Asus Eee PC - Impressions and request for ideas

[audiovoodoo]

Well my long term windows user of a brother finally bit the bullet and got a new PC last week. Much to my amazement he ended up buying a 4Gb Eee PC from ASUS. Now my brother is a reasonably well skilled Windows user, not a tech but well able to install an application change settings fairly easily so I was interested to see how both he and the little Eee got on. Whilst he has used my Ubuntu install before now this is his first forray into Linux land.

Initial Impressions on opening the box:

WOW! That is small.
WOW! That charger is small.
WOW! Not a serial number or EULA in sight!!

Part one of the mission- get it on the net:

Seeing as the new PC was wireless we replaced the USB ADSL modem with a nice £30 wireless router. A little bit of messing around (it helps if you can remember the password for your accounts!) router was up. Booted the box - BANG! 10 second boot. This is amazing.

The default shell is very simple, I can see that it would put power users off but most of the basics are covered. I clicked on the wireless networks icon, scanned and withing 30 seconds I'm on the wireless network. So far this is easier than Vista. Another minute later and I have YouTube streaming video to the new toy.. Hey it works!

Part Two - Moving forwards
Now my brother has been playing for about a week and so far is quite taken. I pointed him at the eeeuser.com site and he has been doing a bit of reading as have I. There are some things that the box would not do well, the screen is to small for graphics work of any seriousness and you are never going to set super pi records with this thing but as a general web client / word processor it seems to really have it covered.

My brother is now interested in having a play with a more complete and traditional OS. The easy option is to turn on the Full Xandros desktop (advanced mode) which we will probably have a go at today, this does however leave us on Xandros.. I've had a look at the eeexubuntu pages and as an existing Ubuntu fan this makes a lot of sense to me, certinaly the fact that it has been pre configured to work with the Eee would make life easier. I have also read good reports of Slax on the Eee. My concern of going this way is that last time I looked Slax seemed to be falling a little behind in terms of updates but if others know different please shout up as it fair flew when I had a play with it a year or so ago. I've not heard of any Gentoo goodness yet but I'm sure it will come.

So folks - Any of you running an Eee and if so what do you think would be the best fit OS wise for a moderate web based user?

 

[linux_0]

Awesome

Don't have one, want one

Ubuntu sounds like a great choice.

Fedora 8 would be cool too, it has some very cool features, kinda big though. You may not have enough storage for a full install.

 

[linux_0]

Your brother get the 2GB or the 4GB?

512MB or 1GB RAM?

 

[MU_Engineer]

Awesome

Don't have one, want one

Ubuntu sounds like a great choice.

Fedora 8 would be cool too, it has some very cool features, kinda big though. You may not have enough storage for a full install.

A bunch of people put 16 GB SDHC cards in the reader and leave them there. If you can't boot from the SDHC card itself, put /boot and at least /usr, /bin, and /sbin and maybe /etc on the HDD and everything else on the SDHC card, particularly /lib, /tmp, /var, swap, and /home. That way you should be able to get almost any distro installed.

 

[linux_0]

Great idea

I guess you could add a USB device too for storage at the expense of portability.

 

[knightrous]

I've seen a few people mod the EEE to have a bluetooth adaptor and 16GB flashdrive wired up to the USB controller, all installed inside the case. Little fiddly when tapping the USB controllers, but it's a great way to add more capacity and function

 

[audiovoodoo]

Thanks for the input folks. Just to clarify things:

The Eee in question is a 4Gb model with 512Mb Ram. So far we only have a 2Gb SD card to hand to play with on this (the 8Gb and 16Gb cards are still a bit expensive for us to play with). We have not cracked it open yet to see if we have been lucky and landed one with a mini PCI slot as I hear some of them have.

We did debate going to 2Gb of RAM as this would be a roughly £30 upgrade and very easy to do, but whilst in 'Basic' mode I'm really not sure the performance increase could justify the cost. In terms of addind extra storage the present plan is:

1. Get some 4Gb pen drives, whilst they do add bulk they are easy for my bro to logically seperate different things. If I was to do a full OS install then I would probably look to install to USB and then set the BIOS to fall back to the SSD if the pen is not present - ultra simple multi boot.

2. As soon as SDHC cards drop a little get the biggest we can easily afford and move internal

3. Add a small NAS to the home network for backup and media storage. This might yet be the old PC with Ubuntu Server or if I get brave maybe a sick BSD install.

Eeexubuntu is looking favourite at the moment, ultimately installed on the SSD although pendrive initial install testing phase. I'm still wondering about the 2Gb of RAM or if I would be better advising my brother to sink that cash into an SDHC card.... I guess that depends just how much pr0n he needs on the move...

Wish it was my box as I'd have already blasted Xandros off the face of the planet and be looking to the soldering iorn out! As it is this is my brothers main PC and the poor ah heck has just thrown his back out so I'm having to tread carefully in my persuit of geek pleasures...

Maybe I should just stick XP on there and stop supporting the commies

 

[audiovoodoo]

Forgot to add.. one of the issues we are finding with the default OS is support for external displays. The defult system just does not seem to want to let us run the local display and an external display at a different resolution. Anybody know if this is a hardware or a software limitation?

