OK, I got coot running on my Asus eee 900 netbook. It turned out to be
reasonably simple.
I tried straight ubuntu first, and ran into a few problems. Fortunately
there is a version of ubuntu for eee, here:
http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/
In addition to various fixes and hardware drivers, it has a smaller font
and window decorations.
I followed the download and install instructions to create a bootable
USB stick with ubuntu-eee 8.04 on it. This was plugged into the eee, and
the machine started. Hit 'Esc' during the splash screen to get the boot
menu and select the USB stick - I found detecting this to be unreliable
- it may take a few attempts.
Ubuntu boots (slowly) from the stick, giving you a live system.
Next to install to the internal SD card - use the install icon on the
desktop, and follow through the wizard. I did a manual partition rather
than the normal guided partioning, for two reasons:
1. I wanted to use ext2 not ext3 to reduce wear on the SD card.
2. I didn't want to create a swap partition, for the same reason. The
eee 900 has 1Gb ram, so swap shouldn't be needed.
Let the install run. When it is done, remove the stick and reboot. Note:
the eee does not shut down properly, you may need to hold down the power
button for 5s at the end of the shutdown.
Reboot, and you should get a grub menu with the old OS and new ubuntu as
options. Boot into ubuntu. There are a few tweak to make:
1. Move fast changing directories onto tmpfs to reduce wear:
http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/index.php5?title=How_to:_make_the_fstab_changes
(the other changes are not needed)
2. Fix the shutdown problem:
http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/index.php5?title=Fix:_The_shutdown_on_hardy
No need to change the swapiness, because I didn't make any swap.
Finally, connect to the internet (wireless works fine), and download
coot (the ubuntu 6.06 build works fine on 8.04). Unpack and run.
Next problem is screen size. I right-clicked on the top and bottom bars,
properties, show hide buttons to allow me to hide the bars to make space
when running coot. Launch coot. The default window is much higher than
the 600px screen. Detach the refinement toolbar - then you can shrink
the coot window until it just fits on the screen. You'll probably want
to turn off desktop effects too (System/preferences/appearance).
Coot should work fine. Graphics performance is good - maps and models
spin just fine. CPU is adaquate.
Kevin
