Puppy Linux on the eee PC
I've been looking at alternatives to the installed Xandros Linux. One of the smallest and simplest is a version of Puppy Linux that has been customised for the EeePC called Pupeee. It was actually fairly simple to get working, by installing on a small 256MB SD Card I had knocking around. (I intend to re-install on a new 2GB card, one is on order)
First download the Pupeee iso and burn it to a CD.
Then boot from this live CD on a normal WinTel PC
Puppy has a built in script to create a bootable copy of Puppy Linux on a USB stick / SD Card. It may be possible to use this tool to create the bootable SD Card, but I created one on a USB stick and used this to install to the SD Card (Other versions of Linux have to go this route so...)
The entry is found under "Setup" Puppy universal installer (menu is found by right clicking)
Using all the default setting I was able to create a bootable USB stick. After ejecting the CD I rebooted using the USB stick, to prove it worked!
The next bit took some trial and error but I managed to boot off the USB stick on the EeePC. I later discovered that pressing the Esc key a boot time allows a selection of boot devices, SDD, Card Reader or USB. The universal installer failed this time when all the defaults were selected. i.e. the SD Card created wouldn't boot. However when the wizard was re-run and the syslinux MBR package mbr.bin was selected everything worked like a dream. When I re-booted and selected the CardReader as the boot device everything seem to just work.
I haven't tried everything yet, but the screen and wireless connection work fine. Further testing will ensue!
Now that I know the reason the SD Card didn't work originally I'll try to install directly to the SD card and miss out the use of the USB stick.
First download the Pupeee iso and burn it to a CD.
Then boot from this live CD on a normal WinTel PC
Puppy has a built in script to create a bootable copy of Puppy Linux on a USB stick / SD Card. It may be possible to use this tool to create the bootable SD Card, but I created one on a USB stick and used this to install to the SD Card (Other versions of Linux have to go this route so...)
The entry is found under "Setup" Puppy universal installer (menu is found by right clicking)
Using all the default setting I was able to create a bootable USB stick. After ejecting the CD I rebooted using the USB stick, to prove it worked!
The next bit took some trial and error but I managed to boot off the USB stick on the EeePC. I later discovered that pressing the Esc key a boot time allows a selection of boot devices, SDD, Card Reader or USB. The universal installer failed this time when all the defaults were selected. i.e. the SD Card created wouldn't boot. However when the wizard was re-run and the syslinux MBR package mbr.bin was selected everything worked like a dream. When I re-booted and selected the CardReader as the boot device everything seem to just work.
I haven't tried everything yet, but the screen and wireless connection work fine. Further testing will ensue!
Now that I know the reason the SD Card didn't work originally I'll try to install directly to the SD card and miss out the use of the USB stick.