Interested in Fedora on Smaller Machines?
jeff
moe at blagblagblag.org
Tue Aug 12 19:51:51 UTC 2008
Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 12:50 -0300, jeff wrote:
>> Jeremy Katz wrote:
>>> Smaller form-factor machines such as the Asus eeePC have gotten a fair
>>> bit of the tech press spotlight of late. Have you bought one with the
>>> idea of running Fedora on it? Or have you thought about doing so?
>> I've done a few different draft images for the Asus EeePC model 900 that can be
>> put on a USB pen drive then booted and optionally installed. I used
>> livecd-tools to build them.
>
> My goal is that we should be able to run on the systems with stock
> Fedora. Having to do a special spin limits users who get given cds, etc
> at trade shows or the like.
For the eee 701/900 i think just about everything is supported in stock
f9-updates kernel except wifi. On the 900 with 1 gig of RAM something as large
as gnome runs well, but something more lightweight is preferable of course.
Once the ath5k driver is there, using NetworkManager is a treat and *really*
"just works".
The install requires a USB cdrom or converting a livecd image. I'm doing a
somewhat inefficient process of `livecd-creator` --> livecd-iso-to-disk.sh
(using git version that can write to /dev/loop) --> `dd` the image onto a USB
pendrive then run the anaconda installer from there in livecd mode.
A better way to install on them would be great, I'm just not sure what that is
yet.
>> These are based on BLAG 90k which is based on Fedora 9. The kernel (-libre +
>> -rt) supports all hardware on the EeePC 701/900 using *only* free software.
>> This includes wifi with the ath5k driver. It is based on -libre and -rt plus
>> various other patches.
>
> Luckily, wifi should be in for 2.6.27, although I need to actually try a
> newer image on my ar2425 based box. I'll probably do that when I get
> home (since that's where it is)
ar2425 support is in 2.6.27, but I haven't seen the extra patches that are
needed for the eee 701/900 (ath5k) arrive there yet. mickflemms' patchset-8
applies without too much hassle.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mickflemm/patch-series-8.tar.bz2
The Eee 901 and 1000 use a different wifi chip. I haven't seen anything support
it other than this from ralink:
http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0.tar.bz2
There is a small blob in there, but it doesn't appear to actually get loaded so
it may not be needed. I haven't heard of any patches for this heading
upstream yet.
Thanks,
-Jeff
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