Just last Friday HP
finally released the installer for MIE, its clever and clean version of Ubuntu, and, though we warned about running it on anything but a Mini 1000, Dan from
Dan's Web threw caution (and whatever was currently installed on his netbook) to the wind and tried it on an Aspire One. Straight out of the box the OS and UI overlay seem to work quite well, as shown on the video below, missing only an audio driver but having WiFi and even Bluetooth. He suspects things will function just as well on other netbooks (since there's so much hardware overlap between them), but as always your compatibility may vary. To get in on the action you'll need the 900KB installer from HP, the 900MB image the installer will download, and a 2GB thumb drive to boot. If you have the necessary bytes, bits, and bravado, be our guest and let us know how it goes.
posted Feb 9th 2009 7:29AM
cool! will try that today! :)
it took forever to load... more than 30s
i was hoping it would take under 20s
900MB...? Isn't Linux supposed to be lightweight? That's bigger than XP...
There is 200MB of HP fluff in there - the standard Ubuntu install image is less than 700MB and fits on a CD.
Plus, a Linux distro such as this comes with much more than XP - ie all of your drivers, Open Office, and dozens of other apps and services.
ahem, no, Linux is not meant to be lightweight, it's meant to be a full-blown operating system. However, there are thousands of distros out there from which you can choose from to satisfy your needs. And yes, HP's MIE is still lightweight compared to XP. Have you even seen how much software it packs ? What does XP come preinstalled with ? IE, WMP and WordPad... the same thing ? don't think so...
"...no, Linux is not meant to be lightweight, it's meant to be a full-blown operating system."
So like the last 4 years of hearing Linux fans piss and moan about how *BLOATED* XP is compared to their super light Linux was just... what? Lies?
@AVG
With the advent of easy GUI's such as nLite or vLite bloatware isn't a problem anymore for Windows OS. but like i've said before, Linux, through it's open-source nature is customizable. If you have your heart set on remastering your favorite distro to include your most common used software and make a 8Gb installation image then go ahead, noone's stopping you ! However, if you're really keen on comparing XP with any modern polished Linux distro, then yes, you will come to the conclusion that while still competing with modern Windows releases major Linux distributions are far more functional and productive out of the box than your retail XP + SP3 install while still managing to keep low resource requirements.
I could go on for days on this topic. What you should remember is that indeed Linux can be far more lightweight than Windows OS. For future reference try not to compare thousands of Linux distributions with basically 2 currently adopted (non-server) Windows OS (XP and Vista). Remember, Windows XP was released in 2002 based on a kernel from 2001 and Vista isn't quite a MS strong-point...at least not performance wise. To me comparison is futile...
"For future reference try not to compare thousands of Linux distributions with basically 2 currently adopted (non-server) Windows OS (XP and Vista)."
...new to Engadget, are you?
"...no, Linux is not meant to be lightweight, it's meant to be a full-blown operating system."
"So like the last 4 years of hearing Linux fans piss and moan about how *BLOATED* XP is compared to their super light Linux was just... what? Lies?"
No, it was just you giving a bad interpretation to what you heard for 4 long years. And no, Linux per se isn't "meant" to be anything; not lightweight, nor a full-blown OS.
Ubuntu is meant to be a full-blown operating system, and compared to XP, the same amount of space will give you much more functionality.
Damn Small Linux, for example, is meant to be lightweight, and will never exceed 50MB in size, while giving you a lot of functionality.
In my mind, "lightweight" goes well beyond physical size. However, my full Fedora and Ubuntu installs are smaller than XP, once I add all the stuff to XP (office, Firefox, Java, Flash...all that other crap that you have to hunt down on a fresh windows install). But even if you ignore the fact that most common full-bodied linux distros include a lot of other software, making them bigger, the key is performance. My dual boot computers run more efficiently and responsively in Fedora or Ubuntu than they do with XP or Vista. So if you take lightweight to mean HD size...well you're arguably still wrong. But if you look at resource use, then yes, Linux distros typically are relatively lightweight.
its the acer aspire one thats the best -
anyone know if this OS could be installed to a flash drive? I have an 8gb Lexar ExpressCard SSD (i know they are slow) on its way, and I was going to install Ubuntu on it because they have an easy way of installing it on a flash drive.
Also can this OS be booted in a live way (loads into memory instead of installing to hdd)?
Thanks
~Fletch
Does anyone here know how to create a bootable usb device (and it need to be more straight forward than the options you find when you google bootable usb)
this wouldn't happen to work really well with touch screens would it???
It works really well on my Lenovo S10 as well. Drivers for everything worked out of the box, although I had to switch the audio settings to OSS, rather than ALSA. It does seem a bit slower than running a normal Ubuntu distro.
HP's MIE is actually just a customized version of Ubuntu's own MID version, at least that's what I believe it to be. I tried this on my XPS m1530, but it didn't work after rebooting. It would say something about using the adduser command, but would ask for a password which would never be correct. =[
I'm inspired... I think I'll drag my compquack out and put hp's linux on it!!! Why didn't I think of that earlier???
come on it is only slightly modified, but in a way where it looks "cool"
Thing about the recovery is that it will wipe your disk, and looks like a rather nasty hackjob.
