Extending flash memory life

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Desktop environment

If you use a Gnome desktop on your Eee, here are some ways to make better use of the limited screen height:

Firefox:

Opera:

KDE/Kwin:

[http://packages.debian.org/openbox ?OpenBox]:

</keybind>}}} in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml to get the application to real full-screen (no panels etc.) via F11.

Accessing the Asus Restore Image

Here is a way to access the files that were on the original Xandros system before you installed Debian on your Eee PC. You need the Asus Support DVD that came with the machine, and a Linux machine with a DVD reader and about 2.5G of free disk space (so you probably don't want to do this on your Eee).

Insert the Support DVD and extract the disk image of the Xandros system:

sudo mount /dev/dvd /media/dvd
zcat /media/dvd/P701L.gz > ~/restore.img
sudo eject /media/dvd

Now you can mount the Xandros image on your desktop whenever you want by doing:

sudo mount -t ext2 ~/restore.img /mnt/img -o ro,loop,offset=32256

(The offset of 63*512 = 32256 skips over the partition table in the disk image.) The original filesystem is now mounted, read-only, under /mnt/img/. When you're finished accessing it, don't forget to do

sudo umount /mnt/img

Make a complete disk image

The Debian Installer provided in the DebianEeePC/Howto/Install can be used to make a disk image and to send it over the network. This trick can sometimes provide a way to restore the (nearly) original Asus EeePC system before playing with new Debian installation as in some countries, you do not have the Asus Restore Image shipped with the laptop.

This method uses dd and nc provided by the Debian Installer and another computer located on your local network:

 nc -l -p 9000 | gzip -1 -c > ./eeepc.img.gz

dd if=/dev/sda | nc -w 5 computer_ip_adress 9000