In June 2008, the Debian project announced that it had started a cooperation project with ASUS in order to bring full support for the company's Eee PC to Debian. It had set up a Debian Eee PC page on the distribution's Wiki and has since released an installation image based on Debian's upcoming release - version 5.0 and code name "Lenny". While many other distributions have announced support for the Eee PC and released various CD and USB images claiming full or partial support for the popular netbook, Debian was the first project with an active communication channel between a Linux distribution and the Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer. So how does Debian GNU/Linux fare on the ASUS Eee PC some three months later?
First, I was curious to see whether any Eee PC support was being integrated into the mainstream Debian GNU/Linux 5.0. To test this, I downloaded the recently released Debian Live, another Debian's sub-project that promises to deliver a set of live Lenny images for those who prefer to install their distribution from a live CD, DVD or USB media. I used the live USB image, which I transferred to a 4 GB USB key in order to boot the ASUS Eee PC 900. While the boot process went well and the system came up with a working sound and correct screen resolution, neither the wired, nor the wireless network was active. As I discovered later, the kernel modules of the two network devices were not available on the stock Debian Lenny system and while it was possible to download the required modules from ASUS's web site, the lack of any development tools on the live media meant that it was not possible to compile them. That brought an end to my experimentation with Debian Live, which clearly is nowhere near ready for the Eee PC.
Next, I downloaded the 16 MB custom Debian USB image specifically designed for the Eee PC. My plan was to use an external SD card to boot the image, then install it to an external USB storage device, leaving the internal Solid State Drives (SSD) unmodified. This worked well; I used one of those SD card USB adapters to write the Debian Eee PC image to it:
dd if=debian-eeepc_20080729.img oflag=direct of=/dev/sdc
The installation went without a hitch. After I booted the machine from the external SD card (/dev/sdd), the system correctly detected the two internal solid state disks (the 4 GB disk as /dev/sda and the 16 GB one as /dev/sdb), and asked where to install the system. I chose the 4 GB external USB drive (/dev/sdc). The installer also asked which network adapter I preferred to use for system installation - the options were eth0 (Attansic Technology Corp. L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter) or the wireless ath0 (Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI E). I chose the latter, then confirmed all the remaining options and went to get myself a cup of coffee. By the time the installer finished I could have had a dozen as installing the system to the external USB drive turned out to be a very lengthy process - it took more than four hours! And it definitely wasn't due to the slow download of packages over the network.
However, before rebooting the system, it was necessary to manually make some changes to the /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst - the details are available here. If you are planning to follow these instructions, then one more warning - different models of Eee PC require a different set of changes so pay close attention to the note in the "Fixing GRUB configuration and /etc/fstab" chapter of the above page. In any case, if you reboot before making the required changes to these files, it is possible to fix them by mounting the USB drive on another computer.
First boot after installation. Once again, the sound and screen resolutions were correct, but still no networking. Even though the entire installation was performed over the wireless network, once booted into the newly installed system, the ifconfig command revealed that there was no device named ath0 and no kernel module corresponding to it. As I was to find out, to get the wireless network up, it was necessary to install the MadWifi package (the instructions are here). Luckily, the eth0 network interface worked as a "hotplug", so as soon as I plugged in the network cable, the system was all set up for some serious apt-get action. Installing MadWifi worked fine and soon I was able to surf the Internet from the balcony.
However, there were a few glitches. While having to do all the extra manual work, such as configuring GRUB and installing MadWifi, was unexpected from a system that claimed to provide support the Eee PC, more disappointments followed. Firstly, the network applet (nm-applet 0.6.6) present by default in the GNOME panel only registered the wired network, so if connected through the wireless one, it claimed "no networking" available. Secondly, the battery applet also gave an error, something to the effect of having only 1% of battery power. And the package update applet claimed that there were two updates ready for the system, but after launching the Update Manager, I was told that "your system is up-to-date" (see screenshot below). Some of these problems were the result of a recent kernel upgrade in Debian, which brought a new set of bugs and for which there are some known workarounds. So even though the system is usable in this state, those wanting a more authentic Eee PC experience with Debian need to be prepared to do much manual work on the command line.
Despite all the trouble that makes Lenny on the Eee PC somewhat hard to install and use at this stage, the good news is that the Debian Eee PC team continues to work on the existing issues. As I started typing this report, I noticed a new Eee PC image released just yesterday (Sunday). Labelled as debian-eeepc_20080907.img, it didn't take long before it found itself on the external SD card for the repeat of the 4+-hour installation process to see if anything has improved. Unfortunately, the same problems showed up again - the "broken battery" error, no wireless network, and the package update issues were still very much present in the new image.
Conclusions? The Debian Eee PC team has made it possible to run Debian Lenny on the ultra-portable, all right. All it takes is a bit of command-line work, some module compilation, and a few workarounds here and there and it will work - thanks also to the excellent documentation on the Debian Wiki pages. But the entire experience isn't particularly positive. Firstly, it's clear that, unlike Mandriva, Debian has not integrated the work done by its Eee PC team into the main Debian kernel. Secondly, getting Debian work on the Eee PC requires many unnecessary steps. If the installer has support for the Atheros wireless network card, why is it not available in the installed product? And if the installer is capable of detecting the installation target, why is it necessary to modify some critical system files after the installation is completed?
At the end of the day, it's obvious that Debian's support for the Eee PC is still very much work in progress. Until this work is completed, there are better distributions to run on the little laptop.
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