Asus EEe PC 900 and Knoppix 5.3.1 report

[dram]

Picked up an Asus eepc today (900 mHz, 1gb ram, 20gb ssd (4+16), linux (xandros) preinstalled.

I didn't want to install knoppix to the ssd, so i ran it from a bootable 8gb usb-thumbdrive. That thing is fast when you run Knoppix from ram that's for sure.

3d worked, flying cubes and all that, but the network (both wired and wireless) didn't seem to be supported. In all honesty I didn't really try to get it working, and I didn't get around to sound. It seems to be the Atheros chipset for network.

Even though the above doesn't seem to work, I'll probably try to make a bootable SD card out of Knoppix just for kicks so I don't have a usb dongle hanging out ready to snap off. :)

I would sure love to see knoppix work out the atheros kinks for the Asus eepc as I really liked how it performed in ram. I probably see no need to install it to the internal ssd-disk; for that I'd probably end up with Mandriva if I ever felt the need to change from the default Xandros.

Man, running Knoppix from a bootable SD card, with a persistent image, and running in ram would be a great project. Klaus, here's your justification to get one! :)

[hat_monkey]

agree about the SDcard, please advise if you get any particular one to function.wll try it myself at some later date too.
further about network card and wireless at this topic on Eee:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=118142#118142

[dram]

I'm hoping that the new Atheros ATH5K will be fully open, and address the ethernet port too. Hopefully that will be in the next Knoppix.

In the meantime, Knoppix is a great way to temporarily run a "full distro" without having to touch your existing Xandros setup. (although I did blow that out with Mandriva).

One good thing about the Asus ssd disks is that I found that Knoppix is using the deadline-scheduler setting for the kernel, which is supposed to be the best for ssd's - I'm assuming that it is also good for usb-thumbdrives as well - at least that's the way I found it by default for my thumbdrive.

To top it off, I just added the "noatime" parameter in my knoppix' /etc/fstab after doing the same to the Asus. Either I'm very tired, or it is truly making a big difference on my desktop Knoppix box running from the thumbdrive with a persistent image. I'm definitely using "noatime" whenever I can now! Not only does the box seem faster, but it cuts down on unnecessary writes to the thumbdrive (unless you need forensic-type timestamp security on read-only files. :)

I couldn't pop for a big 8gb SD card to test out the Knoppix install - I sure hope that a CD-sized version of 5.3.1 appears so I can use my smaller SD cards with the Asus...

I guess I'm rambling, so time to catch some sleep... :)

[hat_monkey]

in the menu.lst of grub if you change the standard settling to be vga=785 you will no longer be told that you have passed a invalid code during the boot process every time you boot up.

[hat_monkey]

Have now successfully booted Knoppix 5.3.1.iso from a kingston 8GB SD HC class 4 memory card. Copied the 8 gig Usb partition to the 8 gig SD card with gparted in puppy3.01 on a seperate Usb stick then set the boot flag and did the two lines of code to get grub going and voila it boots by Holding down esc key at boot and selecting the sd card.

[hat_monkey]

If you have been here a while, You probably now know that Klaus will make the next Knoppix release 8.1Gig long.

[hat_monkey]

b4 you rush out and buy the SDHC card mentioned above, I have just had to return it and get a replacement. old one slowed down to a absolute crawl on file transfers despite reformat. may be non compatible . the HC part of the SD card may be a problem for eeePC. will see what happens with this new one . old one may just have been defective. wil advise.

[OErjan]

i installed Debian on mine, works great this far, only downside to the eeedebian i that it uses Gnome, iwould have prefered Icewm or xfce.
oh, here is he link for the install howto.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Install

[hat_monkey]

b4 you rush out and buy the SDHC card mentioned above, I have just had to return it and get a replacement. old one slowed down to a absolute crawl on file transfers despite reformat. may be non compatible . the HC part of the SD card may be a problem for eeePC. will see what happens with this new one . old one may just have been defective. wil advise.

seems there there are previously reported issues with the 8G SDHC card:

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=28582

not getting any sense out of kingston support yet.

try something else for now.

may end up having to try a NTFS format instead of a ext2 format, not looking forward to that.

[hat_monkey]

Customer Problem:
ASUS EeePC manual E3605 for EeePC 4G(701 - on page A-3 --Qualified Vendor List-- has in the Flash Memory Card section the Kingston SD 4.0G which by reference to
http:--www.kingston.com-support-FLASHMEMORYCARDS-sdhc.asp

is a SDHC memory card as it is above 2.0G capacity.
I have had a Kingston 8.0G SDHC card that has malfunctioned in my EeePC. I have used the warranty and obtained a replacement Kingston 8.0G SDHC memory card. I am now concerned that it will malfunction again and request a go ahead before I put it in the slot and use it.
Malfunction occured using Knoppix 5.3.1, Puppy 3.01 and the native Xandros of EeePC over a two day period before the card became unusable. It went from being an accepable file transfer speed to gradually slowing to virtually zero file transfer speed. File sysetm was ext2. Non functionality persisted through reformat of the Kingston 8.0G SDHC card to FAT and back to ext2 file system. I need ext2 file system because the native FAT system does will not hold the 4.1 G Knoppix.iso that Knoppix boots from.
................
Dear Kingston Customer,

Thank you for your inquiry.

We recommend you to format the card into FAT32 or NTFS format for capacities over 2GB.

I do not understand what you mean by using Knoppix 5.3.1, Puppy 3.01. What are these programs? We only recommend users to use SD cards for temporary data storage.

Please explain in detail of your situation so we can assist you further.


Thank you & regards,

***********************************************
Harry Chen
Technical Support
Kingston Technology Far East Co.
0800-666-200 toll free (Taiwan only)
Tel : +886-3-5666994 direct
Fax : +886-3-5666977
technical_support@kingston.com.tw
***********************************************
Customer reply:
Please refer this request to further up in your support chain. Some links
http://knoppix.com/
http://puppylinux.com/
On further reading/searching I see others are also having the exact same problem as I have had and it was quite long ago, see this page:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=28582

advise what action I can take. because it seems that the current memory card is not suitable for the my purpose/hardware.

......................
Dear Kingston Customer,

Thank you for your reply.

We do not recommend customers to install such programs on SD cards, and we cannot guarantee its support for such programs. It seems that these programs have specific requirements on hardware, therefore it would be best if you can contact them to see what detailed spec the programs require to run.


Thank you & regards,

***********************************************
Harry Chen
Technical Support
Kingston Technology Far East Co.
0800-666-200 toll free (Taiwan only)
Tel : +886-3-5666994 direct
Fax : +886-3-5666977
technical_support@kingston.com.tw
***********************************************
Please include email history with your reply.
implied:
and we are not going to refund your money or change our advertising or product information to stop others from being sucked in. we are a highly fly by night manufacturer.