Getting Fn-F keys working on Asus eeepc

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

I have tried all this on an Asus eepc900, you may get different results with a different model. That is why this is in the advanced users section.

Firstly I am assuming that you are going to install PCLinuxOS root partition on the 4Gb card, and the /home partition on the 16Gb card. That makes a lot of sense to me. Don't bother with a swap partition. It really isn't worth it on this type of machine. It's not the quickest, and it's not advisable to have swap on a solid state drive. In practice it doesn't make much difference.

You need to install PCLinuxOS in the normal way, from an external USB optical drive, or a USB stick. With the external USB DVD drive, you need to use the sata-enabled line on the Grub screen.

Next, you need to setup your internet, I found that wireless with the 900 worked, but when I first pressed the connect button it took a while, giving a "failed to connect" error, but before I had finished uttering my first expletive, it had changed its mind and the wireless was connected.

Anyway, get your locale, clock, etc., set up. And install. You don't need any ATi/nVidia drivers.

Once you have it installed, you need to download two files onto your desktop. They are:

wlan.sh

eeepc-acpi

Once you have them on your desktop, you need to open a terminal, and do the following commends:

Code: [Select]


cd Desktop
su
(enter root password)
rpm -ivh --nodeps --force eeepc-acpi-1-21eeepclos.i586.rpm
rpm -e --justdb eeepc-acpi-1-21eeepclos


Next thing you need to do, is to open PC > System > File Tools > File Manager Super User Mode

Once you have input the Root password navigate to the folder /lib/modules and delete the folder "2.6.22.17.tex2"

Then navigate to the folder /etc/acpi and overwrite the file wlan.sh with the one you have on your desktop. Right click on it, select properties, and ensure that it is executable.

Using synaptic, you need to install the following:

kdeutils-klaptop
suspend-s2ram

Once you have done this, and rebooted, you should find that your "suspend" key, "wireless on/off" keys, etc., work. Not only that, you will get a graphic on the screen to confirm.

I am about to test the the other stuff all works.

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

Once you have installed kdeutils-klaptop and suspend-s2ram, you can go into the KDE Control Centre, under Power Control > Laptop Battery, you need to go to the rightmost tab first and set up ACPI control. After that you should be able to set things up through the other tabs to ensure that power consumption is minimised during battery only use, that hitting the off switch quickly will get you a log out screen, and by closing the lid, it goes straight to power down.

No point in worrying about hibernate to disk as you don't have a swap partition.

You will need to run the mixer from your volume control icon, because it sets up the microphone as "Mic" whereas, unless you plug in an external one, it needs to be "Front Mic". The wired internet appears to be working, if that ought to be an issue with this type of machine.

The only problem I got on the eeePC900 was that the webcam didn't work properly....

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

I found that with the eeePC900, the uvcvideo module in the current kernel resulted in a frozen frame and and a hang when running wxcam.

Fortunately there is an alternate driver here which works, just download it to your desktop and this can be installed more simply through kpackage, and there are no dependency issues with this one:

dkms-uvcvideo

I read stuff on the net about inserting the module with the append "quirks=2", but this just produced an error with the kernel version. It's also possible that on later versions of the eeePC they changed the webcam hardware. All I can report at this stage is that the video on the eeePC900 works after installing this rpm.

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

Since my previous post, I have confirmed that the wired network interface works. I am aware that it didn't on some previous kernels.

[b18b]

Just a note that this is ONLY KDE 3.x and some of the packages currently are not available for KDE 4. (ie. kdeutils-klaptop)

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

Thanks, rustynail. I haven't tried KDE4 on my eeePC it's out on loan and I don't expect to get it back for a month or so. That said, you should already have the klaptop function in KDE4, as Tex hasn't split the packages up for that. The stuff regarding the acpi and videocam on the '900 should still hold true.

[b18b]

There is something up with the klaptop and KDE4.  In my repos, I have kde4 category versus kde category.  When I search for klaptop I get no returns.  Then if I add kde as a category klaptop is returned.   However if I select it to install, there are all kinds of warnings and nothing in the end is selected for install. 

Same with kpackage.  It is not available in the kde4 category.

Now I only tried the first 3 repositories in Synaptic (1 at a time of course) so something might be a miss in those. 

As of right now I would not suggest KDE4 for a netbook anyway.  On my Asus 901 there are a lot of screen pauses when doing almost anything; firefox scrolling or navigating the menus. 

I will check things out with a little more detail later today. 

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

There is no kpackage in KDE4, you would have to use the command line.

kpackage is included but you need to install Smart for it to work.

[mikkl]

Did you use the full iso or minime?  This is a project I'm looking to take on this afternoon.

Couple other questions:

-Which BIOS are you using?
-How is your battery drain?  Mine still has the problem even after sending it to ASUS and I'm thinking of going after a personal hardare mod.

Thanks for the clear instructions,

mikkl

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

I installed using the latest mini-me as the base. If you have the '900 and the webcam freezes as I described. then to install using kpackage requires that you first install kdeadmin-kpackage (whether you use mini-me or the full version).

The only difference you should find between the full version and mini-me is that the laptop packages may or may not already be installed.

Let's know how you get on, especially if you have an eeePC other than the 900, I would like to know for which models the acpi package helps. Does it enable the sleep, wireless on/off, volume and mute functions?

[mikkl]

Installed to my eee900 today.  As you reported, the install went smoothly and everything I have test so far seems to work.  The one thing I have noticed is that when mousing around the desktop with the touchpad, my cursor is jerky, as though there is a video conflict or the CPU is busy doing something other than writing to the screen.  Have you experienced this?  

With ksysguard running, I can see that kded pops up and takes 15 - 50% of the CPU at the same time the cursor hangs.  According to the output, it was the command kded[kdeinit] --new startup that was used to start kded.

The other CPU hog that causes the hang is hald.

Playing around with the ACPI settings, this appears to be related to the power profile settings.  If I set it to "performance", this problem is barely noticeable.  Any other setting, however, and the cursor lag becomes quite noticeable.

mikkl

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

I gave up on the powersaving stuff, when I found that, mains off with a fully charged battery, it was incorrectly reporting that there were only 6 minutes left, and powered down when I had that setting! Maybe try CPU throttling when on battery. You'll get about 2 hours with the rubbsh battery they gave us in Britain.

[Village Idiot]

Yeah, that pwr mgt stuff sometimes. Hmmmphh!   

I own a bullet proof IBM thinkpad r50 that I bought second hand just before I got my 1000H.

Only on Jaunty, just after booting the desktop, it announces that the thinkpad's battery is 30% maximum capacity, implying that my battery is two-thirds stuffed. Not flat, ruined.

Clicking on Ok, the nag goes away. I still get about 100 minutes (that's within par) of usage running live-cd's -and- the internal HDD -and- usb modems -and- usb flash drives, a mouse...

Still, the 1000h (and I guess for other eee's), the big drainer is the screen back-light. When I was on hols recently, I got into the habit of dropping the intensity of the screen down a few notches when logging in every evening. At first so as to not disturb my companions sharing the accommodation with me. I realized that the battery meter indicator was hanging in there for noticeably longer just by doing that.

The only thing I miss on the eee: the thinkpad has a little orange light which showers the keyboard just enough light to see the keys.

[craesz]

Have a 904.... tried to download the files above and get a 404 message... are the links broken or are the files really not there?

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

Just checked links and they are good. Just my ISP 50Mb space so probably not much bandwidth.