The install is still a bit 'fresh', so not too many details yet...

Basic install was made using the 'tricks' from the Wiki: no CDROM, but the pre-installed SuSE was enough to get the minimal set of files loaded & installed. Grub was new for me, but that seems to not be an unpassable barrier ....

Playtime....

I'm curious, how are your U90 and Zenwalk getting along?

I'm looking for the distro that is just right for this little machine, but I've been having issues with (what else?) wireless. I've found a driver for the wireless card, but that only works on an 2.6.26.x kernel, not on the 2.6.27.4 kernel I was running on it

At this moment, my U90 is running ZenWalk-5.2 'current', with all hardware fully operational.

I did have a few 'tribulations' getting the camera & WiFi working, but both are ok now. All other hardware was supported 'out of the box' (well: if you could find a box for ZenWalk that is..).

I've not yet tried the 'snapshot' tree (including the 2.6.27 branch kernels..) yet. It seems that -besides the actual kernel- for camera support, you'll also need the libv4l package on the 2.6.27 kernels.

So far, my 'specials' have been the following:

for the camera:

I use the uvcvideo module. It supports the camera i found in my machine:

Bus 005 Device 003: ID 0c45:62c0 Microdia Pavilion Webcam

I downloaded the driver source from here:

http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/

or rather:

svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk

for the WiFi

That was a bit more trouble. The main source of driver code was the ubuntu mailing list. It seems that the ubuntu-folk are actively communicating with the Realtek driver folk. There are several driver sources mentioned & downloadable for the WiFi 'card' that is inside the U90. I the end, i was satified with the module as compiled from:

http://launchpadlibrarian.net/18553053/ ... ase.tar.gz

The discussion was conducted here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/246141

There are several references to drivers (sources..) for the WiFi here. I tried a few (no: not all...), till i had one that seemed to work ok. I've got a few 'snapshot' boxes (with the 2.6.27+ kernel), so i could just try if i can get the WiFi driver to compile there...

general

The 'wind U90' works very well with zenwalk. I've 'stuck' with the 'current' branch because i consider this to a 'workhorse' machine, not so much a development/test machine. I've done some experimenting with suspend/resume lately (the Aspire one forum thread..), which where less than spectacular (but *very* amusing..). The machine usually runs from 'mains outlet', with wired network.

My normal work-environment on it is ZenWalk-5.2 'current', with additionally a few 'extra packages':

- kde-3.5.9
- koffice
- skype
- google-earth

All-in-all, the machine's software (or rathermy fancies..) have stabilized nicely. I'm actually using it as a bit of a cross-breed of what seems to be the 'core' work of a netbook (e-mail, www-ing, multimedia) and a regular notebook. The latter probably because it's the only 'notebook-ish' thing i have. It holds up to the train quite well.

As a side-note: i've never bothered re-partitioning the disk yet: The -from-shop- partitioning is a bit odd in my view:
- 2 GigBytes swap (in use with zenwalk too, i did re-run mkswap on it..)
- a 20 Gigbytes '/' for the pre-installed SLED: is intact, but unused.
- a 10 GigBytes 'restore' partition: intact, unused
- ~ 46 GigBytes '/media/data': that's where my zenwalk is to be found. Used all the time

The SLED '/' has grub on it; i've simply added the zenwalk to its table. I used the zenwalk wiki entry about installing with no CDROM to get zenwalk installed: first copy the relevant info (about the complete zenwalk-5.2 install iso..) to the SLED partition, add the zenwalk installer to the SLED grub table, boot the installer, and install zenwalk on the 46 gigBytes partition. a final visit to the SLED grub table, and i've not seen the factory-installed system again since then.

Oh, and the only hardware that i just could not get used to is that miniature 'tickle pad': i've got me a regular mouse (USB..)...

Wow, thanx for the info!

I was using the rtl8187se_linux_26.1016.0716.2008.tar.gz driver on VectorLinux 5.9 with the fresh 2.6.27.4 kernel, but that didn't work. Compiling 2.6.26.6 failed due to some configuration error. I could look into that further, but I'm also still looking for the right distro. One thing at a time. I probably don't need to explain that compiling a kernel on the Wind is a bit of a pain. I'll do it if I must, but I'll avoid it if I can . I also had trouble with sound, but any ALSA later than 1.0.15 fixes that, so I'm not worried there.

The machine is going to be my new portable, because my main laptop is rather big&heavy. I'm quite fond already about the portability of the new machine. It fits in the side pocket of the bag that is too small for my main laptop.

One thing i forgot to mention: to build the 'above' drivers, you will need to install the kernelsource package.

