When meeting someone new it is polite to introduce yourself, lets meet your new friend, the webbook. Press the power button (the middle silver button near the hinge) and a few seconds later it will start up for the first time.
The webbook wants to talk to you in your language. It knows lots of languages, but I speak English so I am going to choose that.
Now it wants to know where you live. I live near London so I am going to use the map to click on London.
You may find the mouse a bit lively at this point, if you struggle to click on the city with the map leaping about you can click and drag the edges of the window to make it bigger or just select the city from the dropdown list, (which is arranged into continents) or you could try plugging in an external mouse to one of the USB ports.
Click the Forward button and it now wants to know a bit about the keyboard you are using. It will take a good guess at this based on the city you selected.
Now it is time to introduce yourself, and set up a password. Don’t forget this, and notice that it wants your real name and also a login name. It suggests your first name in lower case as the login name.
After a little while (it has some preparation work to do for you) it will present you with the login screen and you can put in your username and password to log on for the first time
And here it is, your webbook is ready. Have fun exploring the menus, we have put lots of nice things in there for you to find!
Need help!!
I’ve just bought the Webbook and am setting it up. There was an automatic update and I let it run. Something has happened though and it obviously didn’t finish. Now its saying “an error has occured – E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run ‘dpkg –configure -a’ to correct the problem. E:_cache->open()failed, please report.”
my sound card doesn’t work and nothing seems to open. I can’t open firefox or anything. what have i done wrong.
also I got a Vodafone Huawei E272 to go with it and the webbook won’t even recognise it.
HELP??!!
Hi Grace,
OK, sounds like your webbook is in a bit of an uncomfortable state, but I think we can fix it. Can you plug it in to a wired network (or getting on wireless would also do fine) and go to Applications-Accessories-Terminal. This should pop up a white screen with a flashing cursor and something like grace@webbook:$. Type in
with the double minus in front of the configure. Hopefully this will fix everything or (nearly as good) fail with an informative error message. Let me know if it works.
I have some articles in the queue about the mobile broadband stuff. I have not tried the E272 but I expect we can get it working.
Am very happy with my new linux webbook except for one thing; no webcam!
Can you recommend one that will work in Linux, especially for Skype videomessaging?
Thanks.
I’ve just bought a Webbook and turned it on. It didn’t have the curtesy to let me introduce myself and went straight to the Username screen! Does this mean someone else has used the machine before me? Should I take it back to the shop or is there a workaround?
@slik
that does sound like someone has used it already – lets find out who. Have a look at this article and go to the recovery console and type
ls /hometo list the username. Tell me who it is. I have a suspicion that the QA guys in the factory who randomly unpack them, check them, reset them to first user state and repack them may have forgotten a vital step! Once you know the username you can typedeluser --remove-home username then typeoem-config-prepareand finallyhaltto turn off the webbook. Next time you turn on it should politely let you introduce yourself.Thanks, I read that article just after I left the reply – of course I should have read it first!
Problems solved – again thanks alot.
ps Excellent and helpful blog, keep up the good work.
Hi there,
I have just received a Webbook for my christmas pressie! Unfortunately, nothing is happening with it. it boots up and goes through the boot up then the screen goes black and nothing! No desktop, no Windows nothing! Can anyone help me out? I am becoming quite frustrated with it!! Lol.
Huskygsx
Well if it is dead on arrival that is not a good sign at all. I would send it straight back where it came from. There is a reasonable chance that I would be able to get it back to life and running Linux, but as it is dead on arrival it is simplest to not touch it and just send it back. Trying to fix it will just complicate things.
my bro has given me his webbook and forgot username and password anyway of getting on to it
there is an article on that very subject http://webbookblog.com/oops-i-forgot-my-password/