Updated: Might I suggest trying TweakEEE, a program written by myself, to do almost everything these ‘how to’ guides incorporate. Latest Version (0.4)

Update: Part 2 of this guide can be found Here. It is a continuation.

The eeepc isn’t perfect, but hopefully with this little tutorial, we can make yours that much closer to perfection. When I first got my eeepc, I immediately wanted to unleash the potential this little beast has within. I followed guides on eeeuser and tried advanced desktop mode. It was great but after a month of using it, I realized that over time all the little configurations I had initiated added up to alot. I also realized the features advanced desktop mode are much more than the average user needs, as well it wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing (without extra configuration) as easy mode. So to ease your transition, I decided to write my Ultimate eeepc setup guide.
**DISCLAIMER** I would just like to state that I’m not responsible for anything that happens to your eeepc from steps within this tutorial**, however if you follow this guide well I can almost guarantee that it will work perfectly fine, in the worst case scenario you would just have to restore to factory defaults.

*Update** A Continuation of this guide can be found here ‘HOWTO: Ultimate EEE PC Setup Part 2‘.

I would also like to thank everybody over at Eeeuser.com. A great community with excellent documentation on the wiki and forums. If you don’t have an account there I highly recommend that you make a forum account and introduce yourself. A lot of my steps originated from forum/wiki posts there and I try to reference them all below. If I missed anything please toss me an e-mail marf@[thiswebsitedomain].org and let me know where credit is due.
**UPDATE 26/01/2008** I have added a couple repositories as well as fix some spelling mistakes and other such tweaks, some of which people mentioned in comments. I’m still working on ‘part two’ which will be a completely separate post, so keep checking back every once in a while.

Table of Contents

• Updating Default Software
• Changing the Shift and up Arrow Keys
• Removing SCIM
• Touchpad Settings
• IceWM Manager Preferences
• Installing Additional Themes (Optional)
• Changing Default Console
• Screensaver Power Management
• Extra Repositories
• Installing Extra Programs
• Mercury Launcher (Highly Recommended)
• Firefox Addons
• Minimize OpenOffice Toolbar
• Add Icons (Highly Recommended, contingent on ‘Installing Extra Programs’)

Updating Default Software

*Update* Asus’ update feature below apparently can cause some icons to disappear (like the wikipedia icon). This is no big problem (don’t let it scare you from doing this step), just means they played around with the xml in the simpleui.rc and messed it up a bit. The icons are real easy to get back, and there are several posts at eeeuser forums, two good ones where you can find discussion about the topic and reviving your lost icons. Those posts can be found here and here. I’ve added a few steps below to avoid Asus messing with our Icons. *End Update*

Lets quickly copy our simpleui.rc so the AsusUpdates doesn’t mess anything up.

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t)
2. Enter the command mkdir .AsusLauncher
3. Now we want to copy the simpleui.rc, which has all of our icons in it. sudo cp /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc ./.AsusLauncher/

There, now that we have copied all the important icons over you can go head with the updates below.

First thing we can do is check to see if there is updates for any of the software that comes with the default linux OS.

1. To accomplish this, click the ‘Settings’ tab, and then click on the ‘Add/Remove Software’.
2. Then a window opens up with the familiar tabbed interface again. Under each tab it has updates that can be performed for speific programs.
3. I updated Skype first. It asked for a reboot but I declined. I won’t bother rebooting until all the updates I want are installed (It asks to reboot after other updates, click no on them all).
4. Next I check the other tabs and update in this order: Dictionary, Touchpad, and EeeAP (install not update).I don’t bother updating VoiceCommand because I don’t plan to use it. I think it just allows you to say something like ‘Internet’ and it opens up the browser. It of course does more than that but I would never use it so might as well free up the ~2.8MB it uses. So i click remove for the VoiceCommand application. I also remove the Internet Radio application freeing ~1.6MB.
5. The last update to install is the BIOS update. Even though you most likely won’t notice any changes with this update for the bios, theres no harm in doing it. We execute this update last because upon clicking it, it Says it is rebooting the system, and regardless of whether you click OK or the ‘X’ in the top corner of the window, it reboots to a command line and starts the update. Some text appears on the screen, takes about 2 minutes to complete, then asks for you to press the power button. The machine immediately turns off. Then just press again and it boots up normally.