First off: Wow! This machine is fast as lightning on Zenwalk&&IceWM. It's not untill you do some heavy lifting (such as kernel compilation) that it becomes apparent that you only have the look and feel of a Ferrari, but not the actual BHP.

Still, from runlevel 0 to runlevel 3 in 30 seconds



The wireless interface is a different matter though.
I did not see a difference in kernel version between ZW-5.2 I'm running and ZW-current I found on the mirrors. Both seem well served with 2.6.25.4. Yet the link you gave me to the driver failed to build. I wnet ahead and installed the driver I had been trying, the one that needed the 2.6.26.x kernel. So I compiled the 2.6.26.7 kernel and I'm running it right now

Both drivers build using `makedrv`. But led to this error:


I may be derailing your thread about the wonderful Wind with these erros, but did you encounter similar errors during your search for the right driver?? Even after reading the entire thread from the link you posted (thanks!) and trying several patches and driver versions, I'm still out of luck??

I'd try a different kernel again, but between the latest, the ZW default and my current 2.6.26.7 I really see no difference in how the driver errors. I'm beginning to suspect that the problem isn't there. It's weird. I hope you can shed some light on this curious matter??




___
Disclaimer, this message was composed without the aid of a spell checker.

Ah, yes: the build-process of this set of modules is as confusing as the good folk at Realtek could make it: When you extract the archive with the sources, you end up with a directory that contains the 'buildfile' and some files & two directories.



The fun part is that *both* subdirectories end up containing some kernel modules. In ieee80211 there's the modules you seem to be missing, i guess that you're attempting to load the module r8180.ko in rtl8185 ...

What i did is basically to copy all the .ko files i could find in either of the subdirectories to /lib/modules/2.6.25.4/kernel/drivers/net/wireless and next run a 'depmod -a' . That 'sets up the stage' for getting the drivers autoloaded (since the hardware is now 'recognized..') by udev and friends upon boot of the machine. After the depmod -a, you should also be able to 'manually' activate the WiFi by means of 'modprobe r8180'. Oh, and you do need to enable the radio with (blue-text) Fn-F11 before the WiFi radio actually activates.

Ah yes, I see where I went wrong. Not quite there yet, but I'm getting closer. But something else has come up, grrrrr

My monitor keeps dying. It's definetly hardware related, because I can get it back on by tilting the device. Grrrr It seems I need to do something about this first.


In ieder geval bedankt voor je hulp!

Ah , yes; i saw the 'Onjuist apparaat' just now... Another Dutch speaker... I guess my 'Amsterdam location' was a hint

I've just found this link & driver source:

http://code.google.com/p/msi-wind-linux/

http://msi-wind-linux.googlecode.com/fi ... 04.tar.bz2

I'm not sure if this is an improvement or 'another dud', compared to the other & previous driver(s) i found, but it's worth a try

[edit]

The least i can report on this driver is that it builds 'cleanly' on zenwalk-5.2 'current' (2.6.25.4 kernel..) I never did like those warning messages all over the pace. Going to do some tests with it.

[more edit]

I see not grat difference with the previous drivers, but:
- clean build
- gets auto-loaded (after copy to modules directory & reboot)
- Fn-F11 toggles the wifi led & the radio
- i can 'iwlist wlan0 scan' with it --> gives a list of wifi's

It's not a complete 'dud'. To actually test WiFi with it i'd have to set up an actual wifi... I'll test with a friend one of these days...

That last one did the trick! I'm now wireless on the Wind


It's not a completely clean build, I had a segmentation fault the first time I ran `./wlan0up` and the system crashed on `ifconfig -a`, and not even another console could `kill -9` it.

But a reboot later I saw this flashing by:


And it connected flawlesly on my router. I haven't tried encrypton yet. But thanks a dozen times prfaasse! You've been great!

And yeah:

It was an easy guess

For encryption, you might have another look at the wpa-stuff that came out of the driver source archive...

I've not tried anything with that yet.

Hi,

Can you tell me if it is possible to build packages with the ATOM processor ?
I'm interesting by a similar pc but it is for me build some packages for zenwalk in the train when I go to my job


Thanks

Bip

As far as i've been able to detect, the atom is i486-compatible

I've not seen any problems with packages-building on it yet. I've not built & released any 'official' packages on the machine, but: i *have* built an opencv and ffmpeg (private-build) package on it. The little thing runs ZenWalk-5.2 'current' -plus a few 'snapshot' packages- at the moment. Since the gcc et. al. is the default zenwalk one, i'd not expect that it does anything special at all.

It's just another ZenWalk-box; so: please, just move on people, nothing special to see here

@ bipbip

I compiled a few packages including the kernel on my Atom powered Aspire One, a little slower than my AMD 4400 Dual Core desktop, but it seems to work fine.