Asus Eee PC 1008HA Linux source code now available

The Asus Eee PC 1008HA is a thin and light netbook that weighs just 2.4 pounds and measures just an inc thick. It was the first Asus netbook to be feature the new “Seashell” style design. And it’s currently only available with Windows XP, even though Asus was a pioneer in putting Linux on netbooks.

But this weekend Asus did something interesting. The company posted Linux source code for the Asus Eee PC 1008HA. In fact, there are 5 different downloads, ranging in size 299Mb to 488MB. I have no idea what the difference is between one and the other, and I’m not entirely sure what’s contained in the files yet. But if I had to guess, I’d say that Asus is preparing to launch a version of the Eee PC 1008HA that runs Moblin Linux.

Keep in mind, what’s on the Asus support site right now is source code. There aren’t any disc images available for download, which means you can’t download and install the software yet. But if you know more about Linux than I do, you might be able to compile a disc image using the source code. Any penguins out there want to give it a try or give the source code a closer look and let us know what you find in the comments?

Update: The source code isn’t 5 different files… it’s 1 big file broken up into 5 pieces. In other words, the whole thing is about 2.2GB.

Update 2: There’s a similarly huge set of source code downloads for the Asus Eee PC 1005HA as well.

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Posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009, 10:19 am by Brad Linder

http://liliputing.com Brad Linder

Haha, I was kind of counting on you being the first person to jump on this
one. Too bad it didn't come out last week before you got swamped with the
O!Play.
In other news, did you see that Western Digital just released the WD TV
Live, which basically has the same functionality as the O!Play including an
Ethernet port?

I'm trying to get WD to send me a demo unit, and while I'm at it, I've
requested a demo of the Netgear EVA2000 Digital Entertainer Live which costs
just a bit more and is supposed to work over WiFi with an adapter… plus it
supports PlayOn. If I can get a few more of these units I'll publish a
roundup.
Mikez

Still grumbling about ASUStek and the O!Play software here,
someone else do this one.
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Mikez

Chase down one of these if you can:
http://phonestechnology.blogspot.com/2009/10/ic…

That is the “high dollar” model (about $150) with Wifi and card readers.
Mikez

I am a bit miffed with ASUStek at the moment, but I have
sent messages to their tech support people.
Will see what happens.
I may be near the head of the list, the product appeared
in the web-page between page refreshes while I was
looking at it.
Mikez

OK, will check what is inside of the packages.
Mikez

Can't get the download site to work today (it was working yesterday).
Will try again this afternoon.
walter

Well, sorry, two corrections.

For the 1000HE, I have to correct this to “13 part download”
Also, the link for the 1000HE d/l should read
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?…
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walter

Please forget about the links I posted above.
They are all leading to some other directories at the ASUStek support site.
Pingback: Christian Mello (captainshanks) 's status on Monday, 12-Oct-09 22:14:10 UTC - Identi.ca
Name

I have only downloaded part of the last file as it is taking to long and I got to go to work. The file contains a set of Debian source packages (e.g. sudo_1.6.8p12-4.dsc, sudo_1.6.8p12.orig.tar.gz, sudo_1.6.8p12-4.diff.gz).

I presume that you should be able to extract the files, set up a local source repository and then build all the packages using Debian, the exact command currently escapes me. Debootstrap should then be able to make a small root image which you could then use to install the rest of the files.
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Mikez

download page got fixed last night -
they have some serious bandwidth throttling in place,
kget is predicting one full day to download those files.
More (tomorrow?).
Mikez

I asked the tech that fixed the download pages
to change the bandwidth limit for the big files.
will see what happens.
http://listeningtoreason.com wanorris

Shame they don't have a torrent server.
Name

Small update: Started downloading from the begining. Seems to be based off Xandros (in turn based off Etch) still as the package versions look to be the same. I'll have to wait till more is complete to see what's changed.
Name

Looking into the ALSA files at the moment to find out details of other packages. Seems to feature kernel 2.6.26, built for GMA 500 (Poulsbo?)

Format: 1.0
Source: alsa
Version: epc-rc5-15asus1
Binary: alsa-modules-2.6.26-poulsbo
Maintainer: Package Maintainer <pkgmaint@xandros.com>
Architecture: any
Standards-Version: 3.7.2
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 5), linux-headers-2.6.26-poulsbo
Files:
ab9bcb52c65ce1a2b95d75c46b0b7556 19836348 alsa_epc-rc5-15asus1.tar.gz
Mikez

They do, click the P2P icon.
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Mikez

Tech Note: These archives include files that span the various parts.
You'll need a copy of rar (I used: RAR 3.80 beta 3) other tools for
rar archives will not follow the multi-part file or give errors.
Which also means you need all five parts present in the same directory.
You should have 1542 files, none of them zero length.

The contents are those of Debian packages that have been unpackaged;
Mostly from Debian/Etch plus sources from Xandros and from ASUStek.
It includes icewm (ice window manager – from Xandros) and kde with
an admixture gnome packages.

That combination would make possible a “fast boot” and a “full boot”
distribution installation.

The ACPI stuff is customized by ASUS – making this specific to some
ASUS product (probably the 1008HA specific stuff).

Note: These source files **do not** contain an archive tool that could
un-archive the rar source archives. I.E: not self hosting.
Although they tossed in three versions of GCC. Duh…

Probably fullfills the GPL license requirements, but you will need more
than a bit of custom scripting to build from *only* these files.
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Name

I think its probably just been updated to support the hardware (GMA500/Poulsbo) as I've mentioned below.

One way to build it would be to use an existing Linux installation to create something like a LinuxFromScratch installation. From here you would install all of the requirements to build dpkg (trust me – its a pain) and then slowly build all of the other packages. It is an absolute nightmare because package A can't be built without package B which can't be…without package X which can't be built without package A. I done this as an experiment to rebuilt Ubuntu Jaunty specifically for i686.

Not sure if you could just install Etch and then just replace all the packages which have been modified by Xandros and Asus. This may result in errors if the Debian packages were rebuilt against a Xandros/Asus dependancy.
Name

I think its probably just been updated to support the hardware (GMA500/Poulsbo) as I've mentioned below.

One way to build it would be to use an existing Linux installation to create something like a LinuxFromScratch installation. From here you would install all of the requirements to build dpkg (trust me – its a pain) and then slowly build all of the other packages. It is an absolute nightmare because package A can't be built without package B which can't be…without package X which can't be built without package A. I done this as an experiment to rebuilt Ubuntu Jaunty specifically for i686.

Not sure if you could just install Etch and then just replace all the packages which have been modified by Xandros and Asus. This may result in errors if the Debian packages were rebuilt against a Xandros/Asus dependancy.
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Danielitapiraquive

Hey everybody…… SOme one know how to install this codes?????
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Hi! Thanks for the great information you have provided! You have touched on crucuial points! i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later.

Asus Eee PC 1008HA Linux source code now available

ASUS Eee PC 1008HA

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