Asus EEE 901 re-installation
Yesterday I received my new EEE 901, to be prepared for akademy, I want to install another distro on it. That distro has to have KDE 4.1.0 of course, else it is useless anyway.
My first choice would have been openSUSE. They don’t have a special EEE distro, but they have excellent instructions. Installing is a bit weird though. You can use 1 usb stick and install openSUSE 10.3 on it, and after that you can upgrade to 11.0. I think this way you start with a mess, and I don’t want that. The other option is with two USB sticks, without proper documentation how to do it with a cd-rom drive. As my 2GB USB stick could not hold the 2GB image anyway, I decided to just use the regular installer CD and see what would happen. Well, no luck, as openSUSE did not like the external CD-player (can’t find CD configuration images or something like that). Ok, a bit stuck now.
Second choice was Debian. I know the Debian KDE4.1 packages are ok and there is a DebianEee project. Unfortunatly that seems to run behind as the 901 wifi is not supported, I need to download compile the kernel driver by hand and after that Network-Manager still refuses to play with it. Besides that the KDE packages experimental and unstable repository. Although I did learn about apt-pinning, it still feels a bit uncomfortable.
So my third option was Kubuntu. It also has a dedicated ‘distro’ for the Eee. I’ve downloaded the iso and tried it. There is also no wireless or ethernet when you have booted from the live-cd. The instructions from wiki.eeeuser.com let you compile drivers and install extra packages via a flash drive. I just don’t get this. Why have I just burned a cd and now I need additional packages to get it to work?
Mandriva is bragging about excellent Eee support. It is an option, but the KDE 4 packaging in the past was not so good, running behind and available in there unstable repository, which is not generally advisable for the rest of the computer.
So I’m now officially without distro here. What started like a simple job, turns out to be a difficult exercise.
Thank you Lydia!! You totally Rock! Girl!!! Yay!!! I’m gonna try this stuff Raight Nao!!
..MoweSlowley
Where did you get an EEE pc 901 in the Netherlands??
I’ve been waiting weeks for one.
I’ve ordered it in the UK
Bij welke winkel heb je hem besteld dan?
Actually the upgrade-method described in the wiki entry worked quite nicely on my 701. (actually I was the one who edited the wiki entry, that it’s possible to do the upgrade vom 10.3. to 11. without a cd-rom.) :)
I don’t think you will start with a mess. The only problem I have at the moment, are the updates for the madwifi / atheros wireless and ethernet chips, they don’t work for the 701 model and if I accidentally install them, I have to rpm -ihv the old ones from the appleonkel repository again.
Other than that, it just runs fine! (although I envy you because of the resolution and longer battery life :)
I had really good luck with Mandriva 2008.1 on my EeePC. I was able to grab and install the KDE 4.1 packages linked to from kde.org and they just worked. I haven’t really had any stability problems with the packages either.
I have the same computer and have not had any success yet. Check out the forum.eeeuser.com forum, there is some guy who managed to install the eee ubuntu version, but not all the peripherals work. Maybe we need some more time…
You could try Arch Linux.
Works very well on my eee 704. (their is an inoffical eee repo)
But installation is not very easy (but if you know linux good enough that should be no real problem)
There are offical kde 4.1 packages and also daily kde trunk svn packages.
DanielW
Please note that KDE4 ( 4.0.3 ) packages from Mandriva 2008 Spring was available in contrib, and could be installed at the same time than KDE3, and so no issues for the stability of your system.
The KDE4.1 packages available from kde.org for Mandriva can also be installed in parallel.
I have mine working perfectly with Kubuntu now.
Follow these instructions: http://www.array.org/ubuntu/index.html
After using it for a week or two, I have to say that support for KDE 4.1 on archlinux beats everything else I’ve tried (openSuSE 11, Fedora 9, and even Gentoo).
There are instructions here on installing on the eeePC:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installing_Arch_Linux_on_the_Asus_EEE_PC
Since I don’t have one, I don’t know how well they work, but it’s definitely worth a shot, I’d say.
Arch is a really great distro for lots of other reasons, anyway.
I’ll throw in another vote for archlinux. I’ve got it on two 701′s, and it works fine.
There is a lengthy thread on bbs.archlinux.org about it. People have put together kernel, acpid and module packages for the eeepc. KDE 4.1 is the standard kde install now.
I think fedora might have a kernel with the ath2 support required, and madwifi for the wireless.
A usb cdrom is very handy if you have one. Most everything out of the box lacks ath2 and wireless drivers required for a network install.
Derek
I wouldn’t suggest using another kernel, that’s inviting trouble.
Compiling the wireless drivers in Kubuntu for NetworkManager is actually very easy, you just need to remember to tell the driver to compile with NM support.
Read this page:
http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/index.php5?title=Getting_the_network_drivers_working_on_the_901
That should help.
Oh, I should have mentioned – install Kubuntu Intrepid Alpha rather than Kubuntu Hardy, solely because switching from the unofficial PPA KDE4.1 on Hardy to the official KDE4.1 on Intrepid is a nightmare.
Just start with Intrepid and if you want a stable machine, install then don’t update till the release. It’s stable ATM.
Try Fedora 9 with KDE 4.1 from updates-testing maybe?
One of the BLAG folks even has a kernel he claims supports all the hardware, including the wireless (with the Free ath5k, not the non-Free madwifi): https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00122.html.
To get KDE 4.1 on F9, try:
su -c "yum update"su -c "yum --enablerepo=updates-testing groupupdate kde-desktop"
We’d also appreciate any feedback about the update, as it will help us getting it out to stable faster (either directly if it is positive or by helping us identify and fix problems if it is negative).
Oh, and to get kdepim 4.1, use this:
su -cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/fedora/kde.repo
yum --enablerepo=kde-unstable update kdepim kdeutils
rm -f kde.repo
hi,
mandriva has an excellent eee support:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Tour#Asus_Eee-friendly
KDE 4.0 is available in contrib repository, while KDE4.1 is available by adding this repository:
urpmi.addmedia –update Kde41 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.1.0/Mandriva/RPMS/i586/ with media_info/synthesis.hdlist.cz
naturally you can try (at your own risk) mandriva 2009, which it’s enough stable (maybe you can wait the second beta, planned on 19th of august)
Bye
Marcello
On my 701, I did a straight openSuse 11.0 install from USB using the DVD iso, used the appelonkel rpm’s for the drivers, and then installed 4.1 perfectly fine. I’ll bring my stick to Akademy if you want to try openSuse again.
Desperately hoping my 901 turns up before Akademy, but not looking good :-(
John Layt.
I am searching for a new distro for my eeepc 900 and I want it to run KDE 4.1, I didn’t try installation anything yet, since I am busy. Arch looks like a good option, and maybe mandriva. I never tried Arch before, I am little worried it might take severel days work to configure everything and I dont have that much time. I had bad experience with Mandriva in the past, so I am not very excited to try it again.
Can you please keep us updated, I might replace mine on the weekend.
Archlinux has actually gotten pretty easy to install. It’s probably a matter of two or three hours unless you have really, really bizarre hardware. Since the eeepc is pretty well documented, I suspect it wouldn’t be that much trouble for you.
+1 for archlinux. the kdemod packages are quite stable and easy to install. (pacman -S kdemod)