Tripped up by levels of “compatibility”!. I had mentioned that I was having problems after installing Eeebuntu NBR (Net Book Remix) on my Asus EeePC 701 Netbook (see “Neglected Netbook gets new OS“). Important Dialog Boxes were cut off at the bottom of the screen, making it impossible to configure Eeebuntu properly. I though it would simply be a matter of looking at an Ubuntu distribution on another PC to see what the buttons are, and work from there. It wasn’t.

Then I came across some interesting information. The Ubuntu wiki had a page
“HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks” which gave three Tiers of compatibility for Netbooks which had been tested with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04. Tier 1 was “…netbooks that work reasonably well, with few or any issues, and no major issues“. Unfortunately, the Asus EeePC 701 Netbook fell into Tier 2:
“…netbooks that work somewhat, but have problems that may interfere with typical activities at the moment, or many smaller issues.”
For the EeePC701 there was this note “This netbook basically works, but most of the problems with it center around the fact that it has a very small screen with a default resolution of 800×400 and many apps simply won’t scale down to that size.” Two of the issues were “Evolution setup assistant takes more space than available on Eee 701SD” and “Display preferences takes more space than available on a Eee 701SD“.
By space they mean screen space.

This wasn’t even mentioned on the main Eeebuntu NBR website, and if I’d known about it, I certainly would have thought twice before installing Eeebuntu on my Asus Netbook.