Re: [Sheflug] Netbooks: who's got on, and how has it been?

[Dave Mitchell <davem@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 06:04:55PM +0100, Tom Burke wrote:
> List members:
> 
> By 'netbook' I'm referring to the new sub-notebook computers that have  
> appeared in the 9 or 12 months - Asus eee, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind/ 
> Advent 4211, etc. I believe that several members of this list have got  
> one of these, and may have installed different OS software on them.

Just got an eeeee PC 901 last week.

Still using the installed Xandros - but as a C coder, I'm finding it
limiting: no compilers come with it, and my (admittedly brief) attempts
so far to get them installed have failed. Also, 3-button emulation isn't
enabled, which makes cut+paste a royal PITA.

I plan to wipe it and install Fedora at some point, since that's my usual
OS. However, booting with the F9 live image confirmed what I had read -
neither the ether nor WiFi work out of the box. Someone said they used a
supported USB->ether adaptor to get initial networking going, then a yum
update got the inbuilt ether going, then downloading and compiling a
driver got the wifi working.

Physically the device is ideal for messing about on trains etc; it fits
into the lid pocket of my rucksack, is small enough that the lid isn't
hitting the seat back in front of you, and I was getting about 6 hours
battery life (this was just reading a v. long HTML doc and making
occasional notes with vi). Keyboard is small but usable. The only major
annoyance is the \| key which is now shared with Z, so you have to do
Shift-Fn-Z to get a pipe - not good for UNIX!

-- 
Nothing ventured, nothing lost.

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