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Asus To Ship Ubuntu 10.10 On Three Eee PC Netbooks
An anonymous reader writes "Asus has announced that three Eee PCs will ship with Ubuntu Linux. Three 2011 models — the 1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX — are immediately available, though no retailers seem to stock them yet. A Canonical exec had this to say about the new netbooks: 'There are a number of factors that make Ubuntu an attractive proposition for ASUS and its customers. Ubuntu continues to set the standard for slick design, ease of use and security, it is the world's third most popular operating system, and [it] has the most number of users in Linux. We [Canonical] were looking at publicly available data on the operating systems accessing Wikipedia last week and found the web site serves more pages to Ubuntu PCs than to iPads — there are a lot of users out there.' It might not be the same as Asus launching three flagship netbooks all running Ubuntu instead of Windows, but it's definitely a start. Asus says there are more Ubuntu netbooks to come later this year, too — hopefully they'll run Ubuntu 11.04."
10.10 is the right version to distribute ... 11.04 is (Unity aside) way too flaky to inflict of someone you wish to impress with the reliability of Linux. this is cool though ... I've been thinking for a while that Canonical should distribute their own line of hardware, perhaps 3 models of laptop at various levels of power and price, similar to the Apple model, but cheaper, and open. This would get around some of the problems people run into with unusual, unsupported wireless and video cards. If done right, it could probably pull off marketing it as a bit of an upscale laptop.
Don't want to turn people off of Linux.
Microsoft must have been late with its kickback check this quarter. I hope the check isn't already in the mail, otherwise these won't be available for long.
If I got one I would most likely install Debian on it, but if they make it work smoothly with Ubuntu it will probably be easy to make it work smoothly with Debian as well. And it would be nice to not have to pay the Microsoft tax, even if it's not much cheaper. Hell, it would be nice even if they are more expensive as long as Microsoft isn't getting any of it.
Microsoft must have been late with its kickback check this quarter.
Where is that funny & insightful mod button when you need it?
I dunno, they seem to manage fine with iOS and android. We're talking about netbooks, so the different form factor makes people intuitively not expect it to be *exactly* the same as what they've always used. And Unity is closer to looking like android/iOS than windows, which makes even more sense if the device is looking more like a phone than a desktop... although I definitely agree that not including Unity is an obvious choice. That stuff is just a disaster at present.
Yes, on Oct 21st the worthy Mac and Windows users will be raptured to a place where their old machines will be discarded and instead they will use Eee Books running Ubuntu. This will be a time of Unity.
The unworthy will be stuck using their Mac and Windows machines, or for the truly unworthy BSD.
Even if you don't run Ubuntu, it will be nice to get the same hardware for less money. It drives me crazy when I try to buy a laptop, and there is no option to purchase it sans OS. This way even if your favorite flavor is not Ubuntu, at least you won't be paying for an OS you don't plan on using.
What I am more worried about is, when 10.10 becomes obsolete or when 12.04 comes out, can ASUS or Canonical provide a seamless upgrade? As of now, the answer is no, you invariably end up breaking something.
Thanks but no thanks for the FUD. In the off chance you are a retard and not a troll, please let me explain. It takes considerable time and effort to validate an OS for a piece of hardware. More than two months in fact. Asus has to offer support for these netbooks, so they cannot put an OS on it that has not been thoroughly tested on the hardware. When they started this task, 10.10 was the latest and greatest. Strangely enough, they decided not to start all over in the middle of the process simply because a new release came out. Also, it's pretty ridiculous to call 10.10 "obsolete". Non LTS Ubuntu releases go EoL after 18 months, so 10.10 will not be obsolete for another year.
My wife's been using Ubuntu since 9.10. She's been basically happy with it, except for the few times she's had trouble getting mp3s from Amazon. But there's no way she'd know to switch the desktop, and I have told her not to upgrade to 11.04 to avoid dealing with it for the time being.
it's free. You usually don't get any discount on the Linux netbooks & nettops...
