The EeePC netbooks are awesome!
As some of you may have noticed, I usually carry around a tiny little black laptop when I'm at Beer and Blog or at a coffee shop. Since people ask about it so much, I decided to write a few blog posts about it with this being the first.
What is it? Its an EeePC 1000 from ASUS (the same guys that make motherboards). Its a new type of laptop that is generally referred to as a netbook mainly because it lacks some of the features that a normal laptop has such as a cdrom, being heavy, a multi-core power sucking CPU, and a huge screen. Outside of that, its like any other laptop with a few other enhancements. In my case, this EeePC has these features which I love about it.
- Long battery life, claims one day computing (6+hrs)
- Solid State Drives (SSD) - no moving parts & better battery life!
- Multi-touch track pad
- Very usable keyboard (92% from a normal laptop)
- Lightweight (2lbs 15oz)
- Fast 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom processor
- 802.11n Wi-Fi and Blue-tooth
- 1.3MP web cam
I've used my trusty 15" PowerBook for many years and I still use it, but its become more of a hassle to carry around with me. I'm a UNIX Admin, so I don't need much on my laptop (xterm, Firefox, Thunderbird, and pidgin) to get work done and the EeePC was a perfect fit. The first models that ASUS releases for the EeePC didn't appeal to me since they had a screen and keyboard that was too small for me to deal with. A good friend of mine (who also has the habit of being an enabler for me :P) purchased one for himself and kept raging about it. I was actually considering getting an upgrade for my PowerBook but didn't want to pay $2K for a new MacBook, so instead I decided to get this EeePC for around $500 (its down to $430 now).
Asus gives you two options for Operating Systems on these laptops: Windows XP or Linux (Xandros). Since I'm a Gentoo developer, I decided to give it a try on this laptop. I encountered a few issues of course, but overall I have all the hardware working. The only annoying thing so far is the wireless driver not being included in the mainline kernel, but that's going to change soon I hope. There is an open source driver but its a little finicky to deal with on networks using any form of security passwords. But it does work!
In the upcoming posts, I plan to write about the following:
- How I installed Gentoo on it
- Gentoo tweaks I use on it
- Window management
- Firefox tweaks (yes, you need them!)
- How netbooks are helping promote Linux to the masses
I love my EeePC and you should get one too! :)
February 9th, 2009 - 21:18
Looking forward to hearing the process to getting Gentoo on it and ease of Gentoo maintenance. I suppose it isn’t so bad now that these babies have a 1.6ghz proc. dual-core too?
February 9th, 2009 - 21:33
Its not bad but the I/O with the SSD is actually pretty slow. I have /var/tmp in tmpfs but that doesn’t help with merges at all. I went with a binary host that does all the builds then just pull in all the applications via that. The only thing I really do is compile the kernel (although I plan to fix that soon too). They currently only have one core but for what I do that’s fine. Netbooks aren’t designed to do amazing 3D work, or play hardcore games.
February 9th, 2009 - 21:37
I also bought an eee-pc some days ago, but it’s an eee-pc 1000HA. I’m an Gentoo user and, therefore, I will be looking forward for your next post. =)
Thanks in advance!
February 9th, 2009 - 21:42
I should clarify that my network woes were primarily because of the lack of a normal mainline wireless driver. When I tested the laptop with the OEM Xandros, I had no problem using wireless on any network. I also hear from Donnie Berkholz that his experience with eeeBuntu is great as far as wireless goes. I don’t have NetworkManager on (and prefer to do things by hand anyways) so its mostly my fault :).
February 10th, 2009 - 01:33
I really love to read about how to get gentoo onto my eee. Never had the time to play with it and the shipped xandros is just annoying. I hope you are writing these blog entries soon! ;-)
February 10th, 2009 - 12:23
yes, these netbooks are really nice
too bad that they used linux at the beginning just for publicity and now most of them switched to xp :(
February 11th, 2009 - 12:52
I’ve also been running Gentoo on an EEE PC, but for quite a long time – since the original ones came out. Mine is an 8GB (701 Model), and I put in 2GB of RAM. My disk usage is about 5 GB, but I have a fully fledged development environment on here – linux source, several typical includes, eclipse-ganymede, sun-jdk, 2 cross-toolchains, 1 native toolchain, etc. I’ve developed quite a few tricks for using it (very efficiently) with Gentoo. Here is a quick list:
1. Used a SquashFS-compressed version of the portage tree. Saves hundreds of megabytes of space.
2. Very few writes to disk. Use RAM mounted at /tmp instead. E.g. /var/log -> /tmp/log, /var/run -> /tmp/run, changed firefox’s temporary directory to /tmp/firefox, etc.
3. Using PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/tmp, DISTDIR=”/tmp/distdir”, PKGDIR=”/tmp/binpkgs”, INSTALL_MASK=”*.h *.a *.la *.pc *.result *.test *.opt /usr/share/doc /usr/share/info /usr/lib/pkgconfig /usr/share/locale /usr/share/info /usr/share/gtk-doc /usr/include /usr/share/gnome/help /usr/share/aclocal* /usr/share/automake* /usr/share/autoconf* /usr/share/gnuconfig /usr/share/openvpn/easy-rsa /usr/lib/svgalib /usr/lib/svgalib/threeDKit /usr/share/opencv/doc /usr/share/opencv/samples /usr/share/lastfm/i18n /usr/share/qt4″, so only the necessary binary files are installed.
4. Use a faster machine as a PORTAGE_BINHOST to compile and host binary packages instead of building them on the netbook. E.g. EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS=”-GK”
February 11th, 2009 - 14:56
Hi
I also have an eeepc 1000h (harddrive instead of solid state) and run Gentoo on it.
With regards to your net / wireless issues the ebuild for the driver is at http://sf-alpha.bjgang.org/serendipity/index.php?/archives/9-Ralink-RT2860-Ebuild.html .
Is it ok to clarify a few questions with you regarding the hardware configuration (namely the alsa configuration) and a few other things ?
I enjoyed your article.
Thanks for your time
February 18th, 2009 - 23:55
I’m using an Eeepc 100HA w/Gentoo. It rocks. I’ve ditched my desktop. Its a bit slower but the mobility is worth it. The wireless driver works well as a kernel module. When at my desk it pushes a 1680×1050 LCD w/ wireless mouse/keyboard. The only device not working is the camera just because I haven’t bothered with it. I’m using it for: Postgres, MySQL, Apache, XMPP, C++, PHP, Javascript, Imagemagick, PDF creation.
February 19th, 2009 - 06:38
I have Eee 1000H and I want install Gentoo too. When I statrted I will put some linke here as well. Maybe even update somehow gentoo wiki.
See you soon!
February 25th, 2009 - 19:00
Have a 1002HA
Installed Gentoo when it came in October chrooting using
an Ubuntu liveUSB
No issues. Wireless in kernel drivers worked with a Vanilla Kernel since I got it.