Asus EEEPC mods

[Dave]

Just a few notes on basic mods to the Asus EeePc to either enhance the system and some of the changes I have made to get more use out of the "toy".

First thing I noticed was that when it went into screen blanking (screensaver) mode the screen went black, but after a closer look I found it was still actually working displaying "black". If I turned off the screen when it blanked then surely it would conserver power and the battery would last for longer.

This is what I did.

Go into the 'WORK' panel and open up 'File Manager'. Once it opens select 'Tools -> 'Open Console Window'. When it opens you will be at a command prompt ie: /home/user> type the command:

Code: Select all

kcontrol

and KDE Control Centre will start up.

If you click on the + beside Display in the left view you will see Screen Saver. Select 'Screen Saver' and make sure the checkbox is selected at 'Make aware of Power Management'. Start Automatically after 5 minutes should be already selected. This is the standard screensaver time out, and the EEEPC is set to display a blank screen.

Once you have checked the box on select the apply button to save the change.

In the left pane go to 'Power Management -> Power Control' and then select 'Enable display power management'. Disable 'Stanby after'. In the 'Suspend after' enter 5 or 6 min. And in the 'Power off after' set it to 5 or 6 min as well. Then select 'Apply' again to save the changes.

Now the screen will be turned off after the 5 or 6 min entered and should conserve some of the battery power.

Dave

[Dave]

While poking around in Kcontrol I noticed the 'File Manager' 'Cache' set to keep the cache in sync and a default disc cache size of 5120kb set. AS the EeePC has a solid state drive, write to the drive should be kept to a minimum to extend the life of the drive.

I didabled the 'Use cache' setting to hopefully reduce the number of disc writes. If it drops the performance of the file manager I will repost here with the result.

I believe that the cache is probably only used while in File manager and most users wont be using it that often, but if browsing digital camera SD cards often it may help save the onboard SSD.

Dave

[Dave]

I found with the security that if you try to edit a system file with the text editor in the File manager you will not be able to save changes as you will not have write permissions on the file.

Note: use at your own risk. Asus set the EeePC this way to prevent problems.

From a terminal. Ctrl-Alt-T enter sudo kwrite [filename] where [filename] is the /path/to/the/file that you want to edit.

Dave