As I said be­fore, the bas­tardized Xan­dros [1] sucked. In fac­t, I man­aged to de­stroy it. So I de­cid­ed to switch to an­oth­er dis­tro. Any dis­tro.

En­ter ee­eX­ubun­tu, a eee-­tuned Xubun­tu [2].

Since I pre­fer KDE to XFCE, I start­ed hack­ing at it, and pro­duced, IMVHO, a much nicer thing.

As you can see, it takes slight­ly less space than ee­eX­ubun­tu's de­fault, and a whoop­ing 1GB less than the de­fault dis­tro.

How did I do it? First, by de­cid­ing what I want­ed.

• No Open­Of­fice. Kof­­fice is enough to read doc­s, then there is Google doc­s, and I pro­­duce my texts us­ing do­cu­tils

• No print­­ing. I have not used a print­­er in 5 years. What are the odds I will use one from the eee?

• wicd for net­­work con­­fig­u­ra­­tion. It works for wire­­less/wired/en­cryp­t­ed and has no prob­lem what­­so­ev­er re­­con­nec­t­ing af­ter sus­pend.

• yakuake for ter­mi­­nal. It us­es the least screen-s­­pace pos­si­ble: none if you are not us­ing it.

• Fire­­fox + Flash (I would use Kon­­queror, if flash9 had not bro­ken it)

• Kmail + Akre­­ga­­tor for mail and RSS

It works great, boots in 35 sec­onds (and I have not tuned that, yet).

Here's the list of in­stalled pack­ages and here's the list of re­pos I am us­ing

Maybe some­one more en­ter­pris­ing will make a re­al dis­tro out of it.

I fi­nal­ly got my eee PC last sat­ur­day. It's the 4G Surf in Gal­axy Black [1].

Ev­ery­one says the same thing, and so do I: you can't un­der­stand how small the thing is un­til you see it.

And then ev­ery­one takes a pic­ture of it sit­ting in­side its pre­vi­ous note­book. So will I, 2 times.

Here's the eee with a HP Pavil­lion zd7000, which has a 17" widescreen:

Here's the eee with a Toshi­ba Satel­lite with a very un­usu­al 16.6" 4:3 ra­tio screen:

But is it the small­est note­book I ev­er had? Nope.

Here you can see the eee, a Toshi­ba Li­bret­to and a HP Jor­na­da 720 lay­ing over the HP note­book, so you can get an idea of how much small­er all are. The Li­bret­to is small­er but thick­er and feels heav­ier.

Re­gard­ing con­struc­tion qual­i­ty, the screen is de­cen­t, if you can live with the low res­o­lu­tion (I can). The key­board is ok, even though I have large fin­gers [2] and the gen­er­al con­struc­tion feels good (not creaky, no flex [3]), but noth­ing re­mark­able.

The soft­ware... it work­s. But I am loook­ing to re­place it with an­oth­er dis­tro AS­AP. Let's get in­to some de­tail...

1. Xan­­dros pack­­age avail­a­bil­i­­ty is abysmal. There's lit­tle, what's there is old, what I like is usu­al­­ly mis­s­ing, if you start pulling De­bian pack­­ages it will break, and if you don't want to use the Xan­­dros File Man­ag­er you may have to do evil stuff [4]

2. KDE 3.4 is worse than 3.5. There's no kopete?

3. The menus are in­­­com­­plete (in both the sim­­ple and ad­­vanced mod­­es). There are a bunch of things in­­stalled but not show­ing.

4. If you have on­­ly 4GB of stor­age, lit­­tle RAM, and a slow­ish CPU, build­ing from source is prob­a­bly not a good idea, so I can't in­­stall that way even if I felt like it.

5. No PyQt4? That means I can't blog from it :-(

6. On the oth­­er hand, ev­ery­thing in the eee works us­ing xan­­dros, and I don't know if it will on an­oth­er dis­­tro.

The on­ly changes I made so far are:

1. Switched to full desk­­top (KDE) mod­­e.

2. I got rid of the sil­­ly union­fs sit­u­a­­tion (BTW: I did it us­ing the in­­struc­­tions at http://wi­k­i.eeeuser.­­com, but used RIPLin­uX as the USB bootable dis­­tro, it's the eas­i­est of them al­l)

3. I re­­moved a lot of garbage (got 2.2GB free now)

4. Moved logs to a tmpfs

Oth­er than that, it's still the orig­i­nal stuff, and I have been us­ing it to work around the house while watch­ing the baby, and from bars, and such.

Hap­py­ness-me­ter: 8 out of 10 so far.

Net Ma­na­gers es una com­pa­ñia. Y yo soy so­cio. Y va a te­ner u si­tio, en http://www.­ne­t­ma­na­ger­s.­co­m.ar ... y no ten­go idea de qué po­ner ahí.

¿Có­mo tie­ne que se­r?

Acá hay al­gu­nas pis­ta­s:

• Los so­­­cios so­­­mos geeks Li­­nu­­x/U­­nix de un ni­­vel ba­s­­tan­­te ele­­va­­do, mo­­­des­­tia apa­r­­te.

