Eee PC

News

• 2010-07-05 Updated

Installing Fedora LiveCD from USB flash drive

Using USB pendrive (at least 1 GB) take a look at the USB Howto page

Using the regular installation DVD may be problematic when putting it on USB flash drives. Use the livecd versions.

Recommended for resource limited netbooks

http://spins.fedoraproject.org/moblin/

http://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/

http://spins.fedoraproject.org/lxde/

Custom Spins

Allows you to customize a Fedora Spin.

# yum install revisor

• remove software due to space requirements
• add non-free software like flash, codecs, etc
• add software you use

Hardware support

Latest stable Fedora release updated fully. Unless the model listed is completely green, expect to be fixing things.

Model	Video	Sound	FN keys	Power Mngmnt	Wired	WiFi	Webcam
700x	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	atl2	ath5k	uvcvideo
900	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	atl2	ath5k	uvcvideo
901/1000H	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	atl1e	kmod-rt2860	uvcvideo
1005HA	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	atl1c	ath9k	uvcvideo
1001p	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	atl1c	ath9k	uvcvideo
1005P/PE	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	atl1c	ath9k	uvcvideo
101xP	i915	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop				uvcvideo
1101	xorg-x11-drv-psb	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_laptop	Y	Y	ath5k	uvcvideo
1201N	nouveau/nvidia	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_latop				uvcvideo
1201P	nouveau/nvidia	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_latop				uvcvideo
121xP	nouveau/nvidia	snd_hda_intel	eeepc_latop				uvcvideo

Green: works
Yellow: should eventually work
Red: non-free drivers or serious hardware support problems

Eee PC 90x/1000H/1005HA/1005PE/1015PEM Series

The XXXp models (like the 1005p) are based on newer Pine Trail platforms. Issues may arise as newer models are released.

Fn Keys (included wireless switch)

• Almost working, the Fn+F2 (wireless switch) mostly works; supported by eeepc_laptop kernel module. May require 'acpi_osi=Linux' to be added to kernel boot parameters for eeepc_laptop module to load. The system doesn't always connect right away when re-enabled by HW switch (~1 minute delay).

Wireless chipset

• Eee PC 901/1000H wireless chip is Ralink RT2860, which is not supported by current kernel (work on support is in progress, see rt2400 project page for more details), but there's an open source driver provided by Ralink. RPMFusion has a kmod package with this driver (kmod-rt2860). Read this for more details on external repositories.
• 1001p/1005p wireless chip is Atheros AR2427 802.11g WiFi supported by ath9k but needs 2.6.32+ kernel.
• 1015PEM wireless chip is Broadcom BCM4313. Drivers are availible in RPMFusion (package b43-fwcutter).

Issues

• Fn Key to disable wireless also disables eth0 [fix: what model?]
• Screen is off after resume from suspend/hibernate (Eee PC 901) - upgrade to BIOS 1603

Eee PC 1101 Series

The 1101 series has a 11.6" screen and a dual-core 1.33Ghz Atom Z250 processor.

Integrated Intel GMA 500 video chipset

• supported in theory by the package "xorg-x11-drv-psb" in Fusion, but there is no display on my EeePC (cbrace) See this blog entry by Adam Williams for detailed ifo on GMA 500 support in Fedora Intel GMA500 (Poulsbo) on Fedora 11: repository (with working 3D/compiz support)

Fn Keys with issues

• Fn+F3 touchpad: no
• Fn+F4 screen resolution: no
• Fn+F5 brightness down: no
• Fn+F6 brightness up: no
• Fn+F8 external monitor: ?

Wireless chipset

• Atheros AR9285 wireless chip supported natively by ath5k kernel module. Unfortunately, the WiFi doesn't resume after suspend.

Eee PC 1201 Series

The 1201 series has a 12.1" screen and a dual-core 1.6GHz Atom 330 processor.

Eee PC 1201N

The nVidia ION model.

Integrated nVidia GeForce 9400M video chipset

• supported by nouveau driver, may have problems with suspend
• supported by proprietary nvidia driver

Fn Keys

• display-related keys work
• sound-related are not supported by KDE system
• rfkill doesn't work
• touchpad disabler doesn't work.

Wireless chipset

• not supported by default, no packages in rpmfusion, no drivers in staging tree. This is a Realtek RTL8192SE chip, incompatible with RTL8192E and RTL8192SU drivers already in staging.
• vendor-supplied free drivers may or may not work, depending on your kernel version and system CPU architecture
• you may have luck with a rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0010.1116.2009 driver on 2.6.31.5 or 2.6.31.9 kernel on x86_64 architecture.

Fixes and solutions to common problems

FN keys not working

eeepc_laptop is not loaded. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst. Add 'acpi_osi=Linux' to the kernel options.

# lsmod|grep eee

eeepc_laptop should be listed in the results.

Hiding the battery broken alert

This fixes the annoying battery broken alert reported by gnome-power-manager on login. That's a known bug

$ gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/notify/low_capacity 0

Hints and alternative software

Maximize battery life

1. Use the integrated HPET timer (saves about 30 CPU wake ups per second) Should be used by default.

   $ cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/current_clocksource

   This should return 'hpet'

2. Change IO scheduler to deadline: Load the module.

   # modprobe deadline-iosched

   Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

   Add 'elevator=deadline' to kernel options.

   $ cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

   This should return 'noop [deadline] cfq'

3. Run powertop as root and do the recommended changes. Changes do not stick and have to be run again after a reboot.

   # yum install powertop

4. Disable rarely used services

   # for s in abrtd atd auditd avahi-daemon ip6tables iscsi iscsid mdmonitor portreserve livesys livesys-late; do echo "chkconfig $s off"; chkconfig $s off; done

5. Install Jupiter and Jupiter Support/Eee from SourceForge to add power profiles as well as extra function keys and automatic support for Super Hybrid Engine. NOTE: Jupiter is Mono based, if you have any issue with Mono choose to skip this step. Download the latest jupiter and jupiter-support-eee RPM packages from SourceForge.

   sudo yum clean all
   yum install --nogpgcheck /path/to/jupiter*rpm /path/to/jupiter-support-eee*rpm

Maximize performance

1. Noatime for hard drive (reduces writes to disk)

   nano /etc/fstab

   Add ",noatime,nodiratime" after "defaults" for all ext2,ext3,ext4 partitions.

2. Remove Pulseaudio (when playing music or watching video pulseaudio can raise CPU usage high)

   # yum remove pulseaudio

   Switch audio preferences to ALSA. Video players also need to be changed to ALSA in audio properties.

3. Turn off unnecessary services on start up. Should usually be found in Preferences -> Startup

More information

Custom netbook kernels and optimizations http://www.fedora-netbook.com/