EDIT (Serola): call for volunteers to test the Easy Peasy 1.5 beta


EDIT (Serola): Initial thoughts by markyb86...

After Install to HDD on [EeePC 900, 900MHz, 1GB RAM, 4GB HDD]

THE BAD:

No Usplash
Screen Flickers/Fades a few times before the netbook-launcher shows up.
Netbook launcher takes about 15 seconds to become usable, and is very slow.
Error about missing files for my language (US-EN), doesnt allow me to reconcile this error when it tells me to click the button to fix.
small dialogs stretch with maximus.
banshee doesn't open.
shutdown dialog hangs.

The Good:
Wifi worked with no issue
color scheme worked this time as opposed to ep 1.1 is gray the first couple boots on the 900.

Overall, It doesn't seem usable on the low end netbooks with the very slow netbook launcher. Using Jaunty with the 2.9.30-rc2 kernel was quick. I will be testing the next release from a SD card (slower yes, but I cant see myself getting the eee back to speed and doing this over again.)

md5 checksum:
6c21aac19609d63999f5087bd6148bbf

Testing on ASUS Eee 901 4/16 GB

Creating usb key installer on ubuntu okay but currently needs at least 2 GB usb key.

Using live Installer
WLAN connected without any problems.
Install shortcut displayed on Favorites tab.
Firefox shortcut on Favorites tab does nothing.
Firefox shortcut missing on Internet tab.

Installing
Everything went okay till the end, when I selected from alert window to 'restart now', and end up into loop: "unable to enumarete the usb device in port 1." When I shut down by force and tried to boot from usb key, it failed again. Then I restarted one more time and now the system drive managed to start. EDIT: I used two USB keys, one for live instaler and another as a target drive for installation. I guess the system was no longer able to recognise the USB keys correctly, and therefore live installer was not able to display notice to: "remove external devices and hit enter to get back to live installer."
EDIT: After trying the whole installing process again, everything worked just fine!

Running beta in general
Update manager started automatically ???
Update went okay.
WLAN works alright.

Testing apps

Firefox missing from UNR tabs.
Tried app called "Shiretoko", it works and looks exactly like Firefox ???
Shiretoko browser is in English, although I choosed OS installtion in Finnish, and there's no search engines pre-selected on toolbar search.
Thunderbird is in Finnish.
Openoffice seem to work but it's in English.
Not being able to remove Evolution and Firefox shortcuts on Favorites tab.
Youtube videos working out of the box.
PLS file at somafm.com not opened directly and offered only "manually open with" option.
Tried to open Banshee, it did, but then it just closed itself.
There's no Totem? Should it be on Audio & Video tab?
Picasa seem to work just fine. Only edge is the title bar displayed because running it on Wine, but I guess there's no way to change that.

Notice! I'm going to update this post as soon as possible.

[*] Updated the forums and uploaded the new theme, looks great Mark!
[*] Good feedback! These bugs has to be fixed, but they're not release critical, or?

Testing on Acer Aspire One ZG5 160 GT HD

No problems to install.
Running OS and apps the same as on Eee 901 (see above).

Edit: I would say we are ready to rock, aka ready to release the beta, upload it to public server, and announce the call for volunteers to test.

I think the two most serious issues are:

Banshee not working. Closes right after opening it and media files trickered on browser not opened.
Localization of this so called Shiretoko (Firefox 3.5?) is missing. Browser is installed in English. I'm also not sure how good idea it is to use it because it's maybe "too up-to-date" browser aka number of plugins may not work with it (e.g. tiny menu, spell check et.). We need to test those plugins more during beta tests.

I also wonder where's the Totem? Should it be available on desktop tabs?

Here is my experience with the 1.5 beta.
I installed it on an EEE 701 4G.
I used the internal SSD in it's entirety with no swap as I have 2 gigs of RAM installed.
The install process went smoothly except for terrible performance on the UNR desktop.
After install the UNR performance was still lousy. I remebered similar problems with intel performance on my desktop computer.
Using the "Safe" settings from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130582 I managed to get the performance comparable with EP1.1 which is quite acceptable.

Function Keys:
fnF1 - Sleep works (much faster than 1.1)
fnF2 - Wireless on/off is not working
fnF3 - Screen darker works but not osd
fnF4 - Screen Brighter works but no osd
fnF5 - Screen switcher, No screen to test but internal screen flickers and volume osd appears after a few seconds.
fnF6 - Nothing (what does that key even do normally?)
fnF7 - Mute works with proper osd
fnF8 - Volume down works with proper osd
fnF9 - Volume up works with proper osd

Applications:
UNR - Firefox, Evolution and help are stuck in favourites and can't be removed.
Picasa - Works (Slow to start and lots of sceeen flickering)
Skype - Works fully once volume comtrol is used to unmute microphone including camera support.
Cheese - Works
Thunderbird - Works
Shiretoko - Works including flash but performance is pretty lousy. This would maybe be improved with the more optimal intel fixes.
Pidgin - Works
OpenOffice - Works but Word Processor doesn't play nice with UNR (Spreadsheet and Presentation are fine)
Banshee - Crashes immediately after starting

Hope that helps out if anyone has any further questions please ask.

Tested 1.5 beta on a Eee 901 Go with a touchscreen.

The 3G modem was detected and configured correctly on first start, no effort required.

Problems:

• On start-up I got an "incomplete language support" notification on my completely English system (with a Finnish keyboard layout).
• The cooling fan started on start-up and never stopped; it always ran at its lowest speed.
• Touchscreen calibration process needs to be improved; the red X is very hard to notice from the blacks.
• Touchscreen is not accurate even after calibration.
  The cursor is about right in the middle of the screen, but off in the top and bottom edges. Top toolbar is thus unreachable, so is anything in the bottom. Cursor follows touched point with some lag.
• After waking up from suspend (sleep), vertical axis of the touchscreen was reversed!
• Banshee crashes on start.
• mplayer crashes too if started from GUI (but only after trying to open a media file); plays mp3s fine from terminal though.
• Wireless LED stays on, Fn+F2 has no effect (I don't need both 3G and wlan on!).
• No OSD for screen brightness setting
• powertop tells me the system draws 9 W when wirelessly online, doing nothing. On Windows XP a comparable figure on my system is 7 W (brightness at less than half or low). With 3G off (well, not connected that is) powertop reports 8-8.5 W.

Estimated battery life with no work on the system is about 6, maybe 7 hours. In my experience with XP I get about 7-8 hours (or more) with light surfing over 3G (estimated; I've never surfed that long - I have a 63 Wh battery like on a 1000HE). According to powertop an idle system spends half the time in C2 and the other in C4, mostly at 800 MHz.

• Sound volume setting ACPI events are responded to with increasing lag (noticed the same on Kubuntu 8.04.1).
• When sound is muted, the speakers crackle. It's not random crackling, it follows the bass of the music!
• Sound volume is low even at maximum.
• Skype was not able to use the default audio devices.

There's nothing done for this since Intrepid based EP 1.1 No new Eee spesific scripts available out-of-the-box. Currently Eee users are sitll on mercy of third party scripts like eee-control or Eeeasy Scripts. And eee-control may not work because EP 1.5 beta is using different kernel than vanilla Ubuntu Jaunty.

EDIT: But I'm doing my best to get our kernel and distro builders to implement power saving, special key and fan control scripts into final EP 1.5

Gave it a short run (only live, from the stick) on a Medion Akoya E1210 which has 1.1 installed.

- installer is all Ubuntu (I really thought I had downloaded the wrong image)
- Wouldn't log on to WLAN using WPA/WPA2 (worked previously)
- No Webcam (has never worked)
- already mentioned: Banshee never plays a video but dies instantaneously
- already mentioned: dead links to Firefox and Evolution in Favourites cannot be removed
+ I am very much in for testing Shiretoko, after all, this is a beta and for twiddling only

Sorry I didn't take the time to do an install but this first impression was not so terribly encouraging. May give it a a more extensive try with more time to spare.

Keep up the good work,

Thomas