Fix Wikipedia, add Facebook to the ASUS Eee Linux PC

David M Williams
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 16:31

Opinion and Analysis

The ASUS Eee has an update glitch; users worldwide have discovered a recent system update has resulted in missing icons on their tabbed launcher interface. Here's why it happened, how to fix it, and how to add more applications such as Facebook.

The flaw has arisen from an update which appears to have been well-intentioned but sloppily packaged. The bold tabbed program interface the Eee displays in its basic mode is provided by an Asus app called AsusLauncher. This uses a configuration file to build its collection of tabs and shortcuts; they are not hard-coded in which means both ASUS and users can easily add or remove icons by modifying this configuration file. There's no need to edit and recompile an application, and there's no need for any two Eee's to be the same but instead reflect the needs of their owners.

This configuration file is /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc. It may be opened in any text editor, including the OpenOffice.org Writer app, labelled “Documents” on the Eee's “Work” tab.

I talked about this file previously, and showed how you could make your own local copy; AsusLauncher actually checks your home directory first for simpleui.rc in a hidden folder called .AsusLauncher. If it can't find the file here it uses the system default in folder /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher.

Now, the config file has a specialised syntax but fundamentally is a series of tags to define the tabs which appear across the top of the screen, and then the folders and actual application icons which display on each tab.

The AsusLauncher performs a couple of sanity checks; if an entry has a syntactical error it will ignore it. And, in the case of the update glitch, if an entry refers to a program which does not actually exist then it will likewise be ignored.

This is where the flaw comes in: ASUS modified some program icons which formerly just used Firefox to call up web sites. A case in point is the Wikipedia icon; all this did was bring up the Wikipedia web site. Originally, simpleui.rc specified this command for Wikipedia:

/opt/firefox/firefox http://www.wikipedia.org

However, after the update, the command has become

/opt/xandros/bin/eeepc-wikipedia.sh

However, ASUS neglected to include the file /opt/xandros/bin/eeepc-wikipedia.sh in the update. So, that's the problem – AsusLauncher fires up, checks simpleui.rc and verifies the program links exist. This one doesn't, so it ignores the whole entry and the icon no longer displays on the poor hapless user's desktop.

Wikipedia isn't alone; the Web Learn icon on the Learn tab page has also gone missing and for the same reason. Prior to the update, AsusLauncher would invoke

/opt/firefox/firefox http://skoool.ie

but after the update it is attempting to launch

/opt/xandros/bin/eeepc-weblearn.sh

Any others? How do you fix it? Read on!

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