Installing Ubuntu 8.10 & the Array.org kernel

Thankfully, installing Ubuntu (as well as most other Linux systems) has been made incredibly easy thanks to a sweet little app called UNetBootin. UNetBootin will write any bootable ISO to a USB flash drive and make all the necessary configurations to the drive so that all you have to do is pop it in your PC and go. Here's a more structured explanation:

1. Download Ubuntu - I'd recommend downloading via a Torrent, but you'll need a client like uTorrent (my choice).
   
2. Download UNetBootin.
   
3. Plug in your USB flash drive and run UNetBootin. Specify the Ubuntu ISO that you downloaded in step 1. Be sure to specify the correct drive so you don't burn up any of your other USB drives.
4. When UNetBootin is done, plug your new USB boot drive into your EeePC and turn it on.
5. Hit F2 during boot up to modify your BIOS to boot the USB drive instead of your normal SSD. To do this, you'll need to arrow over to the Boot > Boot Device Priority > 1st Boot Device (which should be your SSD) > select your USB drive > hit F10. Upon reboot, your EeePC should load up on Ubuntu.
6. The Ubuntu install process is pretty simple and easy to understand. You can follow the step-by-step how-to on HowToForge.
7. Once you get all that taken care of, the first thing you should do is update your system: System > Administration > Update Manager. This update may take some time, I averaged about 500kb/sec for 275MBs of updates on my cable connection. Your results may vary
8. After updating it's time to load up the Array.org kernel. Follow these instructions to install it.
9. After rebooting, you'll need to make one more change in order for your lappy to continue using the new kernel. Open sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst and scroll to the bottom to look for the new kernel block. It should look something like

   ...
   title   Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-8-eeepc-lean
   uuid    l0ts0fnumb3r5&stuff
   kernel  /boot/vmlinux-2.6.27-8-eeepc-lean root=UUID=l0ts0fnumb3r5&stuff
   initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-8-eeepc-lean
   ...

   Make note of what position in the list this block holds. For example, if there are two other blocks above it (as it was in my case) then this one holds position 2 as the count starts at 0.
10. Scroll back to the top and look for the line that says "default 0" and make it say "default 2" (or whatever place in the list the new kernel holds).
11. The next time you reboot, you'll load up automatically on the new kernel. Congratulations, you're up and running.

Tomorrow I'll post another article outlining the applications I've installed and their customizations.