I don't know about your particular model but usually it "just works". I run
standard Kubuntu on my MSI Wind at the moment and it's all good.

When you say "nothing works" could you be a little more specific? Does it
start up at all? Does it freeze, crash or reboot? Is the screen readable? Do
you have any sound? Is the network card working? There are workarounds for
most of these...

Other things to check are: did you get a good download and burn of the disk?
You can try using it as a live CD (I think all Ubuntu disks work that
way). Is your Hard Drive of Solid State Drive, large enough to do the
installation?

A little more information as to what you tried will help us to
see what the problem is and help you to solve it.

It runs on my eeePC 701 and 901 just fine. I even have compositing working
and a choice of desktops, KDE or GNOME. Check your installation medium. Have
you ever installed Ubuntu before? How did you acquire the CD and if you
burned it, how? The best way is to use Unetbootin to make a bootable usb key
from the ISO file.

I've tried Unetbootin but I didn't have much succes. Unetbootin wants me
to format my USB stick.

People might be able to help you if you say, "I did XXX and the result was YYY
when it should have been ZZZ."

Other people with that computer have had major issues with the network adapter,
but everything else worked for them.

The situation at this moment is that I tried to make a USB start up disk
from my main computer that is running on Ubuntu I keep getting the
message that I should format my stick, even though my stick is empty.
I've tried this with two different sticks.

The "USB Startup Disk Creator" seems to be a bit fussy about the flash disk
it uses. My system wouldn't go past the "Format" button with a 1 GB flash,
but worked with a 2 GB, yet the 1 GB one seems to hold other data fine and
it was certainly large enough for the installation files.

I've had more success with a burned CD running from an external USB CD/DVD
reader. If you don't have one you can buy a case fairly cheaply (about $20)
and temporarily put the burner/reader from your desktop system into it. Even
the most recent systems sometimes choke on booting from a flash drive and do
better on a USB Disk.

Thanks, I will buy an external USB CD/DVD reader.

I am reponding via my eee1000ha and karmic koala. i used an external usb cd/dvd
drive. I installed an 8gb sd card to my eee1000ha. I partitioned the 160gb hard
drive in half using cd i made. i gave half to windows xp (my wife uses xp) and
partitioned the other half as /home. i installed karmic netbook remix and grub
to the sd card. (Karmic runs on the SD card and my data is on /home partition.)
when i rebooted, i went into the bios setup and made the sd card first to boot.
i continued the reboot plugged into the wired internet connection. karmic booted
up and it updated.i also installed packages that i wanted (audio and video
codecs, pan, packages for my mp3 player,etc.). i rebooted and m y wireless
network was detected. the gui is a bit different but it works great. i use it
for everything. the 6 cell battery gives me almost 5 hrs before i have to
recharge.

Now that is great! Keep in touch and let us know how it is going from time
to time. Your set-up is like my own, sans the wife bit. My wife users her
own laptop with Windows and only plays games on my netbook.... in Linux, not
Windows! I am not sure why I give Windows half the drive as I have not been
into Windows in at least six months and that was only for my wife to do
email when we were travelling.

Issue 21 of Full Circle Magazine has an article on creating a bootable USB flash
drive.

I have downloaded this issue of Full Circle Magazine. I still have to
read it. Thank you for bringing to my attention.

I had the same problem install to netbook via USB. Tried several times. I
finally used another Format software, then , utilized the USB creator in
Ubuntu, worked fine from that point with 3 different brand USB sticks. The
sticks need to be, regardless, formated and partitioned before the USB
creator is used.

I use Unetbootin which is cross platform. It even works in Windows. It is
fast and reliable. It can even download the ISO for you. The only trick is
to mount to usb key before you open the application. It always works with
Ubuntu, but it does not work with all distributions. I can't get it to work
with Mandriva for example.

Inspired by your endorsement of Unetbootin I've given it a go and like it.
Unlike the built in Ubuntu utility it does not reformat but more important it
works on my 1GB USB stick whereas Ubuntu's own utility will not accept it, as it
is too small.

However now I have Ubuntu-live working on a USB stick, can I / how do I convert
this into a normal working copy of Ubuntu, so I can save files, remove / install
apps, force a login panel, encrypt home folder, etc & still have everything
there when I reboot?

You use the live version to install a copy onto whatever medium you desire.
You can install it to the hard drive of the netboot or to another larger usb
key or even a SD card. One of my netbooks has a SSD and the other has a 160
GB HD. I kept Windows on the HD and installed Ubuntu NRM to a 16 GB SD card
and it runs like a breeze. It is silent, unlike when it runs from a HD where
the fan and drive can be noisy.

If you install to the HD then you may have to partition or format. If you
install to a key or SD card then you don't. Just make sure that you write
the grub menu to the drive that it is installed on. That is done on on the
second last page before the installation actually begins (page 7). Click on
the Advanced button in the bottom right. It enables you to write to grub
where you want.

When you boot you have to hit the ESC key to get the boot manager to kick in
then select the device that you want to boot. You can also have it written
to the HD however, that can be tricky if you are in the habit of removing
devices as I am or changing order etc. There are advantages both ways.

An external DVD rewriter drive is always very useful.

it all makes sense now. I'll need to get a larger USB stick for
a full installation as this is too big for the one I had handy in my top draw.
However I stepped through the install process and all was clear. I like the idea
of my own writeable, maintainable, customisable system on a stick that I can
carry round & plug into a PC when needed.