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The easiest way to install Ubuntu, or any distro at that, is to make a bootable flash drive to install from. From Linux or Windows you can download and install UNetbootin, which will automatically download Ubuntu and create a bootable flash drive. All you have to do is stick in a flash drive and select the distro and version you want (in this case, obviously, Ubuntu 8.10). Do not choose the 8.10 net install…emphasis on NET…just choose the Live version.

Once UNetbootin finishes, open your USB drive and do the following:

Delete SYSLINUX.CFG:

rm SYSLINUX.CFG

Rename the ISOLINUX directory to SYSLINUX:

mv ISOLINUX SYSLINUX

Enter the SYSLINUX directory:

cd SYSLINUX

Rename ISOLINUX.CFG to SYSLINUX.CFG:

mv ISOLINUX.CFG SYSLINUX.CFG

Now you have a working Ubuntu Live Flash Drive!

Insert your new flash drive into one of the *right* USB ports of your Asus eee 1000HA. I say right because they have been a lot more reliable for me when booting from USB, but maybe that’s just me.

Boot up your eee and push esc when you see the boot screen. This should bring up the familiar Ubuntu Live screen where you can pick whether to start a Live session or go to the Installation. Installation is the obvious choice here. The Ubuntu Installation itself is past the scope of this wiki, but you can find help at ubuntu.com.
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At some point in time, no matter how much you dread it, you will need to use Internet Explorer. That’s right, the same IE that comes from the evil Microsoft. I use it strictly to test websites, which is the only thing I recommend it for. Anyways, if you need to install it in Arch Linux, do the following.

Install IEs4Linux:

pacman -S ies4linux

That will automatically install Wine for you also, if you don’t already have it. Now that you have the installer installed, it’s time to install (say that 3 times fast):

ies4linux --beta-install-ie7

This will bring up a GUI to install IE 5 through 7. Now it’s as simple as hitting OK to install.

To launch IE6:

~/.ies4linux/bin/ie6

Here is my xorg.conf. I am using an ATI Radeon 9550 AGP graphics card in my Arch Linux box. I figured this may help some people who are having problems with fglrx.

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Upgrade Everything
When you install Arch you are installing a “snapshot” of where Arch was at the time that .iso was released. This means, depending on how recently it was released, many, many packages will be out-of-date. To update the entire system you only need to issue one, simple command as root:

pacman -Syu

Install Screen
Not only can you use screen instead of a window manager/desktop environment, you can use them together! Screen is always the first thing I install when configuring a new Arch install. It will allow you (if you know how, more on that here) to do multiple things at once, like edit your rc.conf while installing Eclipse at the same time. To install screen:

pacman -S screen

Install vim
Vim is the best CLI text editor. Period. Nothing else even comes close. Before editing ANY files or installing anything other than those previously mentioned, I must install vim. To easily install via pacman:

pacman -S vim

Edit Sudoers
Edit your sudoers file now or it will begin to piss you off, forcing you to stop being lazy, put aside anything you are doing, and enter:

vim /etc/sudoers

If you would like to be allowed to sudo anything, place

yourusername ALL=(ALL) ALL

on the line under:

root ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now that you have done this, instead of typing ‘su’ and then entering a root password everytime you want to install a program, you can just type:

sudo myRootCommand

and enter your password when prompted.
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Today I ditched Slackware completely. It used to be my number one, most used operating system. Until I found one that was better.

It all started when I got my Asus eee 1000HA. I installed a half-dozen different OS’s on it trying to find one that worked well with the weird hardware, and one that I liked. I just couldn’t find it. I tried Ubuntu with Adam’s kernel, gentoo, FreeBSD, Slackware, and Debian. Either it didn’t work with enough of the hardware or I just plain didn’t like it. Until I found Arch, which was about the same time that my mind was blown.

I never knew an OS could be so simple, yet extremely personal. There is now not a single program on my eee that I don’t want there. Not a single library. Not a single web browser. Everything that was installed was because I requested it to be installed. And it’s EASY! No, not to a n00b, but if you have decent linux experience, it is easy.

And the package manager! I really don’t like apt-get very much. I don’t mind sbopkg in Slackware, but it doesn’t find dependencies. But pacman (Arch’s pm) is simply amazing. It has support for rolling updates so you never need to worry about installing another release again.
“What’s that? KDE 4.2 was announced today? Let me install it, and while I’m at it I’ll just do a system update too.”
Types in terminal: # pacman -Syu

That’s it! I now have the latest kernel, KDE, and any other package on my system!

Give it a go if you don’t believe me.

Update: Arch just added kernel 2.6.28 to it’s core, meaning you can upgrade to this version with “pacman -Syu”. This also means you are eligible for the new filesystem, ext4.

First we are going to make a new directory to work with. I did this in my home folder.

mkdir ~/linux

Next download the 2.6.28 kernel to this folder. When that is finished, unarchive it with:

tar -xjvf linux-2.6.28.tar.bz2

cd  linux-2.6.28

Now to make the config file. (Notice that the $ before the pre is not actually typed, this indicates your regular user shell, while # means root shell)

$ make xconfig

Now we run:

$ make

Go get some coffee, this may take some time.
Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for, we get to become root! Under root, run:

# make modules_install

Better safe than sorry – just to be sure of the version, run:

# make kernelversion

Which should output 2.6.28. If it did, great, move on. If not…you messed up, sorry, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
I am not going to go in depth into the following commands, it’s just copying stuff to other places, pretty self explanatory. If you don’t know what’s going on, that’s OK just follow along.
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The first thing we are going to do is install BackTrack 3 onto an SD card so we can boot from the SD card without having to mess up our currently installed OS. I am not going to go into the details of how to do that here, as it is readily available all over the internet. Here is the article I followed. Apparently the article which I followed has been taken down, but a quick google search should find another.

After you have booted into BackTrack 3, we are ready for the fun part. The first thing we will do is shutdown our wifi card. In the terminal:

ifconfig ath0 down

Next we want to bring it back up, but in monitor mode:

airmon-ng start wifi0

You should see that a new interface called ath1 was created. That is the interface we are going to use for the rest of our cracking. Next:

airodump-ng ath1

This will list all of the wifi signals your card is picking up. There are two things you are going to want to write down: the BSSID and the Channel (CH), and also make sure the Encryption (ENC) is WEP. Or, if you don’t want to write thpre down, just open a new shell and leave that one open.

Now press

ctrl+c

to stop airodump-ng. Open a new console (if you haven’t already) and type:
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