Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

[MadeR]

Did someone ever create an image for usb keys with patched acpi support for the Asus eee (I care in particular for the 900 - 20Gb SSD version)?

[wartooth]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

I'm hoping to buy a 900 perhaps later this year. I would looooooove to be able to put Kubuntu on it, but I willingly admit I am seriously lacking in the technical skills department.

[lmilano]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Me too (I have the original 7-incher running Xandros)! I am really, really surprised that the *buntu family does not include a USB iso as a standard (like Mandriva does). I hope they do for 8.10.

The one thing I noticed in 8.04 is a eeepc-acpi-source package, to enable the hotkeys.

In the meantime, I am hoping eeeXubuntu will release an 8.04 iso, I never heard of a eeeKubuntu initiative.

Cheers!

[bootdoc]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

i just installed kubuntu gutsy on eeepc 8g. I used the isotostick.sh script to make the usb install stick. Now I am doing the tweaks specific to the unit. i am sure you can use the same script to make hardy install stick.

[MadeR]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

i just installed kubuntu gutsy on eeepc 8g. I used the isotostick.sh script to make the usb install stick. Now I am doing the tweaks specific to the unit. i am sure you can use the same script to make hardy install stick.

Where is this script located?

[Betelgeuse]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

yes, where is that script?

My eee pc 900 arriving tomorrow and I want to use Kubuntu on it since I have Kubuntu on my desktop and other laptop and ubuntu on my servers so I want to use ubuntu repos and I want to use KDE.

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

I'm a big Kubuntu fan, but I was afraid Kubuntu/KDE4 would be a bit too "heavy" on my little 4G/701, so I installed sidux 2008-01, a "pure" Debian distro, which includes KDE3.5. Of course, then I loaded it up with compiz and VMWare Player with my Win XP VM, so maybe I didn't save anything after all. :P

I put 2GB of memory in it, and a 16GB SDHC card, formatted ext3 and mounted "permanently" with /etc/fstab. Of course, every time it suspends to RAM, it has to be remounted manually, because internally the SD card reader is a USB interface.

It took me so long to get the Eee PC configured with wireless and overclocking, I don't think I want to try another OS on it for awhile. But I'll be very interested to hear how Kubuntu works on it.

[Betelgeuse]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Now, My eee pc 900 sits on my desktop next to my desktop computers mouse pad. I'm now burning a fresh kubuntu 8.04 alternate install CD with my USB external burner. After that, I'll try to setup kubuntu. Fingers crossed. Wich me luck.

I'll first try to setup kubuntu with alternate install cd, only text part and I'll try to install the hardware drivers by reading the guides about installing ubuntu. When the text mode system works, I'll try apt-get install kubuntu-desktop to install graphical interface...
I think I'll use ssh from my desktop machine because I still could not type good with that tiny little keyboard.

[lmilano]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

I am trying to instalkl Kubuntu in an external (fast) USB flash drive. I plugged it in my PC, booted from the CD, and installed to it (this was painless). I also installed the madwifi driver so I could use it then in the eeepc. The reason I went this way is that I didn't have an easy way to make a bootable USB, and I didn't have another USB flash drive.

Next step, put the flash drive in the eeepc, and edit the grub entry to adapt to the devices of the eeepc (as opposed to my PC). Boy, was (is) that frustrating. It boots great at first, but then in hangs, apparently while trying to read the different disks. It sits there for 10 minutes, then completes the boot and works good. I am trying to find out what's causing the delay. Oh well. <y next UMPC will have a more open hardware, and hopefully, by that time, K/X/Ubuntu will consider USB Flash media a first class citizen ;-)

[Snowhog]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Did you also edit the fstab file after installing to the flash drive?

[lmilano]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Did you also edit the fstab file after installing to the flash drive?

Good point, yes, but I pretty much had nothing to modify there, since I am only mounting /root and the disks are listed by UUID, not by device name (and these are independent of everything, I understand)

The boot hangs after the line "USB Mass Storage support registered".

Oh well, thanks so much!

[Snowhog]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

As I'm not familiar with setting up a flash drive as a bootable Linux device, is it safe to say, that doing so removes the flash drive as an otherwise "removable media" device as far as the system is concerned? I'd think so, as you are actually booting a live system from it, making it more of a "non-removable" device until such time as the running OS is actually brought down and stopped.

There is a kernel boot line option to prevent the loading of the USB subsystem which you might want to try. It can't really hurt, as it is a kernel boot line option you can add via editing the kernel before booting. The option is nousb

[lmilano]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Brilliant idea, didn't work though. Fact is, the flash dive did work fine in the PC where I installed to it (I could boot from there, customize it, etc ... no need for special kernel params)

The problem is that the initial hardware detection was made for my kubuntu pc, not for my eeepc.
Anyone knows if there is a command line option to force hardware autodetection at a very early stage?

After one of the long boots, I ran dpkg-reconfigure -a ... it did reconfigure a lot of stuff, including regenerating the initrd.img ... but that didn't help. Also, I tried copying the /etc/modules from xandros, that didn't help. I also tried using the same command line (kernel) params as xandos, didn't work either. Oh well, thanks so much for taking the time!

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Facing the same problem 6 weeks ago, I popped for $70 at Staples and got an external USB optical drive, just to use with the Eee PC. I think you are correct -- the hardware detection that is performed by the installer is "infecting" the installed OS, so when you put the card in your Eee PC it is finding the "wrong" hardware.

Couple of thoughts:

(1) Probably you should use ext2 as your filesystem type (I got fancy with some of the little-known ext3 options, but I don't recommend it). You don't want journalling on the flash card, due to its limited life expectancy for writes to the media.

(2) You could theoretically follow Qqmike's How To for a USB stick and get the same result:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3089474.0

Ultimately, you're bound to get a better result if you install *buntu directly on the Eee PC.

Distributions that can be set up on your desktop and then transferred would be Slax, and Backtrack 3 Beta has a release for the Eee PC that you can set up on a 2GB USB stick or card on your desktop. I just did it the other day -- it took maybe one hour after I stopped trying to do it on a 1GB card (and against their instructions ...). Although BT3 is a specialized Linux for, errrrr Wireless Network Security Validation, to use the euphemism, the basic OS comes with fully functioning Firefox, in a KDE environment, so you can actually use the thing for semi-general purposes.

http://www.slax.org/

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack_download.html

http://techdu.de/2008/04/12/how-to-i...on-the-eee-pc/

I'll be interested to hear how you finally work it out.

EDIT: Found this interesting, re: your challenge:

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

[lmilano]

Re: Kubuntu for asus eeepc?

Thanks for all the ideas dibl! I did try unetbootin, but it doesn't work, because you don't get access to the network for a netinstall (both ethernet and wifi are unsupported out of the box). Ext2/3 probnably doesn't make a whole difference, using relatime as a boot option was already done! There are some tips here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC/Using

But I fixed it! I just needed to add: clocksource=hpet to the kernel bootup options. Everything else is working quite fine! I'll try to post a minihowto over the weekend. Had I known the clocksource=hpet trick, installation would have been a breeze!

Bootup to usable desktop (from the USB, which is much slower than an ssd): 1 min 30 secs. I can still optimize a bit.

Cheers!
Leo