Within a day of receiving my Asus Eee 701 netbook I dumped the factory Linux and installed Windows XP Pro. For my intended use that was just a better choice. However, there have been several times when I wished that this little guy still had Linux installed.
With four gigs of storage, dual-booting isn’t a very attractive option. However, booting from a USB drive is always an option… so I’ve been using UNetbootin (an incredibly useful utility) to easily convert ISO images into bootable USB sticks and taking some test drives.
I started by trying out the distributions aimed at netbooks. I tried Eeebuntu’s base and nbr versions and also Easy Peasy. All three run quite nicely on my device and all three had the same issue: No support for the WiFi adapter.
Now, based on some searching, that issue looks easily corrected if I were to install any of them as my primary OS — but that’s not my goal.
Today, on a whim, I checked out Knoppix since I’d just read an article about Knoppix’s recent switch to LXDE from KDE and was intrigued enough to grab the latest ISO image and have a look.
Problem solved. This distro is awesome on my Eee!
It boots quickly from USB. Sound, network and video all work right out of the box (heck, with Compiz even). Easy on the eyes and performance is quite snappy. Definitely a keeper.
Heck, with this LXDE action, I might have to give this a shot on my old P2 ThinkPad and see how it compares to Xubuntu…
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March 15th, 2009 
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At the computer store I also ran KNOPPIX 6.0.1 off a USB on two netbooks (Toshiba and Lenovo), and agree that everything is snappy. But I couldn’t get WiFi to work. When I clicked the VPN icon, nothing showed up under the Wireless tab (or any other tab). An ‘iwconfig’ in an xterm also came up zilch – looks like the wireless card wasn’t even detected. Any similar experience / idea?
I could not get the wireless to work either.
I also could not get it to install Flash.
There was a box that appeared to do the install, but pressing execute had no apparent effect.