Source: www.notebookreview.com<

Easy to disassemble, easy to upgrade, and easy to create warranty headaches is probably the slogan many advanced users will be thinking soon after they get their hands on an Asus Eee PC. During our initial review we realized that this device had so much more potential than what we had first expected. Not counting the storage limitation, this little machine was as powerful as notebooks four to five times its price. The Xandros Linux environment could be expanded with more traditional programs, and better yet this device could fully support Windows XP out of the box. We also wanted to touch on upgrading the Eee PC, since its stock configuration doesn’t really have as much ram as what you would want for more stressing software.

Some users will probably enjoy the minimalistic Linux environment included on the Eee PC out of the box, and not want to drastically change anything ... just add a few programs. Jerry, our site editor, fell into this crowd and found that one program lacking from the Eee PC out of the box was Gimp, a photo editor. You could see mentioning of this program if you tried to open image files, but it was a dead link that would introduce you to a helpful error stating “Could not find the program 'The'”. Needless to say it got our hopes up, but left us wanting more.

The First Hack: Adding Programs

One simple (simple for some users comfortable with using a text editor) way to add programs such as Gimp is to gain root access to the console, edit a file, and tell it to install the program. Below are the step-by-step instrucions:

Click on the “Work” tab and open the file manager.

Inside the file manager click on the “tools” option in the menu bar, and select the option to open a console window.

In the console window type “sudo bash”, and click enter.

You now have root access. Type “nano /etc/apt/sources.list”, which will load a simple text editor to edit this file. In the file that loads you will see two lines listing Asus servers that the Eee PC uses to pull in software applications over the web. You will want to add an additional server, by moving the cursor down an additional line (press down till you hit the last filled line, then press end, then hit enter). Then type in “deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/4.0/pkg xandros4.0-xn main contrib non-free”, and save your work. Press ctrl+x, and click “y”.

With that added, you can now install Gimp (and other applications inside that group). First you will want to refresh your notebooks software list by typing “apt-get update” and press enter inside the same root console. Once that has completed, type “apt-get install gimp”, which will prompt you for a “y” a couple of times.

After that the Eee PC handles the download and installation itself, and you are home free. Gimp is now installed on your system, and you can edit images by right clicking them and selecting Gimp as the program to edit them the same way you choose "Open with" on a Windows computer.

Using this same method you can install countless other programs (even more using other server sources) if you feel the need.

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