Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Which Distro For an Eee PC?

Posted by timothy on from the pick-your-poison dept.

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?

10 of 466 comments (clear)

  1. Windows 7 by heffrey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you like vista why not stick windows 7 on it?

  2. Re:Ubuntu by metallicagoaltender · · Score: 4, 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.

  3. eeebuntu by iTowelie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So far I have tried the following operating systems in this order:

    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.

  4. OpenSuSE? by Anonymous Coward · · 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) ;-)

  5. I recommend... by n3tcat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Windows 7. I'm sure it would rate the performance of your EEE PC in the 3.5 range.

  6. Wireless by Nutty_Irishman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you replace the wireless card with an intel based wireless card, you should have no problems with any linux distro. I replaced my wireless card on my MSI Wind with the Intel 3945 and have no problems in linux http://www.google.com/products?q=intel+PRO+3945

  7. Why? by darthservo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I realize that there is some intent of humor behind the post, but really why would it be so hard to believe that someone actually gave Vista a serious look as opposed to having a blog-formed bias against it before using it? Yes, XP is not "giant piece of crap" but Vista is better.

    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.

    --

    Prove it.

  8. FreeBSD by sremick · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not bad for a "dead" OS:

    http://wiki.freebsd.org/AsusEee

  9. Re:XandrOS or EeeOS? by Zordak · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Typing this on a 904HA, which I've had for three or four weeks. The only thing that really throws off my typing is the right shift key. I don't know who made that design choice, but it was stupid. If not for that, it would be pretty much perfect. I paid $350 for the thing, including shipping, and it's perfect for using on the bus or plane when a regular laptop is just too cumbersome.

    I wiped the second partition and added FC 10, which worked out of the box, including wireless.

    --

    Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
  10. Re:wifi drivers, atheros and ralink by cide · · 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?"