CrunchBang on the eee pc (Page 1 of 4)

I have installed Crunchbang lite (love the name) on my Asus eee 4g 701. I also installed the array.org stable hardy kernel which gets the wireless and other hardware running. It also cuts the boot time from 1:24mins to 58 seconds. I made a few minor changes in conky. I like that fact that it is super light but has the hefty ubuntu repos behind it. I also dig screen shots so here is my desktop which shows the disk usage and idle ram usage. I also think the default theme is very "leet" which amuses me. i hate ugly default distro themes.

The battery line i added in conky is
Battery: $alignr${battery}

I will add more info here as i use it more.

Last edited by warden1337 (2008-11-25 19:51:22)

Warden, Kimme, thanks for sharing your positive experiences with the 701 and 900. It would be nice to hear from some 901 and 1000 owners too--maybe after the holidays?

When running any operating system from a solid state disk (SSD), USB flash drive, or SD card, it's a good idea to limit disk activity. Here are some tricks I've picked up; what are some others?

1. Don't use a swap partition. Drawback: Hibernate doesn't work.
2. Tweak Firefox preferences, for example set cache to 0mb.
3. Go into System->Services/Daemons and uncheck unneeded things like computer activity logger.
4. Mount /tmp folder to ram. You need to edit your fstab, be careful! http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/wiki/index.ph … ab_changes

Anyone have more tips to optimize for the eee?

Last edited by snowpine (2008-11-26 01:18:05)

Hello babe For fear of hijacking this thread with a discussion about our Christmas shopping, I have now suspended your account and kicked you from the forums!

Just kidding Seriously though, it is good to see you on here. I am so proud my woman is such a total geek!

ok small issue now. I have crunchbang 8.10 installed on me eee 701 and I also installed the array.org intrepid kernel. Everything is fine expect I can't run kismet! 

in 8.04 (any ubuntu 8.04) I would install the array.org kernel and wireless worked. Then I would install kismet and run it like so

kismet -c madwifi_g,wifi0,wifi0

and voila kismet running with me happy. Now when I go to run kismet with the same command I get this.. see pic. What am i doing wrong here?

help

edit --- the above kismet command works in Backtrack 3 as well.

Last edited by warden1337 (2008-11-27 20:16:20)

Hi all,

I just registered, but am terribly interested in getting this great distro setup as a dual boot on my Eee PC 1000HA.  I am going to give it a go tonight and will report back with my experience!

#! seems to have picked up quite a following in such a short period of time!  Kudos corenominal!

corenominal,

You've really done a wonderful job on this.  Thank you.

I am happy to write that I am posting this from my 1000HA/ 320GB/ 2GB/ Atom 1.6GHz. 

The live environment booted swiftly from a 4GB SD card I set up with Unetbootin. The default theme is both striking and unique.  This is my first foray into Openbox territory, and I don't know how I ever got by without trying this!  Install was as smooth as any Ubuntu based distro.

Out of the box:
* Correct resolution 1024x600
* Ethernet
* Multitouch scrolling
* Brightness ACPI keys
* Battery charge level and discharge time

After install of array.org eee kernel (not lean):
* Wireless (connected to 128bit wep)
* Sound (Had to increase volume via super+v)
* Webcam (works in cheese)
* Sleep (resumes very quickly w/ a touch of the power button)

Not working:
* Remaining ACPI Keys (wifi toggle, video keys, sysmonitor key, audio keys)
* The 4 "special keys"

I do not use any swap, so no word on hibernation.

I am going to have to give the Ubuntu ACPI scripts a whirl... have not used them before, but imagine they will only help restore some of the ACPI functionality.

I'll update again once I have had some time to tinker with this a bit!

Last edited by Xeon Zombie (2008-12-02 06:01:19)

Well, I used the ACPI scripts outlined here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=49081

So far the wifi toggle sort of works.  One of the video keys and one of the "special keys" work, though they both put the computer into some sort of drunken looking sleep. 

Upon further investigation, it looks like I may need to be running Gnome or KDE to get these working.  I might be wrong, but I know I had near 100% support for my hardware, including ACPI w/OSD on a vanilla install of Intrepid w/Gnome.

I would really like to get this working though... I really like CrunchBang! 

If anyone has any ideas, let me know.  As far as I know the 1000HA I am using is the same as the 1000H, just different wireless (I have an AR5007EG carg -b/g) and no bluetooth. 

Thanks!

Good morning snowpine!

Yes, I too read that blatant warning, LOL.  However, as the 1000H and the HA seem to be effectively the same (same motherboard, etc, w/only the wifi and bluetooth being the difference, I thought I'd give it a shot.  My initial expectation was that the wifi toggle would likely not work, as I have a different card than the H model, and that the bluetooth toggle wouldn't work, since I lack the BT module. 

Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong, and sure won't be the last.  I just figured that maybe the scripts depended on some components of Gnome or KDE that are not found in Openbox. 

I do know a trick or two, and have been tinkering with Linux since the Hoary Hedgehog days, but that is still a short period of time, and compared to my knowledge of Windows, I am still a relative NooB, so I really appreciate you guys being here to help troubleshoot such things!

Thanks!

LOL I may have to use that last bit in my signature! I just wish I had an Eee PC, that way I could at least try to help find out why this is not working. Anyhow, good luck with it and please keep us informed of any progress.

Great distro for the eeepc.

I installed #! 8.10.01 on my eee 701 yesterday.  Having just learned of it now, I am not using the array.org kernel,   To get wireless working I blacklisted ath_pci and loaded ath5k from Ubuntu backports, as explained here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC/Fixes

I'm trying to install to an Eee 901; using UNetBootIn to create a bootable USB works, but installing from Live does not, and the Install option at boot gives an error and reboots.
I've tried formatting and rewriting the USB a number of times, and I've downloaded the ISO several times, from different sources, and it's always one thing or another.
So I'm trying to use the Ubuntu 8.10 Minimal installer (Command Line Expert Install) and it's not detecting my networking hardware.  I've found that the Eee PCs use an Attansic L2 network interface card, but it's not on the driver list.
Please tell me someone can help me..