What can and cannot be installed on EeePC

Over the last day or two I've attempted the following installs on the EeePC.

1. Despite the major problem I had trying to install the KDE Full Desktop by the manual method, the so-called Easy Way worked perfectly. The whole thing took 2-3 minutes whereas just the download in the Manual Way took 15 minutes.

The KDE Full Desktop is much more useful in my view. Also, the previous problem I had with the desktop web apps only opening in Firefox has been eliminated as I mentioned in this thread.
Also, ctrl-alt-n no longer opens Opera and ctrl-alt-t no longer launches a terminal. However, it's easy to put these icons on the bottom panel which is much more useful.
I also put the CXChromium browser icon in the panel as this had previously to be launched from a terminal. Nevvertheless, despite being readily available, I'm not very inclined to use it as I don't find it at all as convenient as Opera.

2. After my failure with Compiz, I tried Beryl from here. This installed without problems. Operation was, however, disappointingly unpredictable. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Even at that, I never managed to get everything to work together as it would, say, in Ubuntu. I'll do more research here.

3. Couldn't get kcheckgmail to install. Sudo apt-get gives this error:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
kcheckgmail: Depends: libqt3c102-mt (>= 3:3.3.3.2) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: xlibs but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

I believe I could probably get this installed by doing some judicious pinning changes but I haven't tried it yet.

4. I wanted to install gparted as it will be of use in my goal to get Foresight Linux installed on the 15 GB SSHD. However, it too gave an error about gksu wouldn't be installed.
Turns out that there are two versions of gksu available

sudo apt-cache policy gksu
gksu:
Installed: 2.0.0-1
Candidate: 2.0.0-1
Version table:
*** 2.0.0-1 0
500 http://download.tuxfamily.org p701/etch Packages
700 http://http.us.debian.org etch/main Packages
700 http://ftp.us.debian.org stable/main Packages
700 ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org stable/main Packages
700 http://http.us.debian.org stable/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
1.2.5-3 0
800 http://www.geekconnection.org xandros4/main Packages

So the desired higher version was in the lower pinned repos. So, I overcame this by temporarily increasing the pinning of the deb repos to 975. With this, gparted installed fine.

Chromium in Foresight-Mac

The Cross-Over Chromium site provides installation files for various distros (and OS X) but Foresight Linux is not included.
A version of "CrossOver Chromium for all other Linux distros" is, however available and this is what I tried for Foresight.
The installation file is the 35 MB install-cxchromium-0.9.0.sh. I tried various means to get this to install but no luck.
Then I found that it wasn't executable. Once this error was rectified, it was easy to install (as user rather than as root -- some complaints about installing as root) using

./install-cxchromium-0.9.0.sh

from the Desktop directory to which it had been downloaded.
Thereafter, installation and operation was perfect.

Chromium in Ubuntu and Mac OS X

Google Chrome is not yet available for either Linux or OS X (or anything other than Windows) but Unix users can use Chromium.
So, I tried this out on both Ubuntu (Mac) and OS X.
Very easy to install although it's a big install. Mac download was close to 50 MB and the final install took up about 124 MB. That's bit when you consider that the latest Opera is about 8 MB and Chromium is supposed to be a slimmed down browser.
For me, in both instances, it appeared identical to Google Chrome which I had used a few times in a VM Windows XP.
So, my comments are really no different than they had been before when I looked at the latter
Comparisons have to be made against Opera (I'm using either 9.52 or 9.60 Beta now) which I have used for almost two years and have very few complaints other than the fact that much new software is not Opera-compatible.
So, why do I like Opera?
1. It's noticeably faster than all other browsers I have tried
2. Speeddial is a wonderful productivity tool
3. I like its download manager and in-built torrent client
4. How it handles rss feeds suits me perfectly
5. I make major use of My Buttons

So, how does Chromium compare?
1. It's not slow but it doesn't seem to me to be at all as fast as Opera
2. Chromium's most visited sites is similar to, but not the same as speeddial. A major benefit of speeddial is that your chosen webpages are ALWAYS in the same location so you don't need to search around to find out where they are.
3. Chromium's bookmarks bar is just as good as Opera's My Buttons
4. When I Open in a New Tab, I expect that tab to open rather than just sit there waiting to be clicked. Chromium falls down there.

All in all, I'm going to continue checking out Chromium (and Google Chrome when it comes along) in Linux and OS X, but I honestly haven't seen anything that would make me even think of moving away from Opera.
On the other hand, Google is a large and very rich company and they are unlikely to settle for something that's, well, crap. So, I'll certainly keep an eye on it.

Chrome? What's so good about it?

I've been using Chrome for a day or two (in VM XP under Ubuntu) and, while it's certainly an acceptable browser and one I could live with, I'm not as bowled over about it as a lot of reviewers (eg Lifehacker) seem to be.
Now I didn't test any fancy stuff, mainly because I just don't use fancy stuff on a day-to-day basis, if at all. And, I certainly don't miss the thousands of Firefox extensions that Lifehacker is always raving on about. I really don't need them.
OK, but here's two things I don't like about Chrome. First, although the Recently Visted newtab page is a reasonable idea, it's really not as good as operas speeddial. In speeddial, yuou know where you put stuff so you can click on the image you want very fast. In Chrome, they can move around depending on what you browsed to recently, so for me it's just not as convenient.
Also, it seems that you can only get 9 things into Chrome recently visited page whereas in Opera it can be any number.
Another thing is that when I Open in New Tab, I want that tab to be the one whose stuff is shown, not waiting for me to click the tab to get it to show what I've just open. Firefox does this too (although I'm sure they've got an extension to redress this).
Is Chrome any faster than Opera? I really do NOT think so. Indeed, there might even be a case for arguing that Opera is significantly faster (at least for the things I do, and on my computers).
Would I use it when a Mac or Linux version became available? Yes, I would for sure, but at this stage, I really don't see that I'll be abandoning Opera fgfor a while at least.

Google Chrome in XP (VM) under Ubuntu

Once I had my VM version of Windows XP running under Ubuntu on the Dell, it was a very simple matter to get Google Chrome up and running.
The other alternative was to run Chrome with Wine in Ubuntu but I understand that this is not as fast as the normal Chrome in Windows.
However, in the VM Windows, it seems to be absolutely fine with no shortcomings that I have seen so far.

Google Chrome -- I tried it!

Today I booted into Windows XP on my Dell for the sole purpose of trying Google Chrome. This creating quite a stir and actually appeared on Last night's BBC news.
Actually, it reminded me quite a bit of Opera. In particular, I liked the way its new tab page shows miniatures of your most visited webpages. This is basically speeddial but a little more intelligent as you must have shown recent interest in the sites for them to appear in this page.
It's fast, yes, but not blindingly so on my Dell anyway. Really, it's no different to opera in this respect on the basis of this short test.
I like how it can make a desktop shortcut of your chosen webpages.
Also, I was able to put buttons in the personal toolbar, just like in Opera, but in Chrome they're called pages.
Only a Windows version right now but a Mac and a Linux version are supposed to be coming up.
Would I use it as my preferred browser if these version became available? Yes, I really think I would be tempted particularly as it's got most of the things I like about Opera. it's still being rapidly developed and it's Google who are unlikely to not give this their best shot.