Chris Crockett – Gaming and Computer Geek

I am now officially dual-booting my EEE PC 900.  I’ve got Windows XP running on the internal SSD and Ubuntu rockin’ the SD slot.  Admittedly, most of this work was done by the fantastic folks at Ubuntu (which demonstrates that Linux is getting pretty close to general purpose usability) but there was a little bit of “off-the-map” configuration needed.  I started by following the instructions on the eeeUbuntu page to install Ubuntu to an SD card (a 4GB SDHC card for now but I’ll probably upgrade to a 32GB when the price drops a bit) but I did have one problem (okay, two, but one was a badly burned Ubuntu CD so that doesn’t count).  It seems that the “optional” step nine of upgrading the kernel is… less than entirely optional, at least on the model 900.  Maybe I just didn’t wait long enough for the generic kernel to scan the system but my first boot attempt on my EEE PC hung.
Fortunately, I was able to boot my desktop PC from the SD card and upgrade the kernel from there.  Now, I’ve got an entire second operating system for my EEE PC stored in the SD card slot.  Can I just say, that’s fantastic.