Here's Netbook Mojo's quick guide to tweaking Xandros

Starting the Terminal

Like it or not, getting the most out of Linux requires some access to the Terminal (Windows users would call this a DOS box or Command Prompt). The Eee PC's Easy Menu doesn't have a shortcut for launching the Terminal so you'll need to use the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut.

Enabling Desktop Mode

Although Xandros' Easy Mode, with it's large icons, is great for quickly finding and launching applications power users will prefer a more usual desktop system. Xandros's Full Desktop looks a lot like the Windows XP desktop. To enable Full Desktop mode start a Terminal and enter the following commands

sudo bash
apt-get update
apt-get install ksmserver kicker

If you're a Linux newbie it's worth knowing that when you run something commencing with "sudo", you're running it with full system access. Whatever you run as "sudo" will have access to the entire system. That means, if you don't know what you're doing, you can accidentally mess your system up quite badly.

Exit the Terminal (just type "exit") and then restart your Eee PC.

Now, when you press the power button, you'll have a button to run the Full Desktop, in addition to usual Stand By, Restart and Shut Down options. You can boot to the Full Desktop automatically by enabling it as a permanent option by going to Settings -> Personalisation and checking the Full Desktop option.

Installing Applications

For Eee PC users, installing new applications is one of the most confusing things they have to do. What makes it worse is that Easy Mode, even after a successful installation, doesn't provide easy access to the new application.

Because of how Linux has been developed it works differently to Windows or Mac. Even though, many, many moons ago there was a single Linux, it's evolved so that there are several different types of Linux. Each type of Linux is called a distribution. Each different distribution has its own unique features.

What you need to know is that just because something works on one distribution Linux it doesn't necessarily mean that it'll work on all or any of the others. The version of Xandros running on the Eee PC has been customised and Xandros is a Linux distribution that sprouted from Debian. What you'll find is that applications written for Xandros and Debian usually work on the Eee PC.

Secondly, you can run an application called Synaptic by going to the Terminal and entering the following.

sudo synaptic

The Linux application Synaptic makes program installation simple. Synaptic has a list of known program sources, called repositories, that are interrogated each time Synaptic is executed. This method works most of the time but is dependent on having enough "good" repositories in your list.

In Synaptic go to the Settings menu and choose Repositories. Then add the following repository.

deb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 main

Press the Reload button on the Synaptic toolbar and you'll have a bunch of new apps and categories to choose from. You can search for an application either by name or from a word in its description.

My preferred method is to search for the application type and find an installation that's distributed as a <em>.deb</em> file. For example, you can install the Opera web browser by visiting http://www.opera.com/download, choosing Xandros as the distribution and downloading Opera.

By default, files download to the My Documents folder (you can launch the File Manager application from the Work tab of the Easy Menu - just in case you hadn't found that yet). Right click the downloaded .deb file and choose Install DEB file... from the menu. Just follow the prompts and it's done

By Anthony Caruana