ASUS Eee PC 901 / Intel Atom: Linux Distribution Comparison

[n0nsense]

UMPC != MID, sorry!

This is an example of an MID: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Internet_Device

(no v-shape, keyboard handled differently, usable when you're standing. That's what I'd like)

I suggest you to look at something like nVidia's tegra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tegra
ARM core is way better in any term.

[Kano]

Some hd benchmarks show clear differences, thats not normal. Maybe the flash memory used had differnet speeds.

[Vadi]

Looks sweet, but I need one with Ubuntu pre-installed.

[superppl]

What?!? No openSUSE!?!
JK Nice, ummm, graphics.

[jeffro-tull]

I'm sorry, but you need one with Ubuntu preinstalled? I'm calling shenanigans.

[sloggerKhan]

I recently got an aspire 1 with 6cell battery and 1 gig ram, 8 gb solid state, linpus.

I like it a lot. Hardware and form factor are great.

But linpus sucks really hard. Out of the box there's no root password on the command line (sudo su or sudo or su all drop to root console with no password, or did on my comp anyhow), you can't install or remove software because it starts out with unresolvable dependency problems, it doesn't support wpa or wpa2 enterprise wireless out of the box, and the the microphone doesn't seem to work either. The webcam could record movies, but it couldn't play them back for some reason.

So linpus really sucked.

I put ubuntu on it using onelinux alpha/beta. Webcam and microphone still seem MIA and it doesn't read battery life properly, but everything else works now, and it's pretty nice. Could probably be even better with optimizations.

[aspired]

I recently got an aspire 1 with 6cell battery and 1 gig ram, 8 gb solid state, linpus.

I like it a lot. Hardware and form factor are great.

But linpus sucks really hard. Out of the box there's no root password on the command line (sudo su or sudo or su all drop to root console with no password, or did on my comp anyhow), you can't install or remove software because it starts out with unresolvable dependency problems, it doesn't support wpa or wpa2 enterprise wireless out of the box, and the the microphone doesn't seem to work either. The webcam could record movies, but it couldn't play them back for some reason.

So linpus really sucked.

I got the 120GB HD version of the Aspire One, I like it a lot -got my whole music collection on it!

Upon 1st boot it asked for a password, which I later found out was the root password -maybe you just ignored it, which is why you got a null root password.

I did a software update immediately, the networking reports supporting WPA2, though I use MAC restricted WEP (old access point). I didn't like the default messenger and media player, so I installed skype and amarok.

Installation is not as easy as it should be, because there are some dependencies. See http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/09...spire_one_tips -use the Livna repository. The micropone works for me in skype BTW. Customising the dektop icons could be easier, messing around with XML files is a bit of a pain.

The most annoying thing right now is that it occasioanlly hangs after about 10 suspend/resume operations, which happends as you lug it around the place. You need to force power-off, then after re-start, fsck takes quite some time and re-boots again. Takes time, a wifi device glitch perhaps.

Linpus is based on Fedora Core 8, so once one adds the Livna repository (http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm), it's good enough for me.

[glyj]

Phoronix: ASUS Eee PC 901 / Intel Atom: Linux Distribution Comparison

Late last month we published our preview of the ASUS Eee PC 901 and we shared our plans for a number of benchmarks using this netbook with Intel's Atom processor. Following our Linux desktop encryption benchmarks of the ASUS Eee PC 901 and Intel Atom N270 CPU we have a performance comparison of Xandros, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandriva on this low-cost netbook PC.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12840

Mandriva, like ubuntu is now using the 2.6.27 kernel.
This should change the results a little.

regards,
glyj

[AdamW]

I'm trying not to be too negative, but as I wrote at OSNews, to me this test casts more light on the reliability of the benchmarks than on anything else. Some of the results are just, prima facie at least, absurd. It's very hard to think that, for instance, the compile test is a legitimate result: what can a distribution possibly do that would make a compilation twice as fast on the exact same hardware as any other distro? It's only made more unlikely by the fact that Fedora apparently didn't ace any of the other tests to the same extent.

The drive performance tests seem similarly unlikely, especially since they don't seem to be borne out by the *other* tests which would seem to be dependent on drive performance (like the encryption test - encrypting a 1GB file seems, to me, to be only a function of a) CPU speed and b) drive performance).

To me it just seems more likely that what this test has shown is more that the benchmark suite is not sufficiently resilient to provide a reliable comparison in these circumstances, rather than actually telling us anything about the distributions themselves. It's a great effort on Phoronix's part to come up with the tests, and we do need something like this, but results like these just cause me to worry about the integrity of the test itself.

[jeffro-tull]

wait, the password it asked for on the first start-up was the root password? that explains a lot!

doesn't really change the fact that linpus sucks hard. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. If it does everything you want it to out of the box, then it's wonderful. For me, though, it doesn't. And I'm having a hell of a time trying to make it do what I want. Even after I added livna, I'm still in dependency hell for VLC and new-and-improved Mplayer. It keeps whining about Pulse and libdvdnav not being there.

I'm ready to give up on it. I actually have with me right now a flash drive loaded with the Arch install image. But kernel 2.6.25 doesn't like either of my network devices.

...which is my only gripe with the hardware. If it's Intel every-damn-thing else, why doesn't it have the e1000 for wired and ipw3945/iwl4935 for wireless? For the longest time, they have Just Worked!