Perfect we are done with the default updates from ASUS.

Top

Changing the Shift and up Arrow Keys

Firstly I’d like again to thank the community over at eeeuser. My post here originated from a wiki post here which from what I can tell is a kind of collaboration from the forum post here.When you first start typing on the EEEPC and don’t look down at the keyboard, you notice that instead of pressing the right shift key, you’re pressing the up arrow key. This gets annoying very fast. To fix this we remap a few keys on the keyboard to get rid of this annoyance. Follow these steps to accomplish this:

1. Press Ctrl + Alt + t
2. Enter the command mkdir .icewm The reason we make a directory is because this is where we will be entering various configuration files and such throughout this tutorial. This way we have a centralized location for our changes to the EEEPC. Also, the reason we prepend a “.” in front of the directory name is so it makes it hidden. This way if you are ever browsing the directory through the file manager, you don’t accidentally delete it because it will be hidden.
3. Now navigate to the directory by typing cd .icewm
4. Now we will create a new file with this command touch setupkeyboard.sh This will create an empty file which we will be inserting the appropriate bash script into.
5. Next, copy this code
   #!/bin/sh
#set up keyboard to exchange the Shift and Up keys, and the Down and Right keys
xmodmap -e "keycode 62 = Up" # Make the Shift key go Up
xmodmap -e "keycode 109 = Prior" # Make the Shift-shift key go PgUp
xmodmap -e "keycode 98 = Shift_R" # Make the Up key go Shift
xmodmap -e "keycode 99 = Control_R" # Make the PgUp key go Shift-shift
xmodmap -e "add shift = Shift_R" # Make the new shift key actually do shifting
xset r 62 # Make the new Up key autorepeat
xset -r 98 # Prevent the new Shift key from autorepeating
xset r 109 # Make the new PgUp autorepeat
#
xmodmap -e "keycode 104 = Right" # Make the down key go Right not Down
xmodmap -e "keycode 105 = End" # make Fn Dn go End (Next) not Pg Dn
xmodmap -e "keycode 102 = Down" # make Right go Dn
xmodmap -e "keycode 103 = Next" # make Fn Right (End) go Pg Pn (Next)
# Now that this is in your clipboard, we will open up the file we just created with this command kwrite setupkeyboard.shThis command will open up the default text editor and it should contain nothing. This is where you can paste (Ctrl + V) in your copied code from above. Then close the text editor and save the changes when it prompts. ( ignore any message in the terminal prompt about ICE default error handle doing an exit() )
6. One last thing we want to do is chmod the script for read/execute access by all owner, group and user. To do this type in the command line chmod 0755 setupkeyboard.sh

So we have completed the primary part, creating the script, making it executable, but how do we execute it? Well you can always manually execute the script by typing sudo sh /home/user/.icewm/setupkeyboard.sh but this can be annoying, because everytime you reboot your laptop, you could find yourself executing multiple bash script files. What we want to do is add this script to be executed automatically upon startup. When easy mode is launched, by default Xandros executes “/user/bin/startsimple.sh”. What we want to do it execute our script we just made, before the AsusLauncher executes (AsusLauncher is the lovely interface that Asus designed for easymode). Before we continue I would like to thank the community at eeeuser again and for the startup script wiki page located there. Now back to the tutorial, follow these steps:

1. First, we want to backup our startsimple.sh before we edit the file just to be extra careful. To accomplish this, press Ctrl + Alt + t to open a terminal.
2. Now type this command cp /usr/bin/startsimple.sh /usr/bin/startsimple.sh.bak This will copy the startsimple script so we have an unedited version just in case anything is deleted unknowingly from the script when we are adding our lines of code.
3. Now copy this text below (Ctrl + c) #User added scripts
/home/user/.icewm/setupkeyboard.sh
#End user added scripts
4. Next we want to insert this code into our startsimple.sh at the correct location. First open up the startsimple.sh by typing the following into the terminal sudo kwrite /usr/bin/startsimple.sh
5. Now we want to insert the code into the correct location shown below. ...
done
fi
#WE INSERT HERE#
/opt/xandros/bin/AsusLauncher &
icewmtray &
...
   It so happens that in my file we are inserting the code after line 43, and before line 44. I would assume yours is the same, but if not I provided the sample above. So I inserted my code and now my file looks like so:
   ...
done
fi
#User added scripts
/home/user/.icewm/setupkeyboard.sh
#End user added scripts
/opt/xandros/bin/AsusLauncher &
icewmtray & Now close the text editor and save the changes.

