Further to my earler post “The coolest laptop ever” – more news has come to light in relation to the option of installing a fully fledged distro on the laptop.
Mandriva One is now a fully hardware native linux distro.. meaning that after installing all the hardware on the Eee PC is detected “out of the box” including wifi!!!!
Mandriva One on Eee PC!!!
Specs shown (uses the full 900mhz rather than just 600 odd)
So once you get the file from here –>
http://www.mandriva.com/en/download
Then lets run through the steps to getting your system running smoothly.
Creating the install media for the Hard Disk Install
The Hard Disk install method requires an 8GB or larger USB key, SDHC card or USB hard disk; an extra small USB key will make things a lot simpler. The basic idea is to get the installer on the small USB key as described in the preceding section, and download the iso image for the Mandriva Free DVD to the large USB key, SDHC card or USB hard disk. Other iso image files (in particular those for the KDE One or Gnome One CDs) are not supported so don’t ask!
Then boot from the small USB key and when asked, choose the hard disk install method; next point the installer to the Mandriva Free DVD iso file on the install media and you are set.
In other words:
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Download the Mandriva Free DVD iso file to your 8GB or larger USB key, SDHC card or USB hard disk (the install media); note that this file is larger than 4GB and cannot be downloaded to a FAT partition. Reformat/repartition your install media accordingly.
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As described in the preceding section, download and write the all.img to a small USB key, and boot from it. The install media must also be accessible at this point.
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When asked, choose the hard disk install method; next point the installer to the Mandriva Free DVD iso file (full path).
Creating the install media for the CD/DVD Install
The CD/DVD install method requires an external USB CD or DVD drive. May not work with LG external DVD drives.
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If you have a CD drive, download the 3 CD iso files for the Free Mandriva edition, burn them and boot from the first CD.
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If you have a DVD drive, download the DVD iso file for the Free Mandriva edition, burn it and boot from it.
The Mandriva 2008.1 installer
Right, so you have prepared the install media following the instructions above, and by pressing the <ESC> key after turning on your eeePC, you have booted from it. The Linux kernel on the install media will load and after a few seconds you should be presented with the Mandriva 2008.1 Installer on the eeePC screen.
From this point on you are running the traditional, user-friendly, multi-language Mandriva Installer. Follow the normal installation steps, there is nothing eeePC-specific. Take your time to read carefully through all the options.
Screenshots will be added in time, but for now be advised of a few things to change from the default installer options:
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Choose the Standard security setting (do not use the default High as it is really not required on an eeePC).
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Choose Custom partitioning. If you are installing on the SSD, delete all the existing partitions before you try to create a new one; yes, you do have to understand what a partition is and how partitioning works. Create a single / partition on the Mandriva media. Choose “Journaling reiserfs” as the partition type. In the partition options set the ‘noatime’ option. This is important to avoid excessive wear on Flash media.
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Choose to manually select the packages to install, and when given the choice, choose whatever Desktop Environment(s) you want to have installed by default (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc). At login time you’ll be able to open a menu and choose the session type.
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Do not install any server software. Running Apache, MySQL and PHP on your eeePC is not recommended (although it can be done).
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Do not, unless you know exactly what you are doing, trim down the number of packages to install; this will likely result in an incomplete setup – guaranteed headaches later. You can add packages, but keep at least 500MB free on your Mandriva media (the installer tells you how much space is used and how much you have total)
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Check and double-check (and triple-check, please) that you are installing Grub (the bootloader) to the correct device MBR. This is the most common mistake for first-time Mandriva users, and results in a Mandriva install that cannot be booted.
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Do not try to manually configure network, video, sound or any other option after downloading the packages, these get automatically configured by the installer.
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Wireless must be configured after the first reboot, see below.
READ this note if you are using the Hard disk Install method
There seems to be a bug in the Mandriva Installer that misidentifies the install media (the one that holds the Mandriva Free DVD iso image file). So when you are offered a choice between the various drives identified by the kernel, the correct one is not the one that has the right name! For example:
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You wrote the DVD iso image file to your BrandX 8GB USB key. It shows up as drive sdc. When asked by the installer: “Select the disk containing the copy of the Mandriva Linux distribution install source”, if you answer sdc, the installer will not find the iso and will just loop asking the same question, or will give you a message saying “no partition found”. Try sdb, or sda, or sdd instead.
Post-Install Steps
OK, you have installed Mandriva 2008.1 and rebooted your eeePC successfully into Mandriva 2008.1 The following are some post-install steps required to get a smooth Mandriva 2008.1 eeePC “eXPerience”. Ha! 
Configuring your software sources
Go to the Mandriva Control Center>Software>Software sources and follow the prompt to set up a full set (Free and Non-Free) of online sources. If you installed using the Hard Disk Install or CD/DVD Install methods, you’ll want to remove the original install media from the list of available sources.
Now using your software install GUI in MandrivaControlCentre>Software>SoftwareInstall/Remove, you can install packages from any of the defined sources. Some packages will appear twice. Once from a Mandriva repository, and once from a PLF repository. Choose the PLF version if you want the extended features.
Configuring your wireless connection
Check that the blue LED (WiFi) is on.
Go to the Mandriva Control Center>Network>Add Network Interface GUI and follow the prompt to set up the wireless connection (obviously you will still need to be Ethernet connected to the internet at that point). Choose the madwifi driver (the ndiswrapper option would force you to install the XP wireless drivers) and when prompted, enter the appropriate parameters for your WiFi connection.
Minimize disk writes to prevent flash memory wear
To do this edit /etc/fstab and add the following lines at the end:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs noatime 0 0 tmpfs /var/log tmpfs noatime 0 0 tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs noatime 0 0
Note that any files written to these directories will be erased on reboot (but are kept during suspend/resume). Also check that your fstab file has your SSD or SDHC partitions mounted with the ‘noatime’ option. For example:
# Entry for /dev/sdc5 : UUID=0c0701d1-5dc3-4c9e-982d-53ee393f1fb8 / ext3 noatime 1 1
If you are using a reiserfs partition, the options are slightly different:
# Entry for /dev/sdc5 : UUID=0c0701d1-5dc3-4c9e-982d-53ee393f1fb8 / reiserfs noatime,nodiratime,notail 1 1
Disable unneeded services
(Check the FAQ here)
Configure Power Management
You want to get the best possible performance while maximizing battery time.
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Disable unneeded devices (in the BIOS or using hotkeys).
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(Check the FAQ here)
Installing RealPlayer
RealPlayer 10 installed out of the box will segfault but there is an easy fix to get that to work. edit /usr/bin/replay and add the following lines
export GTK_MODULES= export GTK_IM_MODULES=
Those to lines also need to be added to hxplay
To get RealPlayer 11 to work add the following lines
export GTK_MODULES= export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
Also go to Tools, Preferences…, Hardware and change the hardware from ALSA to OSS