• Nues­­tro ne­­go­­­cio es arre­­glar tus pro­­­ble­­mas de Li­­nu­­x/U­­nix, y ex­­pli­­ca­r­­te co­­­mo uti­­li­­zar Li­­nu­­x/U­­nix pa­­ra ha­­cer co­­sas in­­te­­re­san­­tes. ( o sea, so­­­po­r­­te y co­n­­su­l­­to­­­ría co­r­­po­­­ra­­ti­­vos so­­­bre Li­­nu­­x)

• Te­­ne­­mos una cu­l­­tu­­ra co­r­­po­­­ra­­ti­­va re­­la­­ja­­da y té­c­­ni­­ca. Ca­­da so­­­cio en­­ten­­de­­ría la bro­­­ma ace­r­­ca de po­r­­qué Na­­vi­­dad y Ac­­ción de gra­­cias son lo mis­­mo po­r­­que 25­­dec == 31o­c­­t. Pe­r­­fe­­ri­­ría­­mos que se no­­­te. No­r­­ma­l­­men­­te nos co­n­­tra­­tan los mu­­cha­­chos de IT, no los je­­fe­s.

• Ten­­go un blog y no es en­­te­r­­pri­sey pe­­ro creo que mues­­tra que sé al­­go de to­­­do es­­to. ¿Lo li­nkeo?

• No te­­ne­­mos ofi­­ci­­nas fí­­si­­ca­s. Le­­ga­l­­men­­te sí las te­­ne­­mo­­s, pe­­ro ca­­da uno tra­­ba­­ja des­­de una ofi­­ci­­na en ca­s­a, en dos pro­­­vi­n­­cias di­­fe­­ren­­tes. Así que no hay fo­­­tos de nues­­tros edi­­fi­­cios dis­­po­­­ni­­ble­s.

• So­­­mos una es­­pe­­cie de sta­r­­tu­­p, pe­­ro más bien so­­­mos una fo­r­­ma­­li­­za­­ción de una fo­r­­ma de tra­­ba­­jar que fun­­cio­­­na des­­de ha­­ce tie­m­­po.

Se acep­tan su­ge­ren­cias e idea­s.

Y por su­pues­to, con­sul­tas acer­ca de nues­tros ser­vi­cios ;-)

Po­de­mos ha­cer lo ha­bi­tua­l, mo­do de pan­ta­lla com­ple­ta, y esas co­sas, pe­ro pa­ra mu­chos si­tios 800 pixels es sim­ple­men­te de­ma­sia­do an­gos­to.

Se pue­de ha­cer que las pá­gi­nas "en­tren" me­jor en un an­cho li­mi­ta­do re­du­cien­do el ta­ma­ño de la ti­po­gra­fía. Una bue­na fuen­te de 8 pun­tos de­be­ría ser le­gi­ble en esa pan­ta­lla, ya que uno es­tá cer­ca de la pan­ta­lla.

Sin em­bar­go, eso no ha­ce na­da pa­ra di­se­ños ba­sa­dos en pixel­s, y por el ta­ma­ño de las imá­ge­nes.

Sin em­bar­go, des­pués de leer que Qt 4.4 in­clu­ye we­bkit y per­mi­te po­ner wi­dge­ts en un QGra­phi­cs­View, em­pe­cé a pen­sar, es­to es­tá mal.

Lo que uno quie­re con una pan­ta­lla li­mi­ta­da es tex­to en el ta­ma­ño nor­mal y la pá­gi­na en un ta­ma­ño me­nor.

Por eso mi idea es:

• Agran­­dar la ti­­po­­­gra­­fía. Ej: 12 pun­­to­­s.

• Mo­s­­trar la pá­­gi­­na en un wi­­dget we­­bkit de 1200­­x720 pixe­l­s.

• Po­­­ner el wi­­dget en una QGra­­phi­­csS­­ce­­ne, y re­­du­­ci­r­­lo 33%

El re­sul­ta­do es una pá­gi­na web com­ple­ta pe­ro que mi­de 800­x480.

Por su­pues­to se de­be­ría po­der cam­biar to­dos es­tos pa­ra­me­tros con un úni­co con­tro­l. Si la pá­gi­na es de­ma­sia­do an­cha pa­ra ver­la en 800­x480 con fuen­tes de 8 pun­to­s...

Pro­ba­mos 1000­x600 con fuen­tes de 10 pun­to­s, y re­du­ci­mos al ta­ma­ño de la pan­ta­lla.

Si­gue sien­do de­ma­sia­do an­cho? Pro­ba­mos 1200­x720, fuen­tes de 12 pun­tos y re­du­ci­mos 33%.

Po­si­bles ayu­da­s:

• De­­be­­­ría ve­r­­se me­­jor con fuen­­tes sin an­­tia­­lia­s, ya que la re­­du­c­­ción de ta­­ma­­ño ha­­ría las fuen­­tes con an­­tia­­lia­­sing de­­ma­­sia­­do bo­­­rro­­sas. Una fuen­­te an­­cha y abie­r­­ta se va a ver me­­jo­­­r.

• Las ba­­rras de scro­­­ll se van a ver apla­s­­ta­­da­s, creo. Pro­­­ba­­ble­­men­­te los che­­ck­­bo­­­xes y ra­­dio bu­­ttons se van a ver ma­­l. Pa­­ra arre­­glar eso se ne­­ce­­si­­ta ma­­gia mas avan­­za­­da que la mía ;-)

Por su­pues­to que ha­bría que pro­bar­lo, pe­ro cal­cu­lo que fun­cio­na me­jor que las al­ter­na­ti­va­s. Si tu­vie­ra un Py­Qt 4.4 lo in­ten­ta­ría yo mis­mo ;-)

I had to do a vry late night job yes­ter­day, so I am not go­ing to do it right to­day. Prob­a­bly wednes­day.