Mandriva 2008 on the Eee Pc : Mandreeva ??
This How-to is , so far, for an install of Mandriva 2008 on an external usb hard drive using the Asus Eee P701. It is a very basic install I have not tried everything but the wi-fi and the sound work as well as all the 3D Desktop features (Metisse, Compiz-Fusion) including the transparencies.
Hardware required :
1-Eee asus P701 2-Usb external cd reader 3-Usb external Hard drive with a partition of at least 3 GB free for root. 4-A lot of patience…
0-Some work before you start if you are not a Mandriva user:
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/installmdv2008.0.html
1-Boot the Eee on the hard-drive with the cdrom Mandriva 2007.1 (spring) inside making sure that the wifi is on (blue light on).
2-Let the normal boot occur with no other option.If you get a kernel panic type noapic nolapic as an option.
3-Answer the usual question of language and location, choosing no 3d desktop for the first boot will speed-up the process.
4-Once Kde is running click on the install Icon and be patient , took 35 mins for me on a very old external CDROM reader. At this stage you will have to configure your partitions, I chose 10GB for root and 2GB of swap.
5- When probed for the boot order and where to install it, make sure you choose your external hard-drive or this will alter you stock distro.
REBOOT
6-When rebooting, press the escape key and choose your usb drive to boot.
7-You need to be confortable to work so I advise to reduce the taskbar to tiny, reduce the icons to 24 and enable metisse in order to have more space.
8-Enable the wifi: We need here to use a windows driver (sorry) and ndiswrapper to make it useable in linux.
Follow religiously the instructions there:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:configurendiswrapper?s=wifi%20driver
it works perfectly first time,if not you have missed an important detail!
Once online, I suggest you pay a visit to easy urpmi and update your system. I did a cleanup, removing all the nvidia stuff and all the languages I don't need. I also installed xfce to see if there was any speed gain. I didn't notice any…
9-Enable the sound :
Edit /etc/modprobe.conf and add the line “options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-dig” to get sound working working. At this stage I had to reboot in order to have the sound working, it might not be necessary, please correct if it is the case.
10- Configure the system to your preferences
In order to install codecs and oter necessities to play videos and music properly I suggest to go to:
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/configuration2008.0.html
Lots of advice there with screen shots etc… I also advise a few addons for firefox : CrossFTP, FullerScreen, Download Statusbar. That will save you some space, along with a compact theme if you still feel a bit tight.
Points still not checked : Webcam Ethernet Sleep mode Wifi fn Key etc…
