Some brief highlights of the last three months of Debian Eee PC development.
Thermal and ACPI breakage resolved in 2.6.26-7
We’re pleased to see that in the upload to Sid of linux-image-2.6.26-1-686 version 2.6.26-7, the pair of 2.6.26 bugs we’ve been tracking that have made it difficult for Eee users to upgrade their systems have been resolved. Since then 2.6.26-8 has been uploaded and is expected to enter Lenny this week due to a freeze exception. Once the new kernel has migrated we will move quickly to build and release a new installer that includes it.
Ath5k wifi works on Eee PC in Linux 2.6.27
Jean-Christophe reports that ath5k works in Linux 2.6.27 on the Eee PC 701, and just needs a small patch to work with our eeepc-acpi-scripts package. This is good news for those of us with models 701, 900, 900A and 1000HD who have been wanting to get off of the non-free Madwifi drivers and onto DFSG free drivers.
New Eee PC model 701SD wifi support in the works
Users of the new Eee PC Model 701SD have just started showing up looking for support in mainstream Linux distros. Martin Filtenborg confirmed using our Eee PC Live image with the GPL’d rtl8187se driver from Realtek that we can at least use it to connect to an unencrypted AP, get an IP address and ping other hosts.
Of course, it is one thing to have a working vendor-supplied driver and quite another to have mainstream support. We’ll make do with what we have now, but will be seeking a mainstream solution as soon as possible.
We’re seeking more testers and developers to work on this. To date, an ITP has not been filed, as it is not yet clear who is going to carry this work forward.
Chasing the 5 second boot
An interesting discussion on Arjan van de Ven and
Auke Kok’s work to get an Eee 901 to boot in 5 seconds took place this month. While the Debian Eee PC team is not making work on this a priority, we’ll keep an eye on it to see if Debian can incorporate some or all of the techniques they used so that our users can benefit without making radical changes to their systems.
Working towards mainstream support for rt2860
Our filing of an ITP for rt2860 (the wifi driver for models 901, 1000 and 1000H) was followed by discussion about how to separate out the GPL’d driver from the embedded non-free firmware so that it can at least go into contrib. Glenn Saberton has been working on rewriting the build system around kbuild and separating out the firmware.
Numerous improvements to ACPI scripts
Since my last progress report, there have been numerous improvements to the eeepc-acpi-scripts package to deal with all of the various models we now support and make the scripts more robust and flexible. Check out the changelog for details.
