Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Are all our eeePC users here sticking with the OS that came with it (be it Windows or Xandros) or using alternatives? and if so which ones and why?

Hi Stu,

Thanks for that. I had updated Xandros a couple of times and it meant it started calling devices like cards D: and E:, which was bad enough.
But in doing this they also broke the facility for making items on USB keys or sdcards executable.

Currently tweaking an ubuntu install......its nice to have a c compiler again :-)

Jon

Hi Stu,

(note Some of this veers off topic, if you are a diehard windows fan, suggest you read no further...)

The update that finally convinced me to drop xandros did two things....It called cards and usb devices D: and E: presumably to make it easier for Windows users who got confused by not having drive letters and removing the ability to run applications from cards/USB.

Linux/Windows General
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Ive been a Windows user for a long time, however for me Vista + dealing with a large document in Word was the final push I needed to look elsewhere. On the desktop I now run Linux but still have windows inside Virtualbox, mainly to run IE to configure certain makes of brain dead comms equipment.

I have managed to extract most of my data/documents etc from proprietary formats into cross platform friendly text or XML form.  Which is weird as it feels like you are getting your data back :-)

Its only after a few weeks using Ubuntu that you start to notice how bad the user experience and stability of windows actually is. (I would have to say hardware support for things like webcams is still a bit shakey, thanks to the manufacturers of such devices!)

I have a Windows partition still , mainly for when I want to do dev work relating to Windows/WinMob + hardware.

Ubuntu on the eeePC.....
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We had experimented here on one of our other eeePCs for a while and it seemed ok. Tried 7.10 and had a few problems with the camera. Now on 8 (Hardy) and all seems ok. Standard repositories to use , a wealth of applications to choose from, the support of a large community.

There are good instructions out there are on how to tweak the settings. In some cases you may to have to edit a text file, which for many of the point and click generation looks difficult, but thats an artifact of how we get de-skilled by things like windows...... (no doubt I'll attract criticism for not believing the world should be all point and click as well)

For the time being for schools I suspect Xandros is the better option just for the simplified interface. However if someone produced a nice similar front end for other distro's.......


Jon

Sticking wth Xandros as it "does what it says on the tin".

May change the OS at some point in order to lock it down, as if you know what you are doing it, it's a pretty open OS.

Some of our learners who have their own EeePC have installed Windows on there machines, in the main they said because they use Windows at college or at home.

James