New Addition to the Family

Wednesday, October 15. 2008

On Monday we had a new addition to the family arrive - an Asus Eee PC 1000! So far I am pretty impressed with the hardware. The Linux installation was pretty disappointing but I never really intended to keep that anyway. I played around with it on Monday as I built a chroot for the new arrival (pictured below).

I went for the 10" model as I was worried about the size of the keyboard on the smaller ones. I also liked the sound of the SSD drive and it looked like a great little unit. I ended up building a custom stage 4 Gentoo tarball for it on my desktop and installing it here. I have it running the new KDE 4.1.2 ebuilds along with a few KDE 3 apps I can't do without.

All in all it seems to be working pretty well. I only got round to installing Gentoo on it yesterday. So far I have the webcam, wired and wireless networking working. I am using WICD to control networking. I would love to see a Qt4/KDE 4 frontend that integrates better but it is an awesome little app.

This is my first post on it, the screen isn't a bad size and the battery life seems to be good. I am on the road today and my wife acted as an unwilling hand model. I still haven't managed to get the asus_laptop or asus_acpi modules to load and so am missing all those devices. It claims no such device.

I will hopefully be able to post more at some point in the future. I certainly think this is great for being on the road and Skype is working with the webcam. I did use the 2.6.27 kernel whicih made things a lot easier I suspect. I might try building a vanilla kernel soon to see if that lets me insert the asus_laptop module successfully.

For now I have quite a few hours to kill in the BA lounge at JFK!

Posted by Marcus D. Hanwell in FOSS, Gentoo, KDE, Linux at 13:42 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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You might want to try to build asus_laptop into the kernel (not as a module). I tried it and now I can control wlan and such in /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/. There is also an eeepc_laptop option that will give you the function keys events. There are scripts available in several eeepc wiki's that allow you to manage volume, toggle wlan etc. I hope this helps...

#1 Erik on 2008-10-15 15:25 (Reply)

Thanks for the tips. I was thinking about trying that when I rebuilt the kernel. Right now I am just enjoying the new toy and killing time at the airport. I had not seen any mention of the eeepc_laptop option - is that a patch to the kernel?

I think it is a great bit of kit and am already impressed. Getting the extra devices so that I can enable and disable devices as I need them would be great. I was going to see what tweaking I could do to maximise battery life when I am travelling.

I am building up a list of links. I hope to write a fuller article collating some of the information when I get chance. It looks like 2.6.27 many patches made it into the kernel to improve the Eee PC. I think the 10" is the perfect size for me although I could have probably coped with the 9" model.

#1.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2008-10-15 16:27 (Reply)

The eeepc_laptop option is already available in 2.6.26. It is a bit difficult to find since you first have to enable some other options before it shows. I always check the Kconfig file in the kernel src directory of the driver to see the dependencies.
Indeed the 1000 is probably the most practical netbook on the market now. I have a 1000H that came with XP since they don't sell the 1000 with Linux and SSD here in the Netherlands. I run Gentoo now with KDE 4.1.2, and I am happy with it. The harddisk is OK, but probably consumes a bit more power than an SSD...

#1.1.1 Erik on 2008-10-16 14:59 (Reply)

I will dig around when I get to recompiling my kernel - probably once I get over the jetlag. Still really enjoying the new laptop/toy.

#1.1.1.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2008-10-16 15:24 (Reply)

I started writing a wicd-qt (http://wicd-qt.googlecode.com) but it is neglected now.

I intend to revive it eventually, but maybe you want to take a look.

#2 Roberto Alsina (Homepage) on 2008-10-16 10:23 (Reply)

That is great to know. I will check it out soon. It seemed llike the architecture in use is open multiple GUIs and that there must be others who love it but would prefer better integration into the KDE environment.

#2.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2008-10-16 15:27 (Reply)

Thanks a lot for pointing out wicd, never heard about it before
it's wonderful

#3 tiago on 2008-10-18 10:02 (Reply)

I think so also you, no everything is fine.

#4 Marc (Homepage) on 2008-11-10 10:46 (Reply)

Can you folks post more details how did you install Gentoo on eee pc 1000?
I know it needs kernel 2.6.27 as the network needs "atl1e" driver.

I've tried to follow guidelines from:
http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/Asus_EEE_PC_1000

but I got stuck with kernel; I need to have a USB minimal install with new kernel 2.6.27; I tried to follow these instructions:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manual-en_Build_a_SystemRescueCd_with_your_own_kernel

but they are not consistent, especially the part about "Recreating the initramfs"

2.) Did you folks compile Gentoo on a another machine in "chroot"

#5 Joseph on 2008-11-14 23:54 (Reply)

I will try to post more details when I get some spare time. I used gentoo-sources-2.6.27, I can post the kernel .config if that would help? I compiled everything in a chroot on my desktop and then made a stage4. I think we should be trying to make more stage4 style installs available. Especially for the Eee PC and friends. I don't have everything working on there just yet and am really short on spare time at the moment.

I wasn't intentionally being mysterious. If you have specific issues I willl certainly see if I can help you out.

#5.1 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2008-11-30 19:29 (Reply)

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