Inserted into .bashrc

export PS1=’\[\033[02;36m\]\u@\h \[\033[01;39m\]\W \$ \[\033[00m\]‘

How did I install it?
Not hard at all. Create a bootable USB, copy the files over and BAM boot it up. I used a 4gb flash drive (Windows 7 Ultimate).

Did it work?
Oh yes. The OS runs smoother than full XP Pro SP3 (non 4gb ssd, it’s the 16gb linux pc), more fluid and less SSD lag during normal use. Sure it slows down during write/read intended operations like updating and saving/copying files but that’s expected. I would even say it even feels smoother than Win2000…

It boots fast enough and runs rather comfortable once up. I have not tweaked it in any way. IE8 is a hog to run and was annoyingly buggy at the asus website, but firefox runs smooth and was much more functional.

Drivers
Right after the main windows setup I ran windows update, it takes care of the video, ethernet and wireless drivers iirc. I then downloaded the latest BIOS, Asus Update Utility and ACPI- and Chipset drivers. I ran all of it in XP SP3 compability mode and as administrator, just to be sure.

So far, so good
After install I have about 7 GiB left and most things seem to work. I have not tested the camera, but the device manager shows no errors after the chipset and acpi driver setup. Sound worked out of the box. Suspend works, have not tested hibernation, gonna test it. Eth and wifi works. Hotkeys works, all of them – with proper OSD messages.

Tomorrow I’ll test hibernation and a 16gb SDHC card to install applications on or just use as storage space.

Update
Hibernation works, and the 16gb SDHC card is surprisingly quick and functional. I had a small glitch where the battery gave me some misguided information to begin with, but seems fine now.

I’m happy with the result and I’m going to keep the system on the eee 900 for now.

127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost       the_hostname
x.x.x.x    subdomain.realdomain.net   the_hostname

The rest of the file might look like this:

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

You can find it here.

Code used to detect ip and proxy (PHP):

if ($_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]) {
  if ($_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"]) {
    $proxy = $_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"];
  } else {
    $proxy = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"];
  }
  $ip = $_SERVER["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];
} else {
  if ($_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"]) {
    $ip = $_SERVER["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"];
  } else {
    $ip = $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"];
  }
}

For those interested in trying out Win2000 on their EEE, read on.

###########################
My Windows 2000 Professional experience.
###########################

Before installing
——————
I had somewhat high expectations for having better performance results with Windows 2000 than I have experienced with XP pro. I recently borrowed a XP designed version of the EEE PC, and even there it was equally slow for normal use. Unusable I would say for even just listening to music and browsing the Internet. XP does too much read/write work “behind the scenes” and that puts you straight in the SSD bottleneck. Even with the most nLited version I could conjure without nerfing the system too much for taste.

After installing
—————-
It’s fast.

It takes 55 seconds to load up entirely, from the moment I push the power button. This is a NON-nlited version, FULL original install from a legal disc I have with Windows 2000 Professional. When it’s done booting up, it performs faster than anything I have tried on it. I want to say it’s faster than Xandros, but I can’t really say.

Battery
——–
I finished the install yesterday, and am now testing the battery lifetime. It looks like it will last about 2 hours on an average basis with light/normal use, but this is not of major importance to me, as I don’t mind having to use external power for anything above 30 minutes on nearly any laptop.

Performance
—————
This is a full install of Windows 2000 Professional, and I can almost not even sense the slow SSD speeds by performing normal user tasks. Updating it to SP4 and all the security updates took a long time, but that’s the only thing I can think of that reminded me of the SSD drive. Other software I have installed so far is:

ASUS drivers (all works after you upgrade to SP4, I have turned off webcam in bios as it is of no interest to me to have it).
VLC – Videlan
Internet Explorer 6
Mozilla Firefox
Opera (I’m a webdeveloper, it’s a nice machine to test out browser incompability on with several browsers).
MSN 7
iTunes
Quicktime

Summary
———–
It’s simply fast. In my opinion the eee pc were made for the Win2000 operating system. I notice little to no lag at all when using the machine for normal tasks. Surfing the net, listening to music, checking mail, talking on MSN. It’s quick to use right after boot. Everything works, also hibernation/suspend if that’s desirable.

