The first Asus Eee PC (Eee 700 series) was introduced on October 16, 2007 in Taiwan at COMPUTEX Taipei 2007. Back then, the tiny computer was powered by a Linux-based operating system called Xandros (Debian-based distro), a 4 GB solid-state drive, a 900 Mhz Intel Celeron Mobile CPU and 512 MB of RAM. There were two models presented at that time, the Eee PC 701 and Eee PC 1001, which were later followed by other three. 300,000 units were sold in 2007! Six months later, ASUS announced a new and improved edition of the Eee PC, the new Eee 900 series, with a Windows XP version and a 12 GB solid-state drive. ASUS shocked the world once again on June 3, 2008 with its brand new Eee 1000 series. The new model has a 10" LCD, is powered by a 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom CPU, has 2 GB of DDR RAM and ships in two versions: a Linux-based one with a 40 GB SSD, and a Windows XP one with a 80 GB HD. ASUS intends to sell millions of this baby by the end of 2008.



Ladies and gentlemen, dear geeks, the time has come to introduce to you the perfect operating system for your tiny and fancy Asus Eee PC portable computer, the Ubuntu Eee 8.04! Being based on the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and compatible with its repositories, the Ubuntu Eee operating system is optimized for your Asus Eee PC. Not only that, but it also has everything we've expected from an Ubuntu OS, such as:

￭ Mozilla Firefox 3.0 RC1 (web browser)
￭ Mozilla Thunderbird (mail client)
￭ Pidgin (multi-protocol instant messenger)
￭ Skype (VoIP telephony and instant messenger)
￭ Transmission (BitTorrent client)
￭ OpenOffice.org (office suite)
￭ F-Spot (photo manager)
￭ Movie and Music Player
￭ Desktop notes



With a Vista-like icon theme, Ubuntu Eee looks nice and acts as it's supposed to: fast and furious! Unfortunately, we didn't have an Asus Eee PC to really test this operating system, but we have installed it on a virtual machine. The installation is the same as the regular Ubuntu one.




The home page of Ubuntu Eee offers a lot of interesting and useful tutorials and a couple of fixes as well, if you want to further customize it or improve some things. Go check it out here! Following is what the users have to say about Ubuntu Eee: "I just got it installed this morning and while I have not used it heavily yet, I have run everything I normally do on it for a good part of the day. Everything works so far. I did get a bad battery alert - so that is not working correctly, which for me is only a minor annoyance. The install from an ISO CD went without a hitch. Everything works so far! The team that put this package together did a marvelous job on all of the basics." - Fernando.



So, if you are a proud owner of the glamorous Asus Eee PC, go get your copy of Ubuntu Eee 8.04 right now from here. It's FREE! Oh, and don't forget to drop a line or two about your experience with it.