Asus EeePC 8G 702 Installation

[awd-s]

In this post, I document the installation of PCLOS Phoenix on my EeePC 8G Netbook. I like the clean lines of Phoenix with xfce. Here's the general outline to getting the Phoenix to take flight:

• Press ESC while the BIOS splash screen is displayed to get the boot menu.
• Select the boot device attached to the netbook, either CD or USB or SD card. I booted from a live CD
• Select install PCLinuxOS from the Phoenix edition live CD menu.
• Follow the prompts of the installation Wizard.

After completing the Wizardry, I was able to log-in and encounter two problems:

• I discovered that I couldn't su to root because my password included some alpha characters that shared the numerical keypad embedded in the regular keyboard. I realized that Num Lock happened to be active after first log-in. Once I turned off Num Lock with the Fn-F11 keystroke sequence everything worked as advertised.
• While the Phoenix splash screen filled the width of the display, the X11 desktop displayed with a half-inch gap on each side, reducing further an already small screen area.

Before looking into the screen width problem, I ran Synaptic to upgrade the software after connecting to the Internet via my DSL WiFi. All went well. I rebooted and still had the same desktop width problem.

After fiddling about with the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for a little while with no success at a console terminal, I remembered from trying to solve a screen resolution problem with Bodhi Linux that the latest kernel doesn't need xorg.conf now that display discovery is built-in.

I deleted the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and rebooted the machine. After log-in, the desktop displayed properly, occupying the full width of the display.

While reaching this point, the upper and lower panels kept getting in the way of the Quit, Next, Cancel buttons of the pop-up windows. Right clicking on the window title bar and selecting Move enables the window to be moved beyond the borders of the display, allowing access to the buttons after you left-click to drop the window back onto the desktop.

I right-clicked on the lower panel, opened the property settings window and set Panel-0 and Panel-1 to appear when the cursor is moved into the upper or lower edge of the screen. This gives a lot more room on the small display.

By the way, console terminals are available with keystroke combination Ctrl+Alt+F1 through F6. I thought F7 was the graphical display, but it turns out to be F8 instead.

I hope this is helpful to you. Good luck!

[Yankee]

After fiddling about with the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for a little while with no success at a console terminal, I remembered from trying to solve a screen resolution problem with Bodhi Linux that the latest kernel doesn't need xorg.conf now that display discovery is built-in.

I deleted the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and rebooted the machine. After log-in, the desktop displayed properly, occupying the full width of the display.

My machine boots in full screen OK, except for DOSBOX, then I get the same
right and left black spaces.   Deleted xorg.conf but no help.
Ran     xrandr -s 0      but no help.    Wondering if you've ever used DOSBOX ?

Were you able to get the screen display completely clear with the DebugWait
option enabled ?

THX

FF

[pags]

...
While reaching this point, the upper and lower panels kept getting in the way of the Quit, Next, Cancel buttons of the pop-up windows. Right clicking on the window title bar and selecting Move enables the window to be moved beyond the borders of the display, allowing access to the buttons after you left-click to drop the window back onto the desktop.
...

Yes, the small screen can be quite challenging.  To move windows, you can also hold down the ALT key, and click-drag the window (click anywhere in the window, doesn't have to be the title-bar).  This is, I believe, a function of X, so it should work in any DE.

[awd-s]

To move windows, you can also hold down the ALT key, and click-drag the window (click anywhere in the window, doesn't have to be the title-bar).

Thanks for the tip. It works well.

[awd-s]

My machine boots in full screen OK, except for DOSBOX, then I get the same
right and left black spaces.   Deleted xorg.conf but no help.
Ran     xrandr -s 0      but no help.    Wondering if you've ever used DOSBOX ?

Were you able to get the screen display completely clear with the DebugWait
option enabled ?

I have never used DOSBOX or xrandr. I didn't try DebugWait either. On my box everything appears to be rendered correctly now. By the way, though I said I deleted xorg.conf, in fact I renamed it to xorg.conf.OFF.

Have you tried inspecting the log file /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see if the error messages give you a clue to the cause of your problem?

I tried to paste the output from running lshw to give you something to compare with your machine, but it seemed to overload the system; same with pasting my log file.

[Yankee]

I have never used DOSBOX or xrandr. I didn't try DebugWait either. On my box everything appears to be rendered correctly now. By the way, though I said I deleted xorg.conf, in fact I renamed it to xorg.conf.OFF.

Just wondered if you used DosBox, seemed like you were able to fix
everything on there.

Here's another place to put DebugWait if you have any trouble
with fonts.   Notice file name and location.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/01-monitor.conf

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "Intel Corporation"
    BoardName "Intel 810 and later"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "DPMS"
    Option "DebugWait" "true"
EndSection

regards,

FF

[awd-s]

....Here's another place to put DebugWait if you have any trouble
with fonts.   Notice file name and location....

Thanks for the direction. It will be here if I or anyone else needs it.

Presumably, your box is still giving you screen-width trouble. If you haven't done so, I recommend a close inspection of the Xorg.0.log file to see what X thinks it's doing.