SayUncle v. Linux
Tried various versions (Eeebuntu and EasyPeasy). Both had issues with internet connectivity and networking. Microsoft wins. Installed Windows 7 on the EeePC 1005. Works great. Battery life slightly diminished and the function keys for sound don’t work. Nor does the touch pad work for resizing. I hear there are fixes for those but I haven’t found them yet.
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I just picked up a 1001 with W7 Starter. Def not impressed with that. I may just do a Live upgrade to a fuller featured W7, but I think I’m gonna try a couple live USB linux distro’s first. Sorry to hear ebuntu didn’t work out. I’ll prob’ly give Mint a try..
May 23rd, 2010 at 12:39 am
Yay Windows 7! I love that OS. I haven’t touched Linux since it came out.
May 23rd, 2010 at 12:52 am
I still think you should try Linux Mint. Its had full driver support out of the box on all 3 computers I’ve put it on.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:08 am
Back in the day, some wag published an easily understood analogy about the various operating systems. Apple was a high dollar airline that priced itself out of the market. Windows was a budget priced airline that had maintenance issues. Linux was a bunch of engineers standing on the runway arguing about how to build an airplane.
May 23rd, 2010 at 10:30 am
Uncle,
One thing to remember about all the X-buntu distro’s is that they’re Debian-based, and Debian doesn’t do anything that isn’t open-sourced.
I’m currently using Ubuntu 8.04, and while the correct wifi driver was in the box, it wasn’t enabled in the box.
Just a few keystrokes got me working, with none of that ndiswrapper stuff.
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:34 am
Too bad… I like Linux. A lot. Been using Debian since ’95.
Takes some effort to get over your first install, but after that it’s usually smooth sailing.
May 23rd, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Like The Packetman said. It’s unfortunate, but it’s something that can’t be avoided, but because it’s FULLY open source, drivers for all chipsets (wireless in particular) are not written or available for Linux. When they’re released, that means someone has to take the time and backwards engineer it most times just to get a working driver for Linux. It’s unavoidable and it will continue to happen.
Linux will NOT be up and working 100% right out of the box on everybody’s system. It was on mine and most others, but Uncle obviously has a PC that’s not fully supported yet.
He’s got a point. I hate Windows, but it was ALMOST entirely working immediately after the installation. The only thing not working were extremely minor.
May 23rd, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Tango: Yep. LINUX developers cannot do work under non-disclosure agreements, so that leaves non-UNIX competent users dangling high and dry until their state of the art PC is no longer state of the art.
LINUX developers need to find a solution to this problem if they are ever going to take market share away from the other two competing OS’s.
The Debian flavored distros do have the non-free repositories available … but the user has to know to enable or add them.
Again not ready for prime time ( definition of term: a non-computer literate intelligent person can’t make it work out of the box ) IMO.
May 23rd, 2010 at 4:02 pm
For battery issues – to optimize battery life, go through the POower Options and customize.
Also take a look at this:
BatteryCare
FREEware
Windows
http://batterycare.bkspot.com/en/index.html
a software created to optimize the usage and performance of the modern laptop’s battery. It monitors the battery’s discharge cycles and helps increasing it’s autonomy and improving it’s lifetime. It has the following features: Battery’s discharge cycles monitoring; Complete battery information; Optional statistical remaining time calculation in laptops that only list the charge percentage.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:26 pm
I’ve been playing with Peppermint Linux a little over the last couple of weeks. I’ve got a dual boot OpenSuse/Windows7Ultimate on this Thinkpad T61p. Works well, picked up all the devices with first pass. Suse also installed my wireless as N class, as the MS driver only sees it as abg.
Have a look at OpenSuse and Peppermint. Peppermint is geared to netbooks and is low-footprint.
May 24th, 2010 at 3:25 am
Ubuntu Netbook Remix is usually quite excellent on netbooks, FWIW.
May 24th, 2010 at 11:13 am
I’m far from a Linux IT geek, but I put my Eebuntu 3.0 disc in last night on a live session to see what happened (I’m running an Acer 5xxx).
I could get to the hardware drivers, and attempt to download the B43 driver, but there’s more to it than that (unless you know how to build thumb drive stuff for love distro’s).
But when I installed Ubuntu 8.04, I did the same thing, and it worked fine.
Interesting that I had no internet or wifi connectivity, but Eebuntu recognized that I had a Windows network around, but wouldn’t mount it.