• lotek
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  • Registered: 2009-10-02
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Topic: #! on netbooks (eee, aspire one, etc.)

I installed Crunchbang Lite on my eee 901go and then added eee-control and array.org's custom kernel. It works great -- best lightweight distro ever with excellent hardware support. And the Openbox/Tint combo is simply awesome. I also tweaked the default config for SSD usage (moved tmp and log directories to tmpfs, replaced the cfs scheduler with deadline, relatime with noatime, disabled automatic fsck) and added Thunar to manage usb/flash drives etc. automatically.

Anyway I heard that a specific Ubuntu distro for LPIA (low-power IA) architecture does exist (9.04 is @ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/release … e-lpia.iso) and using it on netbooks supposedly consumes a good 10% less battery power.  I know cruncheee is no more (at least on the download page), but should in the future a specific #! version appear, it could be a good idea to base it on the LPIA ubuntu version. It would make it the perfect distro for netbooks smile

Last edited by lotek (2009-12-06 07:16:50)

  • pvsage
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  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: #! on netbooks (eee, aspire one, etc.)

I've tried it on my Mini.  Maybe 10 *minutes* more battery life, but speed takes a major hit.  The performance difference was most obvious on websites with Flash.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • lotek
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Re: #! on netbooks (eee, aspire one, etc.)

Found this: http://snowulf.com/archives/605-Benchma … -1000.html

According to that benchmark, looks like the hassle of making a #! for LPIA (someone tried to do that: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … ll-mini-9/) isn't worth it after all.

  • Registered: 2008-11-24
  • Posts: 2,087

Re: #! on netbooks (eee, aspire one, etc.)

LPIA is a dead end; Ubuntu has dropped support for it (9.10 was the last release), no other distro supports it (not Debian, Arch, Fedora, etc.), and nobody packages their apps for it (so good luck installing the latest Skype or Wine without jumping through hoops).  It was not without its benefits (some apps were faster, battery life was slightly better, and video was better on some platforms) but apparently Canonical does not feel it is worth the effort of maintaining a separate architecture.

IMHO, the Atom is such a popular and common CPU, it should be well-supported by the Linux kernel itself. I guess you could say I don't really believe in netbook-specific distros. I run "regular" i686 distros on both my Asus eee900ha and Dell Mini 9, and amd64 on my 64-bit Atom 330 desktop.

You can read about my personal experience with #! lpia here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … ll-mini-9/

Last edited by snowpine (2009-12-06 14:00:13)