EEE PC, Part One

I finally got my EEE 901 today… After using it for a bit, my feelings about the pre-installed Linux system are somewhat mixed. The automatic update system tends to bog down the computer if you happen to be doing something else with the machine at the time (easy enough to disable auto update, fortunately) and their “add/remove software” thing is all “add” and no “remove”. I was excited to see multi-language input selection but then immediately disappointed again to see the only option apart from English, apparently, was Chinese.

Then there’s the large volume of junk installed on the system, and the lack of the stuff I really use. I don’t want “Learn Chinese” (though it seemed like a decent package, maybe) – nor TuxPaint (which seemed pretty crappy) nor TuxMath – don’t need a DVD player app with no DVD drive, and so on. But I do need xemacs, vlc, blender, and gimp.

So first step was to try using APT to get some new packages on there, and some of the old ones off. This worked alright for a bit, but after one of the updates I did (I think it was when I removed tuxmath…) the home screen stopped working… I thought maybe I’d accidentally removed the package that provides the home screen, so I tried to get it reinstalled – with the result that the drive filled up. I couldn’t remove packages because the installed packages weren’t configued, and I couldn’t configure packages ’cause there was no disk space. (I suppose I could have gotten around all that somehow… too late now, though.)

Now, to add insult to injury – I figure, drive filled up? OK, let’s delete something. “rm /usr/games/tuxmath”. The damn machine told me that it can’t remove the file because the drive is full. Please feel free to marvel at the idiocy of that all on your own. I have no idea how that happened – some weird combination of exotic or layered mounts, maybe? After that, the machine would reboot but I haven’t even been able to call up a terminal window. Seems I’m stuck for the moment.

It’s too bad, ’cause I kind of liked the home screen – I just wanted it a bit less cluttered. I suppose it’s just as well, though – I was planning to go to a different Linux distribution on the thing anyway. Now that’ll just have to happen now instead of later.