Now if you so please you can reboot to check if your script executed upon startup, by simply checking if your Shift key has been reassigned properly. Now that we changed the key mapping, why not change the actual keys on the keyboard. The wiki over at eeeuser explain how it can be done here. WARNING: I’ll restate what the wiki says, don’t hold me or the eeeuser wiki responsible if you break keys on your keyboard when changing them.
Beware of the next part, if you don’t think you can move your keys, then don’t. It isn’t necessary, but just more aesthetically pleasing (and can be less confusing) if you remapped them. Don’t hold me responsible if you break a the keys and/or clips underneath (or your keyboard).
That being said I followed the wiki instructions but I didn’t have a sharp knife handy, but I looked over and saw paper clips. So I bent my paper clip like so (note: I think I made my paper clip bend a bit on the larger side, meaning I think the lip was on the verge of being too big, so when you do yours it is best advised to reduce the lip size by a couple millimeters).

I then inserted the paper clip like so, **Note Always insert your paperclip/sharp object on the LEFT side of the key, not the top, bottom, or right side. The clip holding the keyboard gives (snaps up) most easily from the left side**

and I would pull almost vertically up (maybe a bit to the left… DON’T push down or to the right in the picture). The amount of force required should NOT be more than that required of opening an aluminum pop can. I would honestly say a fair bit less than that amount of force. If you are applying more then your doing something wrong. If all goes well, you should have your keys looking similar to the picture on the wiki or the ones in my picture (same layout).

Top

Removing SCIM

I’d like to thank the wiki post here from eeeuser which is what I primarily based this section from.By default xandros comes with a program called SCIM and xandros-scim to make sure that it executes into the taskbar upon startup. Now before you go ahead and remove SCIM you might be wondering what it is. It is an abbreviation for Smart Common Input Method. It allows for users to use programs with alternate languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc…). If you only know one language, or don’t plan to be using an alternate language on your laptop, then it’s best to remove both of these packages. Not only does it free space on the 4 Gig SSD drive, it also frees up an icon in the taskbar, which we need all the space we can get there. To accomplish do the following:

1. Open a console by pressing the combination of keys simultaneously. Ctrl + Alt + t
2. Enter the command sudo apt-get remove xandros-scim It will ask if you are sure you want it to remove, press y and then enter.
3. Next, input the command sudo apt-get remove scim It will ask if you are sure you want it to remove, press y and then enter.

Together, removing both of these frees up ~10MB. Below is a picture of my command line after both commands were executed.

Top

Touchpad Settings

This should be a fairly short section, but when there is no mouse available to be used, I find that circular scrolling with the touch pad is unbeatable.

1. Go to Settings tab and click ‘Touchpad’
2. Click the Scrolling tab and apply the settings as follows

Top

IceWM Manager Preferences

I’d like to thank eeeuser community again for giving me the base information to start this section of the tutorial.
The default installation of xandros uses IceWM (Ice Windows Manager) which is a nice light weight application. However there are some preferences that we want to change to increase the functionality of the easy mode UI. We can accomplish this by:

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t)
2. Enter this command cp /etc/X11/icewm/* /home/user/.icewm/ Now we have copied over all of the configuration fiels for the taskbar and themes and such, We will be editing a few of them so we might as well copy them all over now.
3. What we want to do now is edit the preferences file, one of the many files we copied. So type the following commandkwrite .icewm/preferences and then look for this line...
TaskBarShowWorkspaces=0
... We will change the value it is equal to, to a ‘1′. The line number in my file was 232.
4. Now while we are in here, we can make the taskbar only show the windows that are on the current workspace. Find this line ...
TaskBarShowAllWindows=1
... about line 255 in my file. Change this value to a zero. This will segregate the windows that you have open in different desktops. This way the taskbar stays the least cluttered because it only has the windows opened in the current workspace rather then all workspaces. Your line should now look like ...
TaskBarShowAllWindows=0
...
5. Again, find a line of code that looks like WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 "," 3 "," 4 " and change it to look like WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 " This basically changes us to have 2 workspaces instead of four. Doing this we get a bit more taskbar space, and also, you probably won’t ever use four workspaces. If you want 4, then just omit this step.
6. Now find these lines of code ...
#
KeySysWorkspace1="Ctrl+Alt+1"
#
KeySysWorkspace2="Ctrl+Alt+2"
... approximately around line 669 in my preferences file. Now for switching desktops, I find that pressing ctrl+alt+1 very awkard, so I change mine to Ctrl + F1. So my code now looks like ...
#
KeySysWorkspace1="Ctrl+F1"
#
KeySysWorkspace2="Ctrl+F2"
... If you decided to use more workspaces than two, change the extra ones accordingly
7. Lastly, find this line TimeFormat="%R" which should be around line 523 and change it to look like TimeFormat="%I:%M%p" You can go ahead and close the file and save the changes.
8. Now if you notice we have a green pad and a simley face and what looks like a busy picture rotated 90 degrees in the bottom right corner. We don’t need these firstly, the green one can be accessed by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete (windows task manager equivalent), trust me when I say you don’t need the smiley face, and the shutdown button isn’t necessary because pressing the actual power button on the eeepc brings up the identical menu as pressing that littls busy icon. so lets give ourselves more taskbar space and remove those. Type in the command
   kwrite .icewm/toolbar2 you will now notice that there are three lines that are uncommented. Add a # sign to the beginning of these 3 lines effecticely removing the menu. Yours should now look like #prog "SOS" taskmanager ksysguard --showprocesses
#prog "Eee PC Tips" eeepctips firefox file:///opt/xandros/share/eeetips/index.html
#prog "Shutdown" shutdown /opt/xandros/bin/shutdown_dialog shutdown Close the file and save.

There, now if you so please you can restart X by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace, **NOTE** Save any unsaved information before restarting X. Now if you restarted X you will notice that there are 2 Workspace buttons that appeared in our taskbar. The date shows correctly with am/pm in the corner. You may also notice that there is an ugly yellow for the non active workspace. We have to get rid of this, because it is a huge eyesore.

1. Open a console if not already open (Ctrl + Alt + t)
2. Now enter this comand sudo kolourpaint /usr/share/icewm/themes/AsusSilver/taskbar/workspacebuttonbg.xpm Now a simple paint program is opened. I had to press the magnify button to zoom in to be able to see the hideous yellow. I picked a colour that I thought fit the scheme (you can pick a colour you like) and penciled it in the area. Then close the program and save the changes.

You can now restart X again with Ctrl + Alt + Backspace. When I use multi desktop I primarly use the keyboard shortcuts that we setup earlier, however the yellow was so ugly I had to change it. Now it is more pleasing to the eyes. However depending on what theme your using you might have to change the other background
(xpm) file. To accomplish this would would have to substitute AsusSilver with: AsusGreen, AsusBlue, or AsusSunset. These are the four default themes that asus has installed. You can choose to install additional IceWM themes, which is what I cover in the next section.
At the end of this section your taskbar should look similar to the one in the picture below

Top

Installing Additional Themes (Optional)

If you like the look of the taskbar and the windows, then please skip to my next section. Otherwise stick around here to see how to activate an alternate theme.
Firstly we must find a theme to use. Through my browsing around the eeeuser forums I saw a theme and enjoyed the thin, modern look. So I decided to use it for my example.

1. First go to http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=55648 and download this theme. By default firefox downloads to /home/user/My Documents, so this is what I assume you are using.
2. Once downloaded, open up a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t)
3. Type in the command cd .icewm and press enter
4. Now type mkdir themes and then press enter.
   Now type in cd themes
5. Then type in tar xvzf /home/user/My\ Documents/55648-Thinblack2.tar.gz This extracts the contents of the theme that we just downloaded into the themes directory we just made. Now when our tar extraction was echoes to the screen we can notice the directory name that the files were extracted to. In this case the directory name is Thinblack2
6. So what we do is edit that theme file we copied over to our .icewm folder by typing the command kwrite .icewm/theme You might notice that every subsequent line has another # prepended. This file just seems to hold the previous 10 themes used. Not really sure why but we are only concerned with changing the first line. I changed my first line to look like
   Theme="Thinblack2/default.theme" Themes will always have their settings in default.theme, so the only important thing to remember here is the folder name which the tar extracted the files to in the previous step.