I mounted the recovery image, and the rootfs + bootfs inside of it, put the contents from them on a new partition (created with gparted)
Next i created a new script in the initrd (hint: its a gzipped cpio newc archive) that mounts the partition i specified instead of the funky disk scanning they do (which doesn't work in anything other than their default setup)
then copy the lines from the mie boot/grub/menu.lst to your existing /boot/grub/menu.lst so you can boot it.
Honestly I don't like the UI, its pretty, but is better suited for touchscreens / pen displays
I prefer running xterm fullscreen with ratpoison.
While i meant check it out for my AAO i just installed osx and got everything working so its not realy worth it to me right now. Anyways isnt there some cloud os coming out specifically for the AAO anyways. I mean Hp isn't evil but they can't even put any full screen pics on their website for this.
Just installed, but the wired network doesn't work, along with the sound. Kind of stuck here at work with no wireless. Everything else seems pretty good though.
I did this like two days ago. I used dd to load the recovery image onto a 1GB flash drive. NB: HP's tool requires 2GB or greater.
Everything went smoothly. However the only things that did not work was the Ethernet and wireless. I played with the interface, as nice as it was, I found it very sluggish. Back to Slax 6.0.9 I go go.
Thanks for watching the video!!!
Don't forget to check my website http://www.dansweb.me
now only wish that it could turn into live distro. ;-)
I just tried to run this setup on my EEEPC 701. I set the BIOS to "Start" , booted to the USB. Installation said it was successful, I removed the USB, Set the BIOS to "Finished" and when it rebooted, was left at a black screen with the blinking dash in the upper left corner. I have attempted it a few times now both with BIOS settings changed and unchanged with the same effect. Anyone else have any luck? Tested on EEEPC 701 with 4gig SSD and 2gig RAM.
you have to change the 1st boot device back to HDD,then everything will work fine^^
Wow! thats awesome! its really cool, i will surelty try it! Thank you Dan!
Has anyone tried running HP MIE distro on AAO and still manage to have audio working??
Did anyone found out how to make the wireless and audio work on th AAO after installing HP MIE ?
A lot of people above were discussing about be Linux lighter or not and I guess the focus on the main topic was left aside
Thanks
Hi. I've successfully installed HP MIE on my Acer Aspire One 110. Hope can be of some help here. If you have done a little "googling", you'll see that the HP MIE is really just a modified UBUNTU Hardy Heron (8.04.1). It's easier if you do your research in this direction, rather than te HP MIE, because it's so new, there isn't as much info as the Ubuntu. You'll be overwhelmed by the number of Ubuntu community forums.
I figure the audio & wifi are of utmost importance, so here they are:
1. I'm connected to the internet by the wireless router I set up at home now. So wifi is working. However, the wifi LED light, which blinks or light up according to wifi traffic, is dead, so as the on-screen notification when turning on/off. To figure out if your wifi is switched on, you just have to try.Sorry I can't recall the exact procedures, since it involved LOTS of trial, a number of times of rebooting (because the network icon at the bottom right notification area DISAPPEARS when I click on the desired wireless network! NO KIDDING. So when you succeed, DO NOT CLICK ON IT. Or you might have to reboot again. However, it did required some of the following steps:
Setting(Top right of Home Screen)-->System-->Network
A window comes out, double-click on 'Wireless Connection"-->check the "Enable automatic (something)" box.
Home Screen-->Bottom right Notification area-->Click on the "Network" icon (2 monitors stuck together)-->"Connect to other wireless network"
Hereon is really typical wifi configuration.
(Next is to get the sound working. You'll need to be online for it. Because it requires some downloading)
######## it requires some "sudo" tweaks onto your system. Please do not blame me for any errors caused. This caution is communicated, responsibility waived. I just want your AAO to work like mine does. :)
2.OK, NO SOUND!!! In order to make your AAO play music & video, it requires some knowledge in command lines. Don't worry, I'm just a newbie in Linux, I can do it, so do you.)
Go to the following website in your Internet browser:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne#Install%20Ubuntu%20Hardy%20Heron%20(8.04.1)%20on%20the%20Acer%20Aspire%20One
Follow the instructions as listed under Step 2 (a long way down, find AUDIO) do as it says.) If you do not know where to copy&paste those command lines, simply press Alt+F2 to open a dialog. Here, you should check the 'Run in terminal' box. Minutes after that, there will come a point where you should type "y" when a Yes/No question is prompted in the terminal window. Remember to press "Enter" afterwards. Some more minutes after that, "Done!" appears at the bottom of the terminal window, no more dancing text.
Somehow my AAO works even after restarting, without doing the "/etc/modules" part.
If you want to, just type in"etc/modules" in the Command Dialog (Alt+F2), do NOT check "Run in terminal", then click RUN. Copy&paste the line at the bottom of the window. Save before closing.
Now, try restarting your AAO. Your machine should work. I'm not 100% sure, because I have VLC player installed before all these, although I really think the VLC does not matter here.
Beware of the Sound configuration which is quite confusing. You can see Sound in "Settings", also you can go to another Sound config window by clicking the speaker icon in the notification area. Just keep trying.
P.S. the hotkeys on the keyboard works, with on-screen notification.
SORRY FOR THE POOR ENGLISH, AND THE LENGTH OF MY COMMENT. HOPE THIS IS HELPFUL. GOT THESE BY 28 HOURS OF GOOGLING. :)