and have set-up your dictionaries in Options → Language Settings → Writing Aid, but your thesaurus and spellchecker still don't work, try the following:

1. select all
2. format→character.
3. under the 'font' tab, select the language you want (it should have the 'ABC' checkmark next to it if it's the language you've set your dictionaries to)
4. press OK.

VLC is a free alternative, cross-platform, media player by the VideoLAN project.

This method of installing VLC requires you to have installed repositories and codecs using pimpmyeee.sh as outlined above.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+t (You know this makes a terminal appear)
2. In terminal type or copy (Ctrl+c) and paste (Shift+Insert)

   sudo apt-get update

   Press [ENTER]

3. Staying in terminal terminal type or copy (Ctrl+c) and paste (Shift+Insert)

   sudo apt-get install vlc

   Press [ENTER]

If this has worked, you can test it by typing vlc and pressing [ENTER] in the terminal

Exit the terminal by typing exit and pressing [ENTER] in the terminal

• Now that you have installed VLC you can install numerous other programs like Gimp, DosBox etc using the sudo apt-get install method and you don't even need to know what sudo apt-get means. When doing this it is worth trying to find out what the actual name of the program is, although it is often its common name but all in lowercase. In much of Linux capitalisation is important.

It appears that Asus has seen fit to supply 2Gs without working e-mail clients. Thunderbird also does not appear in the default repositories for the 2G which contain the number 700, rather than the repositories for the 4G which contain the number 701. However, if you have been working through this list, your repositories will now be set up to deal with this. You should also now have sufficient courage to try your hand at using the apt-get method to Install Thunderbird onto a 2G. Once you have started terminal you can skip the first step in that article and go straight to Step 2.

Note: Since this article was written marf has added a tool to Tweakeee which enables you to toggle the options of what happens when you close the lid.

Depending on how you work and what you use your eee for, you may have different requirements for what happens when you shut the lid. The default mode is that it suspends the eee. The suspend mode from closing the lid drains the battery quite quickly and you may therefore prefer to ensure that the eee shuts down rather than suspends when you close the lid. Or you may want to carry the eee with you with music blaring (?) out or you may want to attach a closed eee to an external monitor and keyboard in which case you would wish the eee to remain on when the lid is closed. This hack will enable you to be in control.

This hack is based on this wiki article. This forum topic also gives some good advice on how to change what eee does when lid is closed.

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) and type or copy (Ctrl+c) and paste (Shift+Insert) the text below in it to make a backup:

   sudo cp /etc/acpi/lidbtn.sh /etc/acpi/lidbtn.sh.bak

   Press [ENTER]

2. Staying in terminal, type or copy (Ctrl+c) and paste (Shift+Insert) the text below in it:

   sudo kwrite /etc/acpi/lidbtn.sh

   Press [ENTER]

3. You should see

   #!/bin/sh
   LID_STATE=`cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state | awk '{print $2 }'`
    
   if [ $LID_STATE = "closed" ] ; then
           /etc/acpi/suspend2ram.sh
   fi
   exit 0

4. Replace the current text with the text below (copying and pasting is the easiest):

   #!/bin/sh
   LID_STATE=`cat /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state | awk '{print $2 }'`
    
   if [ $LID_STATE = "closed" ] ; then
           # The four lines below all need to have a # in front of them to leave the computer on on lid closure  
           # Delete the # before the line below to let the computer suspend to ram on lid closure     
           # /etc/acpi/suspend2ram.sh
           # Delete the # before the line below to let the computer shutdown on lid closure  
           # sudo /sbin/fastshutdown.sh
   fi
   exit 0

5. Decide what you want to do, then save and exit.
   

• To let the eee to remain ON with the lid closed, leave the text as it is.
  
• To let the eee to SUSPEND to ram with the lid closure, delete the # before /etc/acpi/suspend2ram.sh.
  
• To let the eee to SHUT DOWN with lid closure, delete the # before sudo /sbin/fastshutdown.sh.
  

• Leave only one of the relevant lines without a # mark.

Advanced mode turns off the default tabbed user interface and enables a more “normal” computer desktop with a launch / “Start” button, with movable, re-arrangeable icons on the desktop, icons that respond to right-clicks, etc. This adds a burden to the system, but many find the ease of configuration worth it.

To enable it, select item F when you run pimpmyee.sh

Note: Using this method will result in a sort of “double boot” that will lengthen the startup time by about ten seconds. If you only use this method, your desktop icons and any files you saved to the desktop will disappear at each reboot. In order to maintain them, as well as improving booting speed, you need also to follow the instructions to Boot directly into the mode last used: Easy Mode or Advanced Desktop Mode

Once you have installed Advanced Desktop, you can also use gfoot's Back-up for the Eee PC with Xandros

Note: You will need a 1G USB flash drive to receive the bootable system, and a minimum 2G SD card must be in the card reader slot. —-

Once you have done the above you may want to consider the following:

• Customise the mouse pointer
• Disable Device Detection Dialog
• Watch all DVDs
• Add MS compatible fonts
• Add a PDF printer
• Running a Script or Program on Network Startup

• [Suggestions welcome]

Created by Niel1952. All the information has been lifted from the eeeuser.com forums and wiki. Proper acknowledgments are difficult but, if anyone feels they need one, feel free to edit accordingly.

Thanks to

• mrmot for creating Section “11. Adding dictionaries”.
• alex_e for pointing out a silly error which was causing a lot of grief.
• reeshar for clarifyng the simplui.rc backup procedure.
• Sage_Harpuia for the link to the monkeyblog.org article.
• JBrown of http://www.honeypothack.com/eee for the use of the print of the default setting.