Now you can restart X by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace, and then once you type your password in, bask in the beauty of your new theme, or quickly realize you made a mistake and return to the previous theme.

Top

Changing Default Console (Optional)

I’d like to thank the eeeuser community and this wiki page which provided the information to make this section possible.
This step can probably be ignored for people who don’t play around in the console too much. But if your keen to learn and cherish what little taskbar space you have, then updating the default console program to konsole (tabbed sessions) can be a blessing at times. To execute this, follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the following command: sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator and then you will see a list of the applications. I chose option 1 which is konsole.
3. After this you can close your current terminal and then open a new one (Ctrl + Alt + t). However you may notice that it has a white background. I don’t like this, so go to Settings > Schema > Linux Colours. There we go, but we must save this as our default schema, which is easy, go to Settings > Save as Default.

Easy enough, and now you have a nice tabbed terminal interface.

Top

Screensaver Power Management

This is one of the more important change that you should change on the eeepc immediatly when you get it. I would like to thank the eeeuser community and this wiki page for the useful information that is used to create this section.
If you’ve had your eeepc for a while now, you will notice that after 5 minutes the ’screen saver’ appears to turn on. However if you are in a darker room you will notice some backlight bleeding, which leads you to believe that the LCD isn’t really turning off, thus draining that precious battery power. To hopefully increase the longevity of your LED backlight and reduce the drain on your battery follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t)
2. Enter the command kcontrol and a window should popup where you can configure some settings. First we browse to Display > Screensaver and scroll down in the window to the right and check the box that states “Make Aware of Power Management”. Click apply.
3. Now browse down to Power Management > Power Control and in the right window and in the right box check the box to enable display power management. Then have “Standby after” set to disable. Set “Poweroff after” to 5 minutes, the same as the screen saver. This should move the suspend to 5 minutes as well, which is okay. Please take not that this doesn’t actually turn off the eeepc after 5 minutes, it just turns off the display backlight hence us checking the “Enable Power Display Management” checkbox. After this Apply and close the window.

There you go, another little trick to hopefully increase your eeepc experience.

Top

Extra Repositories

Thanks to the eeeuser community and this wiki page, I was able to provide you with this section for adding extra repositories to the eeepc.
So in order to add some custom programs that we want to use extra repositories. Now please note you must be careful, typing in the wrong command to install the wrong program could render your OS useless, and you would have to format and start over.

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t)
2. Enter this command sudo kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list
3. **Update** Archlung was removed do to it being down for some time (thanks eeeuser wiki) **. Now we are inserting 6 additional repositories in addition to the 2 default from Asus. So copy these 5 lines and paste them into your sources.list. 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://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main non-free contrib
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 main Close the sources.list and save the changes.

Now we have added the repositories but we want to add security. In one of the first sections we removed SCIM. Lets say we now decided to add SCIM because we need it, and input the command sudo apt-get install scim. What if one of the new repositories we added had a scim of its own? Then lets say by executing the command above that we installed the scim which wasn’t from the official asus repos, it was from one of the ones we added. This version of scim could perhaps be buggy, or not even work at all. So we want to add a feature called pinning. Basically we add priority to all the repositories in sources.list. To add this feature follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal if not already open
2. Enter this command sudo kwrite /etc/apt/preferences Don’t be alarmed if the file is empty, because most likely it is and we are creating it for the first time. Insert this code into the file
   Package: *
Pin: origin update.eeepc.asus.com
Pin-Priority: 950
Package: *
Pin: origin
Pin-Priority: 925
Package: *
Pin: origin ftp.us.debian.org
Pin-Priority: 915
Package: *
Pin: origin download.tuxfamily.org
Pin-Priority: 910
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
   Close the file and save any changes.
3. Now enter this command sudo apt-get update and it updates all the packages from the repositories

There we have added the new repositories. Now we can unleash the real potential of the eeepc.

Top

Installing Extra Programs

Don’t get me wrong the eeepc comes with alot of programs that are perfect for most peoples daily needs, however some of us prefer that extra little punch. One downside of easy mode is when we install the programs there is no links to them within the AsusLauncher. But the in a section further down, I will show you where you can get high def icons, and make them work with our newly installed programs in the AsusLauncher.Installing gftp
By default, the eeepc xandros does connect to ftp and sftp but it is built in to the address bar in the file manager. I tried to use it briefly, welcoming something new, but soon realized that I need a dedicated client for ftp. To install gftp follow these instructions:

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the command sudo apt-get install gftp It will prompt you asking permission to use up ~3MB of SSD space and install packages. Choose yes. It then prompts you again saying it cannot be authenticated. Coose yes once again.