This was meant to be a test only, but I have no intention of recovering the Xandros system just yet, as it’s running so well right now. I notice that I want to use pc more now than before, for both small tasks and beside the workstation, simply because it works very well now with little to no SSD lag.

I  would give win2000 on the eee pc a 9/10 rating if I could. XP a 2/10 rating(even on dedicated eee pc’s). Debian/Xandros 7/10 rating.

###########################
How I installed Windows 2000 Professional.
###########################

How to install (should also work with XP)
———————————————-
Make a USB boot drive with the HP tool, copy win98se bootdisc files to it + xfdisk and aefdisk.
prepare a USB drive with a copy of the Windows 2000 installation files.

1. Boot with win98se-bootdisc USB (remember the tools xfdisk and aefdisk).

2. Partition with xfdisk.

3. Format the new partition and make it bootable with format.com
(I used the command ‘format d: \q \s’)

4. Make the partition bootable by writing a MBR with aefdisk (or else you’ll get the Error 17 message)
(I used the command ‘aefdisk 2 /MBR’)

5. Reboot with SSD, it is now C: instead of D:, run ’smartdrv’ then go to the i386 directory of the USB drive with the copied Windows 2000 installation disc, and run ‘winnt’.

Then you just follow the installation procedure. Enjoy.

Resources for getting the tools I used:

A floppy drive simulator from
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html#top

A good win98se custom (no ramdrive) bootdisc creator from
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.0.6
http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

xfdisk from
http://www.mecronome.de/xfdisk/

aefdisk from
http://www.aefdisk.com/

After using the HP tool with the virtual floppy drive as source for dos files, you now have a bootable USB flash drive that works as a win98se boot disc. Remember to copy all the files from the virtual floppy drive as the HP tool does not add all of them. Remember to add ‘aefdisk’ for writing MBR and ‘xfdisk’ for partitioning the SSD.

Use another USB drive where you copy the files from the Windows 2000 professional disc. I suppose you could even use the same drive, and just copy the i386 folder from the installation disc to it.

I hope this can be helpful or interesting for those who might be interesting in trying the Win2k system on their EEE.

I posted this article as well over on the EeeUser Forum.

-

-

XP
When I first got the computer I decided to try XP on it. It quickly became obvious that it would be a bad idea to continue on that path as my Eee doesn’t have the speedy 4gb SSD required to run XP fast enough.
My notes on installing XP

Debian
The computer already came with linux, but I wanted to see if I could put my own tailored Debian system on it and get it to work – it went very well.
My notes on installing Debian

I mainly did these installations out of curiosity and as a fun challenge. As the dust settles from bashing the keyboards for many hours while setting up different configurations, it becomes clear that the original Xandros system is more than good enough for this computer, and works perfectly fine for a netbook’s purpose.

A simple terminal and apt-get with custom repositories is all I need to turn the original Xandros into what I need (extra applications) when I bring it with me. The rest has been done very well by Asus.

Restoring the orginal system took only 5-10 minutes from a USB drive created from the CD’s that came with it, as I initially deleted the partition needed to restore with F9 during boot. It could not have been any easier, and I’m glad I got rid of the extra needless partitions that were on the computer initially.

A happy ending for the Eee adventure with Xandros!

I decided to install Debian (“Lenny” release) with XFCE 4 on it – worked like a charm. SSD responsive speed was not an issue anymore. I was also amazed on how far linux desktops have come the last 4-5 years. No more fiddling around with the X configuration, it just works.

I didn’t do much manual configuration at all, apt-get with its super cow powers did very well without any errors. Here are my rough notes for installing linux on the Eee 900 16gb SSD version.

