The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Linux on Asus instead of express gate

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by Techie09, Aug 5, 2009.

  1. Techie09

    Techie09 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    24
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Friday August 7th I get My very first laptop (hurray!). It's mostly for college and im going into computer science field and studying information systems.

    I have heard alot about Linux and my new laptop will have "Express Gate" on it. express gate is considered a "Linux" OS but im not so sure it is the real LINUX. I understand that one of the best versions of Linux is through Ubuntu.

    How do I swap out "Express Gate" for Ubuntu Linux???
     
    Techie09, Aug 5, 2009
    #1
  2. jas

    jas Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    697
    Messages:
    622
    Likes Received:
    5
    Trophy Points:
    31
    You don't. Express Gate, which is the name that Asus rebrands Device VM's Splashtop product with, is an "instant on" commercial Linux distribution that's engineered to be installed into a 512MB flash memory chip that's embedded on the PC motherboard. It's a specialized Linux distribution that typically comes installed with the Blackbox Window Manager, Firefox, Pidgin, and Skype, and is supposed to boot in about 5 seconds.

    So even if you could hack the Windows Express Gate installer, in order to install Ubuntu into the on board chip, it probably wouldn't be configured to run in that environment anyway. Read the Splashtop FAQ at the developer's website, and if you're curious about hacking Express Gate/ (Splashtop), read this thread over at the Phoronix users forums.

    Express Gate/Splashtop is not supposed to be your main OS anyway. You're supposed to install a full OS onto your system, but then you'll still be able to boot into the Splashtop environment, if you want to quickly surf the web, etc. You could install a normal Ubuntu installation onto an Express Gate enabled computer, if you wanted to.

    Lastly, netiquette, (network etiquette), discourages using all capital letters in an online communication because it's considered shouting. You'll probably get better responses if you use normal capitalization.

    Good Luck..
     
    jas, Aug 5, 2009
    #2
  3. Techie09

    Techie09 Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    24
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Thanks for the help... Im a newbie soz and especially considering I dont use much forums I was just making my question clear the rest was really background.

    I have no intentions hacking my new laptop especially considering I have no idea what im doing. thanks for the heads up...

    Would the best way to do it is leave the express gate boot up alone and just install Unbuntu linux on normal start up with vista???
     
    Techie09, Aug 5, 2009
    #3