On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of buying the Asus Eee for my girlfriend for her
> birthday. Has anyone put Linux on one of those? It looks do-able:
>
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Asus_Eee_PC_701
>
> but I'm wondering if anyone here has tried it.
>
> - Grant
> --
> gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
It comes with Xandros installed, so yes a lot of people have put Linux
on it including Asus . I never installed Gentoo on an Eee, but I'm
confident that you'll be able to install it -- and get everything
working -- on there with less hassle than on some other laptops.
--
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:47:32 -0700, Grant wrote:

> I'm thinking of buying the Asus Eee for my girlfriend for her
> birthday. Has anyone put Linux on one of those? It looks do-able:

I've put Gentoo on an Eee PC 900. So far the only things not working are
sound, which appears to be a common problem with non-Xandros distros, and
suspend, which I haven't even looked at yet.


--
Neil Bothwick

New Klingon hair salon: "Today is a good day to dye"

On Wednesday 11 June 2008, Grant wrote:
> I'm thinking of buying the Asus Eee for my girlfriend for her
> birthday. Has anyone put Linux on one of those? It looks do-able:
>
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Asus_Eee_PC_701
>
> but I'm wondering if anyone here has tried it.
>
> - Grant

There a whole user modding community grown up around the Eee. Apparently
the favoured hack is to rip the existing OS off and stick Ubuntu on, so
there is no reason in the world you won't be able to get Gentoo on it.
And it has no hardware inside that does not have Linux support somehow
somewhere

Compilation might take a while though :-) perhaps you should cross-build
from an existing beefier machine

--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

--
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

>> I'm thinking of buying the Asus Eee for my girlfriend for her
>> birthday. Has anyone put Linux on one of those? It looks do-able:
>>
>> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Asus_Eee_PC_701
>>
>> but I'm wondering if anyone here has tried it.
>>
>> - Grant
>
> There a whole user modding community grown up around the Eee. Apparently
> the favoured hack is to rip the existing OS off and stick Ubuntu on, so
> there is no reason in the world you won't be able to get Gentoo on it.
> And it has no hardware inside that does not have Linux support somehow
> somewhere
>
> Compilation might take a while though :-) perhaps you should cross-build
> from an existing beefier machine

Yeah how is the thing to use? How long does a firefox compile take?
How is xfce on there? Is the screen and keyboard too small? Anybody
work on it?

- Grant
--
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 15:53 -0700, Grant wrote:
> >> I'm thinking of buying the Asus Eee for my girlfriend for her
> >> birthday. Has anyone put Linux on one of those? It looks do-able:

yeah, ASUS did, but they quickly realised their mistake, and put a
superiour operating system on it (Windows XP I think). Plus you get to
pay more for it, so why wouldn't you buy that?

<sarcasm />

> >> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Asus_Eee_PC_701
> >>
> >> but I'm wondering if anyone here has tried it.

not me!

[snip]

> > Compilation might take a while though :-) perhaps you should cross-build
> > from an existing beefier machine
>
> Yeah how is the thing to use? How long does a firefox compile take?

I think it's a celeron 900 for the 700 range. Not sure about the 900
range, but that's a chunk more expensive. I once had a similar specced
desktop PC and I used firefox-bin because it was slooow. Definately try
distcc. In fact, if you can make the packages completely on another
machine, even better.

The EPC1000 debuted this month:
http://gizmodo.com/393596/asus-eee-pc-1000-to-debut-first-week-of-june

> How is xfce on there? Is the screen and keyboard too small? Anybody
> work on it?

The keyboard is not full sized. If you need that for touch-typing, then
maybe the MSI Wind is better:
http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20080529536/hands-on-with-the-msi-wind-ultra-portable.html

Anyway, there are plenty of reviews around:
http://www.slashgear.com/asus-eee-pc-looks-even-more-tempting-295983.php
--
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

I consider the day misspent that I am not either charged with a crime,
or arrested for one.
-- "Ratsy" Tourbillon

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On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 09:14:53PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote

> Compilation might take a while though :-) perhaps you should cross-build
> from an existing beefier machine

I'm thinking of doing something similar soon. Another reason for not
building on the EEE is to save wear-and-tear on the flash drive. I
suppose one should also use a filesystem without journalling to save the
flash drive. Are there any other native linux filesystems, besides
ext2fs, that don't journal?

While we're at it, can Gentoo run without a swap partition or swap file?

--
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
Stop the Squeegee Kids in Pinstripe Suits
Fight Canadian internet taxes http://walterdnes.wordpress.com
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On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:19:14 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

> I'm thinking of doing something similar soon. Another reason for not
> building on the EEE is to save wear-and-tear on the flash drive. I
> suppose one should also use a filesystem without journalling to save the
> flash drive.

Another option is to mount an external hard drive at /var/tmp/portage
when building large packages.


--
Neil Bothwick

There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to

On Thursday 12 June 2008, Walter Dnes wrote:
> While we're at it, can Gentoo run without a swap partition or swap
> file?

Any Linux can run just fine without swap.

--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

--
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:53:52 -0700, Grant wrote:

> Yeah how is the thing to use? How long does a firefox compile take?

[nelz@krikkit ~ 0]% genlop -i mozilla-firefox
* www-client/mozilla-firefox


Total builds: 1
Global build time: 1 hour, 24 minutes and 2 seconds.

Info about currently installed ebuild:

* www-client/mozilla-firefox-2.0.0.14
Install date: Sun May 18 22:22:48 2008
USE="java -mozdevelop -bindist -xforms -restrict-javascript -filepicker -iceweasel"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -pipe -Wno-return-type -w"

> How is xfce on there?

No idea, I use KDE, Xandros uses IceWM with KDE apps.

> Is the screen and keyboard too small?

They are small, whether they are too small depends on the size of your
fingers and the age of your eyes The PC 900's screen is a definite
improvement. I wouldn't want to work on mine all day, but that's what
desktop computers are for. It's a compromise, but a pretty good one,
especially as you get used to the smaller keyboard.


--
Neil Bothwick

Do hungry crows have ravenous appetites?