Now we’re talkin’
I bought a new USB stick (8GB) for making a bootable stick for Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I tried following different instructions to create it with the Linux’s “dd” command. First it reported errors in data transfer, then after Kory’s help it transferred properly but I was faced with a non-effective bootable stick. I chose to boot off it but it just went right through to the normal boot-up. Gah.
(At this point, I managed to bork something bad enough that I ended up making a recovery stick for the original AA1 Linpus and installed it again. Because this worked, I trusted the problem was not with the stick as such but the creation of the bootable image.)
Today I decided to try it on Windows — and it worked! (trusty Windows 
)
Not that there was anything really wrong with Linpus (except that I couldn’t install a Pidgin version new enough to support ICQ and updating Firefox would’ve been such a hassle), but there’s something irksome about the super-simplified interface.
Now THIS looks like a proper computer OS:
Haven’t played much on it yet. I’m now retiring to the sofa to do just that.
[edit 8/3/2009] Here’s a sceenshot 
[/edit]
Sweet! Now I’m tempted…
Hmm, I wonder why it didn’t make a bootable drive from “dd”. I’ve only ever used it to destroy partitions, which apparently you learned the hard way. Not that I blame you, dmesg without a good grep string can be intimidating.
While it is an adorable machine, the Print Screen button takes a ready-to-save screenshot of the desktop (Alt+PrtSc for current window), which is just a shortcut for Accessories -> Take Screenshot. Also some cool little programs like Shutter for more options. I think you already read Lifehacker. They pick up on some great Linux stuff.
I don’t know what borked the computer. It probably wasn’t dd, though. I think it happened after I tried every boot option available; one of them being something about legacy network (I knew 100% it wouldn’t work but wanted to see what it was) and then it started giving me 2001 Space Odyssey errors (“Problem initialising HAL” or something) and stopped connecting to the wlan etc. I had already broken the native email application (and calendar and contacts which I didn’t use but the email bugged me a little) by installing a newer version of libpurple (trying to get Pidgin working) so I figured I could just re-install the whole thing (Linpus, that is).
I think I stumbled across a print screen application browsing the menus. However, when I took the photo I didn’t have the wlan set up, let alone the email (which I still don’t have set up…), not to mention any other sophisticated means to get the file transferred from Alvin to Sullivan (ironically, I didn’t think of my myriad of USB sticks at that point) — I hadn’t retired to the sofa yet, you see.
Then again, it’s rather worrying that my first instinct was to blog about it and not play with it…
I do read Lifehacker. Never had any reason to follow the Linux news but now I’ll have to browse the archives.
My audio is working now by the way. I have no clue what did the trick but I’m glad it’s working.
Kimmo, been to Verkkokauppa trying out the AA1 keyboards lately?
I can’t believe you still haven’t buckled. Maybe you should wait for the better models to arrive (unless they have already; I haven’t tried to look for the new products on their site, I don’t want any buyer’s remorse).
“Remove favorite”? Never seen it called anything but “Trash” before.
What made you go with the English UI language?
I’m kind of terrified of amateur translations. Mozilla (either the old school or Firefox) contained horrible grammatical errors which is why I’m nowadays using the English one even though my Windows is in Finnish. Bad grammar makes my head hurt. Now that I think about it, though, why didn’t I get the UK English version. If I wanted to change the UI language, would that mean re-installing the whole shebang?
Scratch that. Apparently it does change the UI language from the Language Support settings. Hurraah — now I’m seeing favourite instead of favorite. (We were taught UK English at school so that’s why I’m more familiar with its spelling).
I like UK pronunciations better, like “advertisement”. Rolls right off the tongue and seems to take less time to fit into a sentence. I refuse to ever say “Al-you-min-ee-um”. But UK spellings always add a letter, or replace the “z” with an “s”. I love a good “s”, but we use “z” so rarely already!
I’m slightly disappointed there aren’t any novelty languages like h4x0r or Pirate in Ubuntu, similar to Google or Facebook. Oh well, let’s see how fast I can learn Czech.