This page is a work in progress
The Eee PC has really taken the sub-compact pc market by storm. 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 the Eee PC.
News
- 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
Hardware support
Eee PC 70x Series
The current Fedora release (fully updated) natively supports the Eee PC 70x 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 by the i915 kernel module.
- Intel audio
Supported by 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
- Integrated video chipset
- Audio
- Fn Keys (included wireless switch)
Almost working, the Fn+F2 (wireless switch) doesn't work yet; supported by eeepc_laptop kernel module.
- Lan adapter
Supported
- Wireless chipset
- Eee PC 900 Atheros wireless chip supported natively by ath5k kernel module.
- 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.
- Webcam
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