Eee PC

NOTE: This page is work in progress

Fedora on netbooks

Small form-factor laptops categorized as netbooks began to be part of pc market in 2007 with Asus shipping the Eee PC. Although the bundled linux installation is interesting, Fedora is more our style. This page should contain all the needed quirks and notes needed to run Fedora perfectly on netbooks.

News

• 2009-02-17 Page name changed to netbooks.. Eee PC it's not the only one netbook we must support
• 2009-02-16 The 90 % of instructions was obsolete, so they have been deleted. Let's try to give a better layout to this page

Installing Fedora

• Using DVD, you need an external DVD/CD reader
• Using USB pendrive (at least 1 GB) take a look at the USB Howto page

Eee PC 70x Series

Hardware support

Currently Fedora 10 (fully updated) natively supports all the Eee PC 701 series hardware. No post-installation manual mods are needed, all the hardware is automatically probed and the proper kernel modules are loaded.

• Integrated intel video chipset

Supported using the i915 kernel module

• Intel audio

Supported using the snd_hda_intel kernel module

• Fn Keys (included wireless switch)

Supported by eeepc_laptop kernel module

• Lan adapter

Supported by atl2 kernel module

• Wireless chipset

Supported by the ath5k kernel module

• Webcam

Supported by the uvcvideo kernel module

Eee PC 90x/1000 Series

Hardware support

• Wireless

Eee PC 901 wireless chip is Ralink RT2860, which is not supported by current kernel (work on support is in progress), but there's an open source driver provided by Ralink. RPMFusion has an akmod package with this driver (akmod-rt2860).

Read this for more details on externel repositories.

• Fn keys

Almost working, the Fn+F2 (wireless switch) doesn't work yet

Fixes and solutions to common problems

Screen is off after resume from suspend/hibernate (Eee PC 901)

Adding --quirk-dpms-on to pm-suspend/pm-hibernate helps. Adding --store-quirks-as-fdi makes it permanent.

Note: upgrading to BIOS 1603 seems to have removed the need for this quirk.

See bug 468271.

Hints and alternative software

LXDE Desktop

LXDE is a lightweight desktop environment that fits perfectly on low performance PCs like netbooks. Fedora 10 has LXDE on its repository

su -c 'yum groupinstall lxde-desktop'

Easy-mode like desktop

Do you like the easy-mode of Eee Pc default OS (Xandros) ? LXPanel is a panel based desktop interface for launching easily your installed software

su -c 'yum install lxpanel'

Openbox as window manager

Openbox is a nice replacement to GNOME's and KDE's window managers .

su -c 'yum install openbox obconf'

After installation you will need to choose openbox as your new window manager. If you are running gdm click on the session button and choose Gnome/Openbox. If you have an .xinitrc that is run at log in you can add, openbox, openbox-session or openbox-gnome-session to it.

Why?

• This Window Manager is FAST!!!
• The decorations are very small and simple.
• By default Openbox trys to shrink windows to fit the viewable screen

Firefox 3, really a cpu eater

Use Epiphany instead of Firefox 3... it's slim (written using the GTK libs) fast as Firefox 3, same compatibility (uses gecko as rendering engine).

Kickstart files

With a kickstart file you can ease the process of installing Fedora on your Eee PC.

• The kickstart file from Clint Savage for Live media

Source Code

If you want to take a look at the default source code which comes in the Eee PC, you could check Asus ftp:

• Eee Pc 700 series: http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/pool/
• Eee Pc 900 series: http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p900/pool/
• Eee Pc 901 series: http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p901/pool/

Comments

It might be good to coordinate efforts and reach out to http://code.google.com/p/eeedora/. Some comments at http://www.bytebot.net/blog/archives/2008/01/31/eeedora-impressions and at http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:eeedora