I think I've finally settled on my software for the NB200; Kubuntu Netbook Remix. Here is a picture of it below that you can click on for a larger version.


Of the missing things in the NB200 line up, there is an audio output that goes out through the headphone port but there is nothing through the on-board speakers, nothing through the system speaker and no control over the volume. The only control is via the external speakers that I hook it up to. Also, there is no camera or bluetooth. I was hoping the camera would be there, like it was under Ubuntu netbook remix, but it looks like I'm out of luck.

Still, the main things are there that matter to me and I think it is nice cross between the standard menu structure and the minimalistic netbook remix. I really like this presentation. They've done a great job on it.

This is a really great and easy solution. At a console prompt, firstly type ...

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

...then when you want to download a YouTube video, simply change in to the directory where you want to download the video and type ...

youtube-dl -b http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUezmc-DvcA

The -b specifies maximum detail option to get the best quality possible.

Many computers have been 64 bit for some years now, but many people are running the 32 bit version of XP on them and not really getting the benefit. Consequentically, Adobe has been slow out of the gate with the 64 bit version of Flash, but they did release a beta late 2008 for Linux. This page has the download link for it. Unpack it and you'll find a file. Close Firefox and put the file in the plugins folder and away you go.


KNOWN ISSUES - This beta it is a bit power hungry so best to use a multi-core processor to share the load so it doesn't choke your machine.

If you loose the "cashew" at the right of the clock and also loose the see through Desktop folder that appears in the background of every window, like this, then help is at hand to get them back.



Go to your home folder and view hidden folders. In the .kde folder is another called "share" and in that is another called "config" - in here there are some files that start, "plasma-" and you want to rename some of them to .old and then restart KDE. Start with remaning the one called "plasma-desktop-appletsrc" and then log out and back in again. That should sort it out.

Why rename them and not delete them? In case something goes ga-ga and you need to rename it back again.

How to get Windows XP working under Ubuntu. This will show you how to get Virtual Box from this page, install and configure it.




DISCUSSION - In order to give the virtual machine a, "hard disk," of its own, you create a large file under Linux. That is then presented to XP as a hard disk which XP can then partition as it needs it.

I created a separate partition on my operating system specifically to house this large file; I gave it 40gig. The reason for this is because I made it a fixed disk. A dynamic virtual disk would change its size depending on how much space XP took up, but this adds an overhead which makes it slower to run. More on this in a future post.

You can share out a portion of your home directory structure so that both Linux and Windows can see it at the same time so it is a simple matter to share files between the systems. Just remember that if you create a text file in Linux, you will need to use Word Pad in Windows to read it; Notepad doesn't handle the end-of-line very well.

I decided to go for Kubuntu 64 bit because I wanted a half-decent, nice looking screen for a change, rather than the usual Gnome. Yes, Gnome is more efficient but I want something that looks nice for once, so I got a hold of Kubuntu 9.10 and installed it.

This is the starting journey in to installing and getting things runing.

Part 1 is a discussion about why I'm doing this. It is a talk about the philosophy.
Part 2 is a look at the things I use Winows.
Part 3 is a look at the manual partition handling.
Part 4 is the sound and twin-monitor problems and how they were sorted.

Ubuntu and Windows XP on the same machine, at the same time, running simultaniously - virtually seamlessly with a shared folder between them, the mouse moves seamlessly between them and the cut and paste works between them as well!!!



This wonderment has been brought to you by the Sun Virtual Box application for an operating system near you.