You can execute the program by entering gftp in the terminal window. No initial setup is required, just enter the ftp and go. The other great thing about the program is it supports SSH and SSH2.

Installing Gimp
The first program I want to install is gimp. It is the equivalent of adobe photoshop, but for linux. It runs perfectly fine on the eeepc and makes a fine addition to the default set of programs. It takes up ~31.5MB which I am willing to give up for such a good program. To install follow these instructions:

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the command sudo apt-get install gimp It will prompt you asking permission to use up ~31.5MB SSD space and install packages. Choose yes. It then prompts you again saying it cannot be authenticated. Choose yes once again.

It installs some stuff, and once done we can execute gimp by simply typing the command “gimp” and pressing enter in the terminal. It will bring up a licence agreement and some other questions the first time you execute gimp. You can accept the defaults for all the settings, so just click ‘Continue’ for all of the prompts you get. Also if you are a person who has used Adobe photoshop on windows and have become acustomed to the interface, then you can install a deb package to bring back some of the familiarity. The details for doing this can be found here thanks to the eeeuser community.

Installing VLC
Now don’t get me wrong, mplayer is okay. But by default doesn’t play as much as vlc can. VLC can play almost every type of video file from my experience so in the spirit of keeping it simple lets install VLC.

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the command sudo apt-get install vlc It will prompt you asking permission to use up ~35MB SSD space and install packages. Choose yes. It then prompts you again saying it cannot be authenticated. Choose yes once again.

Now this install takes a few minutes because there are quite a number of packages it has to install. But once it is done, as usual type vlc into the terminal and it opens the program.

Top

Mercury Launcher (Highly Recommended)

Thanks to a user at the eeeuser forums for releasing this program and a mini how to. You can view their forum post here as well as the actual program website here.
This program increases productivity a great deal. It essentially allows you to type in commands to execute programs and such without opening the terminal. There is a Windows XP equivalent I have used before called ‘Launchy’ and some for linux called quicksilver or katapult. To install mercury follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the command mkdir /home/user/.mercuryThis is the directory we will be installing mercury into. We put a period infront of it to make it hidden in the file manager.
3. We now browse to the mercury directory with this command cd /home/user/.mercury
4. Now input this command wget http://www.marengo-ltd.com/mercury/mercury.tar.gz This command downloads the file from the location to the current directory.
5. Now we will extract the tar into this directory that we are currently in with this command tar zxvf ./mercury.tar.gzYou will see about 6 files extracted (assuming nothing was added to the zip since I wrote this)
6. Now we need to have a database of all the programs/file that we have on the eeepc. Luckily all we have to do is run a bash script already written which makes a .dat file with this information. To do so, execute ./update-database.sh This creates a mercury.dat file which is required for mercury to run.
7. Now that we have mercury installed you can execute it with this command /home/user/.mercury/mercury However that is pretty useless if you have to open up the terminal to execute the program. So we will add a shortcut key.
8. To add a keyboard shortcut we will edit our keys file. Assuming your still in the terminal enter the command kwrite /home/user/.icewm/keys And with the file open add this line of code to the end of the file key "Alt+Ctrl+space" /home/user/.mercury/mercury As you can see I made my shortcut Ctrl+Alt+space however you can substitute in whatever you please.

There once done I think X requires a restart (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace). Also please note this is beta software and there will be further releases so check the website I mentioned at the beginning of the section for updates.

Top

Setting up Firefox Addons

Firefox is a great browser, but has it’s many flaws. Firstly it is a memory hog, no doubt about it. The more tabs you have open the more memory it leeches. This issue has appeared to have been fixed in Firefox 3, however it is still in beta. Once a full version is released I’ll install that and remove firefox 2.xxx. But until then we must make the best with what we have.Default Theme
Firstly the default theme is a bit larger then it has to be. We can easily get a smaller more suitable theme for the small screen of the eeepc.

