I am not very experienced in all the configuration with linux. One of them that gives me headache all the time is about the encoding (UTF-8, ISO, etc.) and the keyboard-layout (german, swiss german, us, etc.).

Now, I found out that I need to manipulate (tried on sidux, but should work on ubuntu and debian as well) three packages to ensure that my swiss-german keyboard layout is used on the ttys and within the graphical window system.

I used the following three commands (with root or sudo) and chose the “correct” stuff to make it work with my swiss german keyboard:

dpkg-reconfigure locales (choose only the necessary utf-8 stuff)
dpkg-reconfigure console-data (swiss german latin it is)
dpkg-reconfigure console-setup (swiss german latin it is)

I was asked the “right” questions to ensure that my language and my keyboard layout will work.

This blog entry is mainly for me to remember and all of you who just might to get a starting clue to get things done…

I finally decided to order an Asus EEE PC 901 (12 GB SSD with Windows XP preinstalled) a few weeks ago. Unfortunately – and that is maybe I am just too inpatient – there was no offer for the 901 with a 16 GB SSD and Linux preinstalled.

Nevertheless, I managed to actually install xubuntu 8.04.1 by copying the iso of the desktop-installer (not the alternative CD-iso) on a 4 GB USB stick using on of the many scripts available on the net (isostick.sh is it called).

The SSD is divided into a 4 GB SSD and a 8 GB SSD. I installed xubuntu on the 4 GB SSD and ended up with about 1.5 GB free disk while I am using the 8 GB disk as my /home. That all was done with the desktop installer I never used before, but was actually rather surprised how well it worked.

Not everthing works out of the box unfortunately. However, there is a website that helped me (and surely a lot others, too!) quite a lot. The website http://www.array.org/ubuntu offers a kernel-image which includes the necessary modules to make actually everything run smoothly so far. There are also scripts which can be used to make the buttons and special keys work as they suppose to. The webcam needed some more treatment as the BIOS disabled it be default. I had to enable it….

Well, I am running Xubuntu 8.04.1 with rather many pieces of software to make that little netbook a nice tool while on route. The next thing will be trying to get that Expresscard-Modem up and running…

I consider buying a netbook, one of those small thingies that run with an Atom Intel CPU and a SSD harddisk.
The latter is pretty important to me, because otherwise I could buy just a little notebook and give that a go.

I have not yet decided what kind of netbook I will choose and buy, there are plenty to choose out there. As a help I wanted to find out how much space Xubuntu and Ubuntu are going to use on the harddisk.

I am using virtualbox 1.6.4 and a fixed-sized harddisk of 8 GB to evaluate this. Before each df -h I clean the cache of all deb packages, hopeing that this will help to make the numbers a bit more trustworthy.  Furthermore I am using the 8.04.1 Xubuntu alternate ISO.

Of course these numbers are not totally accurate and I am sure there is a lot of tweaking possible. However, tweaking is what I want to do, not need to do because I run out of diskspace….

Diskspace needed after a clean install of Xubuntu 8.04.1: 1.6 GB
Diskspace needed after a clean install of Xubuntu 8.04.1 and updates: still 1.6 GB
Diskspace needed after installing some more software: 1.8 GB
Diskspace needed after installing some media stuff: about 2.0 GB
Diskspace needed after installing kopete and gftp: about 2.05 GB
Diskspace needed after installing ubuntu-desktop: about 3.1 GB
Diskspace needed after installing kubuntu-desktop: about 4.2 GB

Media stuff installed included some players (such as xine, mpeg123, vlc, etc.) and codecs (win32codecs, etc.), mainly also the restricted-stuff…
The additionally installed software included thunderbird, nmap, wireshark, mysql5.0, apache2, kernel-headers, virtualbox and some more.

Conclusion:
I can very well work with xfce and additional 400 to 500 MB worth of software. So after using about 2.1 GB I would still have about 10 GB (most of the netbooks come with a 12 GB SSB now) left for films, data and so on.