Translations: Nederlands German Italiano

The goal of the Debian Eee PC project is full support for the Asus Eee PC in Debian. This is a brief summary of our progress:

Installer

We install a proper Debian (http://www.debian.org) Lenny system on the Eee, not a fork. The custom installer works over ethernet or wifi.

People with needs not met by this installer can use the standard Debian installer instead, and manually install packages from our repository as required.

Hardware support

Our project supports all hardware components of the Asus Eee PC series. In each release we automate more of the hardware setup. For the rest we document the remaining manual setup. We are working towards completely free hardware support which is aided in particular by recent releases of the kernel targeted at Squeeze (currently version 2.6.29).

Naturally, the earliest models are supported best, but full support for all models is not far off. In particular, the 701, 900 and 900A are very well supported. Models 901, 1000 and 1000H are supported as well, though the state of the wireless driver upstream continues to be a sore spot. It is hard to keep up with the dizzying rate at which Asus releases new models, but depending on the hardware some of them may work already. For instance, model 701SD wifi works by building your driver from the source package in Lenny with module-assistant, although the newer kernels aimed at Squeeze support this chipset out of the box. Similarly, you need a new kernel to support ath9k wifi for the newest Atom n280 models (e.g. 1000HE).

Flexible system

The Lenny custom installer creates a working base system the users can build on to meet their needs. We do adapt the installation for the special needs of the Eee hardware, but we do not over-simplify the system. We want to build a solid base which will continue to work if you customize, adapt and extend the system. We want our users to be able to change the system. This is an important subgoal of our project.

Software

Using pure Debian on the Eee PC makes it possible to select software packages from the huge Debian software archives. It is simple to install or remove software with the standard tools in Debian. You can easily try out software without damaging your system.

Documentation

Our wiki documents the Eee-specific side of our project. It explains how to install, configure and expand the system. The wiki is translated in different languages. For other, not Eee-specific questions see the very rich Debian documentation.

Community support

Debian has a very active community with many mailing lists, newsgroups and irc channels. There are a lot of people helping each other with all kinds of questions. Our own project has a growing group of people ready to answer Eee-related Debian questions on our irc channel ( irc://irc.oftc.net/#debian-eeepc ) and mailing list.