Install debian base system (lenny) installer from wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePc (expert install)

add vga=788 to /boot/grub/menu.1st (kopt)

update-grub

apt-get update

apt-get install locate

apt-get install xorg xfce4

(You start xfce4 correctly with ’startxfce4′ and not ’startx’).

#BATTERY
apt-get install xfce4-battery-plugin
Right-click the panel in xfce > Add New Items
Add the Battery Monitor
Right-click plugin > Properties for the properties dialog

#WIFI
Just add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://apt.wicd.net lenny extras

You’ll also need to add the key used for signing Wicd by running the following command in a terminal:

wget -q http://apt.wicd.net/wicd.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

apt-get update and apt-get install wicd to install Wicd

Remove eth0 lines from /etc/network/interfaces

#SOUND
apt-get install alsa
run alsamixer
add volume mixer to xfce4 panel
Change the value VOLUME_LABEL to Master in /etc/default/eeepc-acpi-scripts

By now most Eee specific things seems to work, though I have not tested webcam.

Here are the instructions for Webcam from wiki.debian.org:
##########################################
Webcam (uvcvideo)

Ever since kernel version 2.6.26 there is no need to build uvc module which is now included in.

Become root and type the following command:

modprobe uvcvideo

Then test it’s working by executing:

Become root and invoke the following command:

apt-get install luvcview
As normal user you can now make use of your web cam tool
luvcview -f yuv

The camera is switched off by default after the installation. You can enable it in the BIOS, or by doing:

echo “1″ > /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/camera

You should see messages about the camera being detected if you do:

dmesg | tail

If you broke your webcam settings, use mplayer -fps 30 tv:// once to restore them.
########################################

#BROWSER
apt-get install iceweasel
1. Open “about:config” in IceWeasel’s address bar.
2. In the “Filter” box, type general.useragent.extra.firefox.
3. Where you see the word “Iceweasel”, right-click and pick “Modify”
4. Then replace the word “Iceweasel” with “Firefox”.
5. Close the page (or the tab).

#BROWSER2
Iceweasel was hard to combine with quicktime and flash, to make it simple I did:
apt-get install wine
Then you can just download windows versions of firefox, flash and quicktime(and itunes) like normal,
xfce will take care of the rest when you execute them – it will be as easy to install as in windows.
BUT – quicktime has a tendency to act up and be laggy and bug stuff up at times.

#MISC
Uncomment kernel.printk = 4 4 1 7 in /etc/sysctl.conf, then run sysctl -p
This avoids kernel spam, in my case the HAL daemon spam at boot which cluttered the login prompt.

Add ‘clear’ to /etc/rc.local (above exit 0) to have a clean login prompt at boot after all boot messages.

All done. Debian (Lenny) with Xfce4 is up and running nicely and everything seems to work – and fast! at least compared to XP. It’s very comfortable to use now and I’m rarely reminded of the slow SSD speed.

I’m still curious on how windows 2000 would run on it, as I _greatly_ improved the speed on an old laptop once by replacing XP with Win2k on it.

HP provides a nice tool for creating a bootable USB drive. Here is a compressed zip archive with the tool and a clean set of dos boot files for you to use together with it.

- Update 12th of November 09
Just want a bootable USB?
If you only need to make the USB flash drive bootable in itself without any dos files – eg. for a Windows installation of some type – then WinToFlash is an excellent choice.

WinToFlash will format your drive so it becomes bootable for any windows installation, and it will even copy the installation files from a source to your drive for you if you want.

I used it recently to install Windows 7 on a laptop that had dvd issues.

The original system seems to work nicely on such a small screen, and Asus has done a good job on tweaking Xandros to work properly with their drivers. But before I can enjoy the existing system I want to see what this little thing can do. After playing around for a short while I decided to try XP Pro on it.

Preparing the install
I could not use my normal cd since the eee pc simply does not have a cd or dvd player, I don’t own an external drive and I don’t want to buy one either when I can just use USB.

Tools I used
usb_prep8 – Wizard for writing xp source to USB.
PeToUSB – Used by usb_prep8 to format USB correctly.
bootsect – Used to write a boot sector on USB.

