[Debian-eeepc-devel] Got my 1000HE, here's some info on it.

[Ben Armstrong]

On Wed, 4 Mar 2009 19:55:52 -0800
Cory Nelson <phrosty at gmail.com> wrote:
> Delivered yesterday, put Debian on it immediately.  It's got the same
> stuff inside as the 1002HA: atl1e wired, AR928X wireless, Elantech
> touchpad.  I got something around 6-7 hours of life out of it with
> varying firefox+wifi usage, full-screen h.264 playing, and compiling.
> Power usage reports as between 10 and 16Wh.

Excellent.

> Installed via usb stick using the vanilla installer.

Vanilla ... the standard installer (i.e. not our debian-eeepc.img
custom installer?)

> Now I have no random clicking, but I still have sporadic
> movement if ethernet is plugged in.  Unplug ethernet and cursor stays
> still.  Doesn't happen with wifi.  It baffles me, if anyone has ideas
> I'd appreciate them.

Strangeness.  No idea.

> Please, put 2.6.28 (for ath9k) kernel packages with elantech support,
> and alsa packages, into the debian-eee repo.

Our goal is full support in Debian.  We don't do custom kernels.  Is
ath9k in 2.6.28 itself?  If so, no worries, squeeze will have 2.6.28
before very long.  As for elantech, we expect to be able to get patches
into 2.6.28 as needed.  As for alsa, I don't think we need anything
custom for that.

>  User documentation
> should not have "the only way around this is for you to compile a
> custom kernel..." anywhere in it -- I'm very happy with my Eee now
> that it's mostly usable, but honestly if I wasn't a long-time debian
> user comfortable with all this, I would have given up and tried
> something else.

The wiki lists workarounds until Debian is ready with the things that
are needed to support the Eee.  So when you complain about "user
documentation" you are really complaining that users have contributed
tips to other users to get things working before Debian has full
support.  I personally don't see anything wrong with this.  You have
two choices as a user: one, wait until Debian has full support, or two,
use the workarounds.  If you find the workarounds technically
difficult, that lands you back with option one.

I understand your frustration, and I understand your point about what
is best for end-users.  Please don't take this reply as just blowing
you off about your concerns.  We are striving towards this ideal that
everything "just works" for users, but we are not going to strike from
the wiki material that is beyond the comfort level of some users just
for their comfort when that material would have helped the more
experienced / adventuresome users.

In the end, we will get there.  We will work on making sure Debian
itself has full support for your model, to the best of our abilities.
But it is going to take a bit of time to do this.

Ben