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What OS Do You Run On Your Netbook?
The web is rife with articles and blog posts citing statistics of Windows vs. Linux on netbooks. Nearly all of these articles mention the stats of the pre-installed OS from online and brick and mortar stores. A quick search of NewEgg.com yielded one netbook with Linux pre-installed and 63 running Windows XP. There were also another 15 running various versions of Vista. So it seems that those that desire to purchase a netbook running Linux have little choice from retailers.
Sure, some OEMs offer a Linux netbook on their sites. Dell offers a version of their Mini 10v with Ubuntu, but it's somewhat hidden off in a corner of their website. One must purposefully go looking for Open Source PC's in order to find it. HP is at least a little friendlier to the Open Source Community by not burying their Linux offering in the bowels of their website. HP's own Mi Linux distribution could be considered to be handicapped by some, though. Linux specific vendor System 76, of course, proudly proclaims their use of a GNU/Linux based OS.
Even with these offerings from some big OEMs, (and one small), there is a much wider variety of netbooks available that can only be purchased with a version of Microsoft Windows installed. Many netbook buyers have chosen to make their purchase based on the hardware and price with the knowledge that they can install their Linux distro of choice. Reading the MSI Wind forums indicates that this is indeed a poplular choice, while all the market research seems to ignore this segment of netbook users.
Because such a large segment of users has been left out, I have started my own non-scientific poll about netbook operating system usage. Let me know what OS is on your netbook by voting in the poll to the right.
Create a Button to Restart USB in Ubuntu
I've been using my HP w2207 flat panel monitor for some time now. My only frustration has been that I haven't been able to get the USB ports on the side to work unless I have a device plugged in when the computer boots. I think this is more the fault of Ubuntu than it is the monitor. Ubuntu just doesn't seem to care about a USB hub unless there is a device plugged into it. After a little searching on the web I found that a fellow blogger had posted a solution on Hack 2 Live.
Since my wife also uses this computer and she's not nearly as geeky as me, I figured I had better make this a little more automatic. The first step was to write a script to automate the USB restart. Copy the following text into a text editor and save it as /home/userid/bin/usb_reset.
#!/bin/bash## Script *usb_reset*. Place file in ~/bin. Make sure to make executable with "chmod +x usb_reset".# This script must be run as root to work. For desktop launcher, use command "gksudo /home/userid/bin/usb_reset". # Stop USBmodprobe -r ehci_hcd wait # Start USBmodprobe ehci_hcd exit 0
Now make the file executable. Open a terminal and enter the following commands.
chmod +x usb_reset
You can now try out the script with
If you had a USB drive connected to your hub, then it should have been recognized and mounted automatically.
Now we just need to create the button for our Gnome panel. Right click on the panel and select Add to Panel. Select Custom Application Launcher and click Add. Now in the Create Launcher window enter into the name field
and enter into the command field:
The USB icon should get selected automatically. Click OK.
That's it! You can now restart your USB devices with the click of a button. You will need to enter your password at the prompt if you haven't done any sudo commands recently.