Linux Mint on a EEEPC 1000H howto

Hallo! Yesterday I bought an EEE pc 1000H with windows xp preinstalled.

Obviously, I wanted to install Linux on it; I decided to try the Linux Mint distribution, a nice Ubuntu spinoff with some good customizations.

Base desktop

Here’s what you have to do if you want to get the same setup!

The first thing to do is to create an USB key with the system to be installed. It’s pretty straightforward:

1. download the ISO of LinuxMint from www.linuxmint.com

2. download the file fixmint.exe (fixmint2.exe), and put it on your desktop

3. plug your USB key (it’s important, do this before proceeding!)

4. run the fixmint.exe file, it will create a folder called LinuxM on your desktop

5. copy the LinuxMint ISO file into that folder

6. run the fixmint.bat file into that folder, it will ask you for the device letter of your usb key

7. when it ends copying files, safely remove the usb key and restart your system leaving the key plugged in

8. at this point, you can try to see if simply hitting esc repeatedly during startup brings up a boot menu to choose the device to boot from, and select the usb key. I wasn’t so lucky: even hitting ESC, I couldn’t bring up any menu. The solution is to hit F2 during startup and load the BIOS setup; there, go into the boot section, and you’ll see that the USB key is not seen as a removable device but… as a second hard disk! So, the default boot order (removable device, hard disk, atapi cdrom) is ok, but you need to change the order of the two hard disks. You need to look for something like “hard disk priority”, and invert the first and the second disk.

9. now, the boot should start from the usb key. When you see the Linux Mint desktop, click the install icon and the installation procedure will start. Follow the instructions, there are no particular issues here.

10. when you’re done installing, reboot the system. You will have an already usable environment, but without the wireless functionalities. Don’t worry, it’s easy!

11. to get the wireless, download the file RT2860_Drivers.tar.gz, extract it to a folder of choice, and start the ndiswrapper driver utility provided with Linux Mint (it should be called “windows wireless drivers”). There, click on “install new driver”, and select a “.inf” file from the folder where you unpacked the .tar.gz file. I choosed the WINXP2K subfolder, and it works flawlessly: ready to go!