 

[MU_Engineer]

Forgot to add.. one of the issues we are finding with the default OS is support for external displays. The defult system just does not seem to want to let us run the local display and an external display at a different resolution. Anybody know if this is a hardware or a software limitation?

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the Xorg.conf in that system or the version of the Intel graphics driver. The chipset in the Eee is an underclocked but otherwise standard Intel 910GML mobile chipset and those support external displays to at least 1600x1200, if not the 2048x1536 that the 945GM chipset in my notebook has. I'd try to boot another standard Linux OS like straight Ubuntu 7.10 i386 from a live CD or a USB drive and see what that does.

 

[audiovoodoo]

Thanks MU - Much as I suspected on that one. We're hoping to get an external DVD purchased in the next week or so then the playing can really start.

Any thoughts on the merrits of the Ram upgrade?

 

[MU_Engineer]

Thanks MU - Much as I suspected on that one. We're hoping to get an external DVD purchased in the next week or so then the playing can really start.

Any thoughts on the merrits of the Ram upgrade?

You'll want to as 512 MB is a little tight and 2 GB of DDR2 can be had for $35 or so.

 

[audiovoodoo]

So as with many an IT project I now wait on the management for the budget request...

 

[linux_0]

lol

always max the RAM if you can

 

[audiovoodoo]

Totaly off topic - I lost my job the week before crimbo so funding is now a huge issue on these sorts of projects. We'll have to see if I can crawl back into the world of IT... Anybody wanting to pay silly money for a half way humorous chimp to fettle their hardware just drop me a PM!!

 

[linux_0]

Check http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/13/1730238 out

GL

 

[audiovoodoo]

Small update:

After having had no end of trouble with a slightly strange Wireless router I got round to having another play with the Eee last night. Enabled full desktop mode using the guide on the eee user forum wiki. This has moved from 'simple' to 'advanced' desktop mode.

The interface is now KDE 3.4. I've stuck a copy of Opera on there for my brother and his initial impressions are very positive. The machine seems to have more than enough oomph to do all the basic tasks and he's finding the more windows based feel more to his taste. It has gone from being an internet appliance to a fully fledged PC.

Anybody who has one and who has not tried this yet I really do suggest you give it a go. The change is as simple as adding a new repositorty to Synaptic and installing one meta package. Non destructive and you just select which interface you want so switching between the two is a doddle. The guide is very clear and concise.

** Heads off to hunt for work to fund purchase of EeePC for himself **

 

[audiovoodoo]

It looks like those after a solid state UMPC are in for a good year. Anybody have any opinions on the impending release of the Elonex One:

http://www.elonexone.co.uk/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/17/elonex-one-englands-100-quid-laptop/

http://ec.fontastic.com.tw/clients/showproducts_A9160333734983_big_P11987417213084909.html

At less than half the price of an Eee this looks like an interesting toy to be playing with.

 

[knightrous]

Just had an EEE turn up at the local PC stores, had my joy of playing with the demo model and confuzzling the staff...

I've already got a Think Pad X23 (12.1") and really really need a new server, but I can so see me buying the EEE and living without a server for another 6 months

 

[audiovoodoo]

They are just such a cool toy. Sorry to the world that I harp on about them but having gotten your hands on one I take it you understand my rants.

My problem is that the one I have to play with is my brothers and his main machine so I can't afford the couple of days without service that I would doubtless get if I started having a real play. If I get a new job before my savings run out then let the fun commence!

 

[knightrous]

They are just so much fun to use. I found it hard to put the little fella down and go back to work... They just seem to appeal to everyone, the average user chasing a cheap laptop that just "works", the tech on the run who wants to be able to keep documentation of jobs while on the fly, the hardware hacker who enjoys pulling things apart and putting as many extra features into a device which has features leaking from the seams already...

The EEE is just brilliant, I'll be buying one in the coming months, my X23 is great, but the EEE is more up to date (The X23 has PC133 ram, ever tried to find that stuff in 512MB sticks in SODIMM?!) and will handle my needs a little better (screen size isn't ideal, bit useable).

Xubuntu + EEE = teh big winz0r!

 

[linux_0]

$EEE=awesome();

The keyboard is a bit hard to get used to and the LCD is a bit small but it's still awesome :d

It's very light, small, doen't get in the way and runs pretty fast and smooth.

What more can you ask for?

Well, ok I would like to see them come up with an AMD version too

 

[audiovoodoo]

To my mind I think they should scrap the internal SSD and have either a CF of SD card slot in addition to the existing SD slot. Lots more flexibility and a lower base cost.

** Ponders for a moment... **

Actually make that 3 SD card slots and RAID support in BIOS

 

[linux_0]

Now that would be interesting.

SDRaid (TM)

 

[audiovoodoo]

Already been done with pen drives:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/flash.ars/8
http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/thumbraid_4


Or you could be a sick puppy and do it with floppies:

http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

 

[knightrous]

Did someone forget about my thread HERE about FlashRaids

Random idea...

Remove the standard SSD, fit in 4GB of DDR2 ram. Impliment 2 SD Card slots. Use 2-3GB of the RAM as a iRAM esque setup, loading the saved OS into RAM on boot up from an SD card (Flash is fast to read). When you shut down, it re-writes all changes in the OS back to the SD card... Use second SD card for storage... Maybe Raid it with the first SD card if you have enough space on them...