Download
The files are available here in a zip archive I created for instant use.

Pre-install information
On most the guides I’ve seen on the web, people use nLite to first strip their installation thinking it will increase their performance greatly. You DO NOT have to do this, the Eee PC 900 is MUCH MORE than strong enough to run a full XP Pro installation. I rather have a lot of native support in the system than saving a few greedy megabytes of space.

The ONLY bottleneck for the Eee PC 900 that matters and that will slow XP (as with any other OS) down in any way are the SSD writing/reading speeds at around 20mbit/s. This is slow and you WILL notice it more than often.

USB Setup if using usb_prep8

1. Download the tools above.
2. Unzip them into a random folder.
3. Insert in a USB drive of 1gb or more.
4. Start usb_prep8\usb_prep8.cmd
5. PeToUSB will pop up, format the USB with LBA enabled like this.
6. Close PeToUSB when done.
7. From the command line (Start->Run->CMD) run the following command from the bootsect folder: bootsect /nt52 H: (replace H: with your USB drive letter).
8. Continue with the usb_prep8 window and choose 1 to select the drive where you have prepared your XP installation source – an iso image mounted through daemon-tools or a cd/dvd.
9. Choose 3 to select your USB destination drive.
10. Choose 4 to begin.
11. Answer yes on all questions that follows. (format ramdrive, copy to usb, use as boot, unmount virtual drive.)
12. USB setup is done. Copy service pack, updates, drivers and additional files you want to bring along to the USB.

Summary setup
The procedure above will format your USB, create a boot sector on it, copy your XP installation source file to it properly by using a temporary virtual drive.

Alternatively, I suppose you could just format the internal SSD and transfer the files and run it from there, which would probably be best to keep the installation entirely clean. Just remember to run smartdrv.exe before you start the installation from i386/winnt.exe to speed things up.

Booting your USB if using usb_prep8

1. The USB will give two options, TXT or GUI. Choose TXT.
2. Delete all partitions and create a new one.
3. Reboot and choose TXT again to get the C: letter on it.
4. Install files etc, on next reboot choose GUI.
5. On the next reboot, choose GUI again. Make sure you boot from the USB still.
6. Complete setup, You’re done.
7. Keep USB for backup repair etc. On every boot you will have the chance to boot with USB to use repair, you can remove this option by editing c:\boot.ini

Summary installation
You’re done with installation and can now install the latest drivers from ASUS and start tweaking.

Tweaking XP after install
If the computer had e.g. a 7200rpm ide drive, we would not have to tweak anything as the computer itself is quite strong enough for XP. Here are a few things you can try to speed things up with the slow internal SSD drive:

• Turn off system restore.
• Turn off the indexing service (the service itself).
• Turn off NTFS journaling timestamps to prevent extra SSD activity.
• Adjust visual effects for best performance.
• In firefox visit about:config and set browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0 to make stop it from caching sites you are not visiting.

You forgot about turning off swap/pagefile!
Actually, this will not eliminate all paging. Binaries (EXEs and DLLs) and memory mapped files that are not backed up by pagefile will still page in and out as necessary. So if the system really wants to free some RAM it will always find something to page out. Running without pagefile only restricts what it can choose from.

A good reason to keep a nice pagefile going:
A lot of stuff that is normally paged out to and rarely if ever paged in will now sit in memory all the time, reducing the amount of RAM that’s avaliable for other purposes. Keeping it in the pagefile does not mean the SSD will get written to more.

The above information about swap and pagefiles comes from MSDN blogs almost directly from those who work with memory management.

Command, enter this in the main directory of your search.

for /F "usebackq" %i in (`dir /b /s *.asp`) do find /N "John Wayne" %i >> searchresult.txt

Where you change the following values to make your search:

*.asp with the type of files you want to search through, e.g. *.* (all files), *.txt (all text files).

“John Wayne” with the search term you want to search for within the files.

searchresult.txt with the file you would like to save your result in.