Syllable Runs on the Asus Eee PC
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 14th Apr 2008 21:10 UTC, submitted by Kaj de Vos
Syllable, AtheOS Michael Saunders got Syllable Desktop to run on his new Asus Eee PC (screenshot). There is some work to do to support all hardware, but most functionality already works. Michael reports that video, audio, touchpad, USB and battery monitor all work. Widescreen video and network don't and there may be reliability problems with USB storage devices. As installing Syllable from a USB device doesn't work yet, Michael used an inventive method for installation. It can be done by imaging your Eee drive with the dd utility (from Linux), installing Syllable on it through QEmu and then dd'ing the image back to the real drive. Note that the drive number needs to be adjusted in the GrUB boot file. The project is looking into distributing Syllable especially for the Eee PC in this form.
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RE: headache machine
by lemur2 on Tue 15th Apr 2008 04:58 UTC in reply to "headache machine"
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

So far it's been easier to install xp on this machine than anything else. It won't even restore from the dvd they give you, so once you wipe it there's pretty much no way back.

I've managed to kill one in a week although my 2nd one seems to be working well after about 2 months. I've only installed xp this time instead of trying for debian et al. The flash drive just doesn't seem like it will last long.


Just a bit more explanation of why you should avoid XP and use an OS with a log-structured filesystem (designed for flash) instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-structured_filesystem

Some kinds of storage media, such as flash memory and CD-RW, degrade slowly as they are written to and have a limited number of erase/write cycles at any one location. Log-structured file systems are sometimes used on these media because they make fewer in-place writes and thus prolong the life of the device by wear levelling.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_levelling

Wear-levelling attempts to work around these limitations by arranging data so that erasures and re-writes are distributed evenly across the medium. In this way, no single sector prematurely fails due to a high concentration of write cycles.

Conventional file systems like FAT, ext2 and NTFS were originally designed for magnetic disks and as such rewrite many of their data structures (such as their directories) repeatedly in place. Some file systems aggravate the problem by tracking last-access times, which can lead to file metadata being constantly rewritten in-place.


So, once again ... if you are worried about the durability of the EEEPC flash disk ... get rid of the XP install asap.

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