racoma.netI love to write. I write to live. I live to love.

My first netbook was an Asus Eee PC 701. And as with most netbooks that vintage, it came preloaded with Linux, particularly Xandros. While it wasn’t the best Linux distribution, it worked out of the box with the Eee PC. It was good enough for me, that is until I wanted more functionality out of the little computer.

Not that Linux was not functional enough. But it’s that different flavors of Linux have varying support in terms of the community discussion and help available online. And so I switched to Ubuntu. Not everything worked out of the box. But being the adventurous computer user I am, I hacked my way into perfection. Some add-on hardware did not work perfectly, like the bluetooth dongle I use to pair my phone with to connect to the Internet while on the move. The visual effects were not only stunning, but they helped a bit with productivity (for instance, with the ability to place different windows on different “faces” of a cube, with Compiz Fusion).

But with the small seven-inch screen of the 701 I was looking for an upgrade, which I found with the Eee PC 900, which, incidentally, turns one year old this month. My purchase came preloaded with Windows XP Home. And as with preloaded softwares go, I found it to work out of the box perfectly. I had to make a few tweaks and optimizations to make the machine run quicker, cooler, and with a longer battery life. But again, the adventurous user I was, I took some risks and considered some tradeoffs. For instance, I use a RAM disk to store all my temporary files, including the browser cache (which can be difficult to tweak when you use Chrome). I’ve also done all sorts of tweaks to remove unnecessary services and registry components.

And just recently I again ventured into the realm that was Ubuntu. I downloaded a copy of 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope a few weeks back, and it’s only now that I found the time (and curiosity) to try it. I installed it on an 8GB SDHC, so I wouldn’t have to break my current Windows installation. It worked well out of the box. No additional drivers needed.

But then there was a hitch. Jaunty Jackalope did not support CPU frequency scaling on the Celeron-M.

You see, Celeron-M variants of the Eee PC–paticularly the Eee PC 900–try to save on power and improve cooling by clocking down from 900 MHz to 630 MHz automatically when the computer is unplugged or when it runs on battery. Speed stepping is not a usual Celeron-M feature, but the folks at Asus were able to tweak the 900′s BIOS to achieve this effect, albeit on a limited level.

Suddenly, the prospect of using Linux again on my netbook didn’t sound too cool. Literally and figuratively!

But I’m not disheartened. I know that I’ll get around to finding a tweak or fix for this. These things usually involve much research and a lot of sleepless nights. Sometimes, it’s safe to say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But for some people, it’s better to say if it ain’t broke, then break it.

image source: flickr/ampersans