Which Distro For an Eee PC? 466
An anonymous reader writes "I've got an Eee PC 1000HD, and frankly, I can't stand XP. I know it's odd, because I actually like Vista, but XP is such a giant piece of crap on here that I struggle to use it day-by-day. Anyway, my question is this: which Linux distro should I run on it? Plain Ubuntu just doesn't have driver support. I tried Ubuntu-eee, which, to put it bluntly, does not work for me at all (slow, terrible battery life, even worse interface). I've heard that Jaunty Jackalope is going to have better netbook support, but that's all the way in April! Is there a distro out now that will free me from XP's terribleness without being terrible itself?" Getting wireless working on an Eee PC (though in my experience imperfectly) with stock Ubuntu is possible; for me it took some googling, though I've been told with great enthusiasm that it actually works "out of the box." What distros are you running on your netbook, and what problems do you find?
Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
If you like vista why not stick windows 7 on it?
Re:Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
+1 on Ubuntu. I picked up an Eee 1000H this past weekend and installing Easy Peasy (the poorly named Ubuntu Eee distro) via flash drive was ridiculously easy. Everything worked right off the bat without any messing around with config files. The "Netbook Remix" interface is sort of annoying, but very easy to turn off.
eeebuntu (Score:2, Interesting)
vLited Vista Home
Ubuntu eee
eeebuntu Standard
nLited XP
eeebuntu NetBookRemix.
Just last night I switched back from XP to eeebuntu 2.0 NBR. Why? Well, it just works beautifully OOTB with my 701SD and the GUI works well with the 7" screen. All I had to do was edit my fstab to automatically mount my Airdisk and media shares on my Vista box and that was that. I use it to browse the web, edit/view spreadsheets and to remote into some of my home computers. ZSNES is also a crucial download.
I honestly don't really notice the battery drain. If I want to compute for 2+ hours, I will use my desktop to avoid sore wrists by using the 701SD's small keyboard.
OpenSuSE? (Score:1, Interesting)
Hi!
I was considering buying one and putting OpenSuSE on it. There's a walkthrough on the OpenSuSE website:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_on_the_EeePC
Good Luck!
(Anonymous Coward) ;-)
I recommend... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wireless (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, I'm just tired of hearing crap flung against Vista when people don't give it a serious look. I look forward to Windows 7 for somewhat similar reasons as the Vista-haters - we won't hear any more about Vista. But the difference is that I'm hoping it will take the bias away as well.
FreeBSD (Score:3, Interesting)
Not bad for a "dead" OS:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/AsusEee [freebsd.org]
Re:XandrOS or EeeOS? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wiped the second partition and added FC 10, which worked out of the box, including wireless.
Re:wifi drivers, atheros and ralink (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this is the reason why the eeepc and other netbooks have been so cheap.
They tend to use newer hardware components that do not have a track record for rock-solid support in linux and windows. Manufacturers (Asus isn't the only one) select bids from the vendors with the lowest price.
Its not a coincidence that other non-Asus products end up with similar wifi/ethernet cards as Asus (Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind specifically), and thus have the exact same problems in support on linux.
What makes this rt2860 driver particularly unusual is that there are existing internal (community supplied) Linux kernel drivers for other ralink hardware available, but this rt2860 deviates from them so much, existing drivers useless for this hardware.
Coupled with the fact that Ralink has done such a poor job with version control, IMHO, (See reasons #2 and #3 above) it only causes endless greif for someone who automatically assumes that the latest version is always the greatest.
"Huh?.. rt2860 v1.8.0.0 doesn't contain anything fixed from v1.7.1.1?? But its got a higher number! WTF?"