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good god i hope they dont ship 11.04. Your average gnome 2.4 desktop is mildly understandable for joe sipack (especially once you move to just one panel, at the bottom), but unity is a fricking usability disaster. Once they ship eee's with 11.04, they will have a repeat of the original eee 701 on their hands, massive returns by clueless commoners unable to connect to their wireless and start ther browser.
i've tried installing 11.04 on my oldish laptop, and the thing is horribly unstable, and basicaly unusable, while old versions of ubuntu run without a hitch
Honestly, the first system i buy with ubuntu 11.04 pre-installed will have its drive wiped as if it were running vista
People, what a bunch of bastards
The original Linux EEE PCs ran the most god-awful distro imaginable.
It had to fit in 2GB of file space, and still have something left for users. But I agree that it sucks. I have several EeePC 2G Surf machines, obtained cheaply from a failed startup company. I use them to run some embedded system demos, where all that runs is one Python application. The biggest problem is that the WiFi driver is flaky. The second biggest problem is that the "union" file system, which makes one read-only file system and one read-write file system appear to be a single pathname space, leaks inodes, and has to be flushed out occasionally.
The problem with Asus is that they can't be trusted as a Linux vendor. They've had on again, off again Linux support for years.
I suspect that most of the upgrade problems are caused by installing drivers that aren't in the official repositories. I have never had a problem with a system that had only packages from the repos installed. One of my machines has been upgraded in place, version by version, since 6.06; another, since 7.04; and others since 8.04, 8.10, and 9.10. All of them have been upgraded, version by version, to either 10.10 or 11.04 (and I even upgraded to alpha builds on one of those machines!), and not one of them has ever had a problem with the upgrade.
(One thing that all five of those machines have in common is nVidia graphics. I don't have any experience with upgrading a system that has Intel or ATI graphics, so maybe the upgrades aren't so smooth there.)
Unity isn't in 10.10. Good thing, because it sucks. I'm now using Mint.
which is totally what she said
DNF is shipping. Anything can happen.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I am actually in shock. How is it even possible to miss the sarcasm here?
"Massive usability disaster" is an understatement. I tried lodging my complaints about 10.10 unity on the netbook and got shouted down on the official forums. 10.04 is nearly ideal, but 10.10 is slow as molasses and not at all intuitive or structured around getting things done in an expeditious manner. It's even more frustrating for "power users". I heard a rumor that Unity from 10.10 netbook edition was going to get rolled into a later desktop release. I hope not.
moox. for a new generation.
This is Slashdot.
I've been running UNR on a 1001p for a year and a bit now and it's fairly flawless. Respectably quick for a wee machine like that, odd-but-nice navigation, and stable with one exception: if it's running under the effects-laden UNR interface then X will sometimes fall over. It's happened maybe 20 times since I've had it - unsure as to the source, but my first total guess would be something between the nVidia driver and Ubuntu. The wireless took a bit of fiddling to get working too, but no huge hassle, just a couple of installations. I'm hoping that the combination of a newer OS than I'm running plus an in-house build will sort both issues out.
If you're not a fan of the Unity interface (and I get the impression I'm in the minority by liking it) you can easily just boot into good-old-gnome, but given the screen size I never bother. Battery life is a solid 6 hours without being particularly careful (wireless on, screen bright, playing videos with the sound on), dropping to about 4 hours after a year and three months of daily use.
Cracking machine for the money, and Ubuntu sits very nicely on top. My initial review of it is here: Asus 1001p review
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
didn't BestBuy sign a deal with Microsoft (ExpertZone) putting Microsoft employees inside of BB for training and lots of the training was how to bash Linux and Macs? I wouldn't doubt there was also a contract section eliminating their ability to sell other operating systems, especially GNU/Linux based ones. Here is a good search to start with:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft+Best+buy+employee
Don't count on Best Buy carrying these or expect to keep getting it pulled from your hands by Best Buy employees shoving Microsoft at you.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Actually I solved it by inserting another USB mouse. It was quite weird, the touchpad was dead but the USB wasn't. Then I used the onscreen keyboard.