Take control of the ASUS Eee Linux PC launcher

David M Williams
Monday, 28 January 2008 18:58

Opinion and Analysis

One of the hottest gadgets of 2007 – with no sign the trend is abating – was the super-portable ASUS Eee, putting Linux in the hands of the masses at minimal cost. It's user interface is great for new users but power users might want more punch. Here's how to take full control.

The key is the config file for the simple graphical window manager used by the ASUS Launcher program, which provides the interface. Now, it's possible to change the Eee to have an 'advanced' mode – which I've discussed in the past – but today I want to focus on retaining the bold, friendly basic mode but giving it more pizazz and grunt and tailoring it to your specific needs.

Press CTRL + ALT + T to open a terminal window; copy the file /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc to your own home folder via the following sequence of commands:

mkdir ~/.AsusLauncher
cp /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc ~/.AsusLauncher

Note we're doing two things here: the first command makes a new foflder called .AsusLauncher in your home directory; the second command then copies the simpleui.rc file into this folder. Under Linux, any folder or file that has a name beginning with a period (.) is not ordinarily displayed in directory listings without extra flags; the leading dot makes it a hidden file.

The AsusLauncher, like many other Linux applications, will check your home directory for a customised configuration file. If it doesn't find one it looks in a standard location for a default, system-wide file. This is true for a lot of login shells as well as window managers. In this case, the AsusLauncher looks under ~/.AsusLauncher and, if it finds nothing, looks in /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher.

So, by copying the simpleui.rc we've not really done anything too spectacuflar just yet; when you next boot your Eee will use your local config file instead of the system default but without modification the interface will be exactly as usual.

On the last page, I'll list my system simpleui.rc as it is right at this time. It's important to document this for reference, because a recent glitch in the ASUS updates inadvertantly replaced the system simpleui.rc on many Eee's unlucky enough to download the bad update with a file that was severely truncated. As a result, after rebooting, unfortunate users discovered most of their program icons were missing. The solution was to replace simpleui.rc with a good copy, but unless you made a backup or knew someone with an Eee – or were prepared to trash your whole system, restoring it to the factory image – you were stuck until ASUS fixed the update.

Open up simpleui.rc in a text editor like the Documents app from the Work tab, or, if you still have your terminal window up, load the Kate editor like so:

kate ~/.AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc

Check out the structure; it's an XML file which means it has matching pairs of tags between angled brackets. Let's see how each tab is defined.

CONTINUED