1. Open up a firefox browser (however if your reading this your firefox is already open).
2. Go to Tools > Addons and click the themes tab, then click the link ‘Get Themes’ in the bottom right corner of the window.
3. Now theres two themes I prefer. If your a bit of an aesthetics person and you installed the Thinblack2 theme I showed above, then get the Aquatint Black theme.
   If you have the default AsusSilver theme installed or just like simplicity then I recommend the Whitehart theme.

I’m assuming you’re smart enough to activate the themes yourself.

Flashblock and Adblock Plus
This is one of the best addons in my opinion, because lots of webpages have unnecessary flash items which take extra time to load. As well adblock plus I would recommend.
Assuming firefox is open, go to Tools > Addons, click the extensions tab and then click the ‘Get Extensions’ link in the bottom right. Now search the two extensions I mentioned above and install them. For more tips such as these, a helpful page exists at this eeeuser wiki page.

Top

Minimize Openoffice toolbar size

The eeeuser wiki has alot of excellent information for maximizing screen space. This step was based off of information from this wiki post.
It is in your best interest to free up as much screen space as you can in any application that you use. I’ll show you how to do this in openoffice and you can use the same technique in your other favourite programs.

1. Open a terminal
2. enter the command openoffice and press enter
3. Go to Tools > Options and then expand the openoffice.org menu and choose view. After that change the icon style to small as per my picture below

Top

Add Icons

**Update Feb-2-2008** The Launch Tools project has been discontinued by the author however Easy Mode Editor is still going strong. I mention how to install it in my second guide here. ** Now your probably thinking “I installed all these great programs from the extra repositories, but what good are they if I have to execute them with a command in the terminal, or mercury. Well fortunately we can add the programs and icons of our choosing to the Tab/Section of our choosing. When I initially had started this howto document, I was planning to edit the simpleui.rc file made by asus, which contains the xml format configuration for the asus launcher. However I try to frequently go to eeeuser forums and keep up to date on the latest eeepc news and developments. Some community members have developed and are deeveloping a utility to add/edit/remove icons and tabs to the asus launcher. You can follow and keep track of those developments here and here. I will be using the altools for this tutorial because its add icon feature is currently working. Thanks to SublimePorte for such a great tool. They both plan to have more features but it takes time, as they add more, I’ll try update this tutorial as quickly as I can. Now lets install the AsusLauncher Tools.

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the commandwget http://www.3eportal.com/downloads/altools_0.3.1.debPlease note that this tool is constantly being updated, and I might not be able to update it as readily as I’d like, so you can always double check by going to the Project’s Webpage.
3. Now make the package executable (not sure if this is necessary, but it can’t hurt) sudo chmod +x altools_0.3.1.deb
4. Then enter the commandsudo dpkg -i altools_0.3.1.deb After the installation it will ask you to reboot or enter a command in the console. I just rebooted to keep it simple.

Ok, now we have a program that can add icons to our interface, but no icons. Now we have fairly large icons, so getting icons that are anything but high def would be a disgrace to all this effort we just put in to keeping this AsusLauncher interface. Again, the great users over at eeeuser have compiled a list of high definition icons for common linux program. This wiki entry can be found here. For the next part I’ll just show you how to add one icon and you can repeat the process depending on how many extra programs you installed. I used the GIMP icon zip file which I obtained from this eeewiki page. Rather than link to the domain on the wiki, I figure I’d be generous and use the bandwidth from my own website. Now lets add the icon.
GIMP

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the command wget http://www.infinitedesigns.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/gimp.zip
3. Now lets extract these with the command unzip -x gimp.zip
4. Now lets move these icons to the appropriate directory sudo mv /home/user/*.png /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/
5. Now before we add the icons we will backup our simpleui.rc which is an xml file containing all the tabs/icons. Enter this command to backup the file. sudo cp /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc.bak
6. Now close the terminal window and we will use the Launch Tools that we installed previously. Go to the Settings tab then the Launch tools icon. We are now brought to a Launch Tools sub tab. This is where we can choose the ‘Add Icon’ button. Now we are brought a window where we can input the settings. Additionally the icon we copied can be found in the default directory when browse is clicked. You can refer to my screenshot for the settings.
   

   Once done you can click ok. It will tell you it needs to reload. Click continue an your screen should flash. Then you also notice your window is still open. You can close this because your changed have already been added.

Now as you can see in my screen shot below, there is a GIMP icon in my Work tab, and when I click it, it executes the program as expected.