Install using the Xandros kernel and modules

For now, this is still the best way to install Debian on the Eee PC, as the Debian kernel support is still very new and is missing ACPI.

Instructions for installing Debian on the Eee PC using Kibobo's http://kibobo.free.fr/EEE/debian/usb/usb.imb.gz which contains the Xandros kernel that ships with the Eee PC can be found here:

It is possible to get wireless and wired ethernet connections working using this method.

Unfortunately, the kernel and modules in kibobo's image are out of date because the Asus update site kibobo fetched them from is out of date. One way around this is to extract the P701.gz image file from the recovery CD, gunzip it, mount it loopback, chroot into the mount, install dpkg-repack from etch, and dpkg-repack each package, though that's a lot of work to ask a user to do. The old packages seem to work well enough for now.

There are some further notes here:

Don't use Andrew's wifi script, as it does not work when there are blanks in the essid, which is pretty common. Use this version instead:

http://people.debian.org/~synrg/debian-eeepc/wifi

If you use Andrew's zzz script, you need to edit /etc/acpi/events/lidbtn to call lid.sh instead of lidbtn.sh.

I have put an improved version of zzz here:

http://people.debian.org/~synrg/debian-eeepc/zzzIn particular, it preserves the display better than Andrew's original and doesn't force you back to vt7 even if you were on a different vt when you put the machine to sleep.

FixMe: summarize instructions here, as the instructions on the eeeuser forums are really all over the place

FixMe: package a suspend solution using original Eee PC acpi and/or Andrew Kilpatrick's scripts as a guide.

Using the standard Debian kernel

After installing using Kibobo's image, you can install the standard Debian kernel can be and get wired ethernet working with the atl2 driver in sid:

http://syn.theti.ca/articles/2007/11/29/debian-eeepc-now-has-atl2-ethernet

In fact, it should be possible now to produce a new debian-installer image using these components.

To get wifi working on this kernel you'll need the new madwifi patch from Atheros:

http://syn.theti.ca/articles/2007/12/01/atheros-patch-makes-wifi-work-for-debian-eeepc

To get asus_acpi working, get the source from the Asus eeepc downloads site and use 'make' to build asus_acpi.ko. You can just replace the asus_acpi.ko from your kernel with the one you've built (but of course it will be walked on when you upgrade your kernel, so make sure you rebuild it each time).

http://support.asus.com/download/Download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Asus has packed this as a rar file which requires 'unrar' from non-free to extract. If you just want a tarball, you can fetch the latest version I have repacked and put here:

http://people.debian.org/~synrg/asus_acpi_071126.tgz