Review: Easy Peasy 1.5 Released
The Ubuntu-based netbook distro Easy Peasy was formely known as Ubuntu Eee. Easy Peasy uses the Ubuntu Netbook Remix graphical user interface and provides a mix of popular open-source and proprietary software. If you’re trying to stay away from proprietary software completely (not a bad idea) this ones not for you. I found it interesting that so many have commented on Easy Peasy working out of the box. Along with my questions about compatibility I was curious about the features, new appearance and day-to-day usefulness of Easy Peasy 1.5. Could the Ubuntu-based Easy Peasy be anything more than a toy?
Easy Peasy is easy to install onto a USB pen drive and now with Easy Peasy 1.5 you can install it to USB even easier. Easy Peasy 1.5 comes with a hybrid image offering .img and .iso at the same time making the process of moving your image to the USB stick with UNetBootin pretty easy. Of course you can also install Easy Peasy to the hard drive which is what I did hoping it would be my permanent OS.
After installing Easy Peasy i was pleasantly surprised by the login screen. It included shades of green and dark grey, a good mixture. I found it appealing, clear and easy to follow.
The desktop was equally stunning but I was less surprised as I had seen this running the live version. The desktop consists of a top bar, two outside columns that server as menus and a wider center column that displays results based on what is selected. The desktop is more of a graphical interface with a unique style that few other distros can be compared to as you can see in the screenshot below.
The menu includes common categories as seen on Ubuntu but includes a few applications you won’t find on Ubuntu. Applications that I found useful were Skype, Banshee, OpenOffice 3.1, Picasa, Evolution, Firefox, and Pidgin.
After adjusting my microphone settings I tested Skype and it worked first try. The interface is a little different if you’re a Windows user switching over but all the options appear to be there and it took me very little time to find everything.
I also tested Flash content at Youtube, MP3s with Banshee, and photos with Picasa, all of which came turned out excellent. I didn’t see applications that I use on Ubuntu like GIMP and a few others however these can be added immediately by going to Administration — Synaptic Package Manager.
I had a very good experience using Easy Peasy and I plan on making it into something I use everyday. I hope you enjoy the screenshots and be sure to look at our Linux PDFs and manuals.
- Bug fixes
- Software update
- UXA by default
- New green visual appearance
- Linux kernel (2.6.30) optimized for netbooks with faster startup
- More supported netbooks
- Hybrid image file .iso/.img
- Smaller harddrive footprint
- ext4 filesystem as default
Official Changes
Both 1.1 and 1.5 have a problem identifying the wireless of Acer Aspire One. In EP 1.1 you could simply Add/Remove Windows Wireless Drivers and let this program install the driver that you can easily get from Acer-Europe Website. In EP 1.5 Windows Wireless Drivers can’t get added. On the other hand, EP 1.5 has fixed the sound problem. I decided to go back to 1.1 to enjoy wireless, though very silently!
Thanks for the comment. wireless or sound?? hmm guess it’s a toss up…
Anyone else have issues with specific models?
EasyPeasy is an excellent OS ! I used since 1.0, 1.5 is very good and fast on my 7014G
I really like Easy Peasy too. I think that it is great to see that they survived having to change their name. Unfortunately, I think that I cannot use it any more until I get a netbook, but that may wait until the ARM netbooks are out.
My wife and I really love using Easy Peasy 1.1 on our Asus Eee PC 900A – everything except Fn-F2 (wireless on/off) works well. Though we use a headset for sound, I haven’t noticed any loss of sound (as was mentioned before).
Great for daily use, am downloading the 1.5 iso and will check out a live/usb unetbootin of it when it’s done.
So for someone vaguely familiar with linux, I love it. For someone who is completely not computer savvy (my wife) she just “loves the netbook thing” and uses it extensively.
Nice work, Easy Peasy team!
“Both 1.1 and 1.5 have a problem identifying the wireless of Acer Aspire One”
I installed Easy Peasy a few months ago on Aspire One and the wireless worked out of the box.
Apparently under some of the Ubuntu distros it is very important to turn up the sound for all the speakers including pc speakers and PCM, this might work, as I tried this on my EEE and it seemed to have fixed the sound problem. Might work for you, might not… at least worth a try I reckon.
Hi L4Linux
Re: “I installed Easy Peasy a few months ago on Aspire One and the wireless worked out of the box.”
Acer Aspire One uses different wireless cards. AA1 D150 alone uses three different cards. The Broadcom card is not supported by Easy Peasy.
I enjoyed reading the review. I just wish I would have found this BEFORE purchasing my Acer. Could have saved a little bit of money by not going with XP.
I have the same problem with Sound on my Acer One D250. I noticed that on the LiveCD v1.1 when the Wireless wasn’t working the sound did. I tried going to v1.5, but the graphics were messed up…wireless worked as well as sound, but couldn’t see a section of the desktop until you moved the mouse over the area (seemed to be a common problem as mentioned in the forums).
I was in Barnes and Noble last night and found a Ubuntu magazine that was published in the UK that was very interesting and informative.
I will be sticking around as the guy mentioned above “rather silently!” I have found even with XP I kept my sound muted most of the time so no big loss for me for now.
UPDATE: With the *released* version of 1.5 everything on my Acer Aspire One D250 appears to be working…specifically sound and wifi. Now if I can find an accounting program that will import my Microsoft Small Business Accounting Express files I will be ditching XP on my Netbook. Thanks EasyPeasy.
Hi, I did a clean installation from EP 1.1 to 1.5 on an Asus 901. everything went fine with the installation, and everything seems to be working fine, except I can’t get Skype to recognze the microphone. The major problem I have is that EP 1.5 will not let me update any packages. I get an error message saying that the security certificates are not recognized or something like that. If I try to install new software from Synaptic I get the same error messages. Any help?
Gerardo
Go to Linuxforums.org.
They will help you with everything you need.
Adding the security keys is a common task, you ‘ll get an answer fast.
“Hi, I did a clean installation from EP 1.1 to 1.5 on an Asus 901. everything went fine with the installation, and everything seems to be working fine, except I can’t get Skype to recognze the microphone. The major problem I have is that EP 1.5 will not let me update any packages. I get an error message saying that the security certificates are not recognized or something like that. If I try to install new software from Synaptic I get the same error messages. Any help?
Gerardo”
Its a shame that it seems the desktop switcher issue people were having before hasn’t been fixed in version 1.5! Ive just installed easy peasy 1.5 and now have no panels or menus on the desktop, basically a dysfunctional desktop. Seems you cannot change from netbook remix desktop to classic without messing up.
I installed version 1,5, great look, everything worked as it should on my AA1 110L, but… I am Norwegian and the language packages that follows doesn’t support Norwegian, which is sad.
That means e.g. OpenOffice.org doesn’t come with Norwegian spell checker or other goodies.
Such things should work after install and not by search and tweek.
Back to the Italian version Linux4one, which at least support Norwegian.
Acer Aspire One AOD250-1165
This model is fairly new. So it has the usual features, i.e. built in wi-fi, camera, 160 GB drive, etc, etc. This is the 3 hr battery model. I have no idea where Amazon gets their tech specs. We just bought this and the manual states that it comes with 1 GB of RAM, and is upgradeable to 2 GB. It recognized 4 wireless connections in my area the instant it was powered on. So far it’s great for what it was bought for, the internet, small low demand games, music, simple word processing…
I have one question. I noticed on the easy peasy download page that you load it from the PC onto a memory stick, then take the stick to your netbook (EeePC 900 in my case) and download it that way. Correct me if I got that messed up
) Anyway, my question is this, will it work if your PC is Windows and the netbook is Linux?