Installing Xubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 on the Eee PC 901

Xubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx Beta 1

The Linux distro of choice for my 901 Eee PC is Xubuntu, I’ve been using it on there since Xubuntu 9.04 which at the time needed a little help after the installation to get all the hardware working correctly.  Xubuntu 9.10 ran completely out of the box on it with all the hardware working including the OSD.

So with the release of Xubuntu 10.4 beta 1 and sometime on my hands I felt it time to test the waters of it.  I have decided to go for a clean install of the OS and not an upgrade.

The spec of my Eee PC 901 is unmodified from the standard model; 1GB ram, 20GB SSD, Wifi, etc.

Image> Xbuntu 10.4: Install screen running on Eee PC 901 [click image to enlarge]

The storage in the 901 is a 20GB SSD which in the system is physically made up from a 4GB and 16GB SSD, for my installation I will using the 4GB for the root partition and the 16 for my home partition.

I don’t use a swap partition to save the write wear on the SSDs and I wont be encrypting my home folder.

The install was painless and quick as expected taking about 15 minutes, all the hardware was detected and configured correctly out of the box, the functions keys all work and the OSD is working too, these all worked in 9.10 as well.  The default theme used for Xubuntu 10.4 hasn’t really changed much from 9.10, however it does have a new splash screen reflecting the recent font change for the Ubuntu brand and has a few other little touch ups to the default theme.

So far Xubuntu 10.4 is running well for the first beta, the boot time is about the same as 9.10, gdm appears about 10 to 15 seconds after booting and the desktop loads almost instantly from login, once booted to the OS there was 70MB of updates to install which installed with no problems.  Now I’m off to customise it to my needs and liking, more to follow.