Asus 1015PEM + Ubuntu

Anyone have experience with the Asus Eee PC 1015PEM and Ubuntu on it?

I am going to be picking up a netbook late this month and the 1015PEM is one possible choice. I want to install Ubuntu 10.10 on my netbook and have the hardware features be as close to fully functional as possible (e.g. wireless, Bluetooth, USB 3.0, webcam).

Thanks for any information and/or recommendations.

 

I've been looking at this netbook myself (matte screen, matte finish, dual core atom), it looks like it has no problems with Ubuntu, but I would run Debian on it. Here's some references:
Amazon.com: Matthew A. Keas' review of ASUS Eee PC 1015PEM-PU17-BU 10.1-Inch Netb...
[ubuntu] asus 1015pem wireless not working - Ubuntu Forums
[ubuntu] Touchpad recognized only as generic mouse - Eee 1015PEM - Ubuntu Forums

I haven't seen anything specific to the webcam, but my guess is no news is good news.

 

Thanks for the quick reply and the links.

The wireless does not seem to be much of a hurdle and I will defer to you on the "no news is good news."

Is there a reason you prefer Debian on a netbook? Based on your signature, it appears that you have experience directly with Debian previously and probably like it over other distributions of Linux, but I was wondering if there were any other reasons.

 

BTW the diff between the MU and PU is the battery rating, PU having the better one at 63W/h (13hrs stated) vs 48W/h (10hr stated). There's a difference of $30 or so.

 

I didn't know that model number scheme - thanks for the heads-up.

 

I've been using Debian for many years, and it's slimmer than Ubuntu which makes a difference for performance, but it's not a huge deal. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so in many ways they are the same, but not exactly. It's personal preference really, when it boils down to it.

Edit: Just found this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iPGIkOKKj8#t=12m30s

There's another Linux thread here: [all variants] asus 1015pem - Ubuntu Forums

Anyone else out there running Linux on one of these?

 

I just got this machine, I'm currently running Debian off of an external HD I have sitting around that has an installation on it, and backing up the recovery partition on the internal HD. It's going to take a few hours, so I'm reading up on brcm80211 (never compiled or used it before). In the meantime I'm going to move this thread to the Linux forum and I'll update after I've made more progress.

Update: I've got it running Sid, I used the daily Squeeze netinst and installed using ethernet (atl1c). I get about 4.5-5 hours battery life on normal brightness with wifi and bluetooth on, so no complaints. I get 7.5hrs on power saving mode with bluetooth off and medium brightness. The brcm80211 driver is pretty decent for a staging driver, I had no problems compiling it for 2.6.37-rc7 and it's working fine, except I need to reload the module after resuming. Wireless strength is good. (Edit: I forgot to mention I had to downgrade to xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.13.0-2 from Squeeze because the version currently in Sid is broken and the resolution is stuck at 800x600.) The only problem I've run into is that some of the hotkeys don't work; I'm using eeepc-wmi and Fn+F7, Fn+F2, and Fn+F3 don't work, but the volume and brightness hotkeys work. Using eeepc-acpi requires passing acpi_osi=Linux as a boot parameter, and then the mute hotkey doesn't work, also with this the backlight brightness is noticeably reduced. I'm going to dig into the source code when I have a chance, since it may be an easy fix. I have the same problem booting from an Ubuntu 10.10 AMD64 livecd, so at least I know I'm not losing my mind. (Edit 2: I made a post about getting the hotkeys working over at the Ubuntu forums thread.)

If you update the bios it may take a good 20 minutes on programming (with no 'erasing' stage before that, which freaked me out). Also, in order to boot from USB I had to hit F2 repeatedly immediately after turning the machine on and it still took a few reboots to get into setup and disable fast boot.

Flash video playback is decent all the way up to 720p, where it can get choppy at times but still is mostly watchable. The speakers are placed underneath the palmrest and are decent, they aren't nearly as tinny as other netbooks I've tried but still aren't great. The display brightness is pretty good, it's not a particularly dim display by any means, and with the matte finish the viewing angles are extremely good for a netbook. The screen doesn't tilt back quite as far as I'd like due to the hinge design. The webcam is surprisingly good for a netbook, and doesn't choke under low light conditions, although the framerate isn't extraordinary, it's not hideous. The touchpad with two finger scrolling works fine and isn't overly sensitive. The matte surface is nice since it offers no resistance and it's a huge touchpad surface for a netbook. There's no problem clicking the simulated middle button with both sides of the mouse button. It can squeak a bit while pressing down the mouse button, but that's a minor complaint. The overall build quality of this netbook is miles away from the 901 and 701. There's still a lot of cheap plastic involved, but I like the matte finish of the lid and palmrest area, and the aluminum mouse button. I do wish they had made the display bezel matte instead of glossy. Oh and replacing the hard drive voids the warranty, since there's no access panel for it, and requires near-complete disassembly.

Code:

lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation N10 Family DMI Bridge [8086:a010] (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:a011] (rev 02)
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:a012] (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:27d8] (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 [8086:27d0] (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 [8086:27d2] (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 4 [8086:27d6] (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:27c8] (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:27c9] (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:27ca] (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:27cb] (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller [8086:27cc] (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller [8086:27bc] (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA AHCI Controller [8086:27c1] (rev 02)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications AR8132 Fast Ethernet [1969:1062] (rev c0)
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)

Code:

lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 13d3:3315 IMC Networks
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 13d3:5702 IMC Networks
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub