Asus Eee PC 8G -- Opinions please!

Mjolinor:

Okay, I created the /etc/apt/preferences file, and the /ect/apt/sources.list file, with the lines you gave. But when I ran apt-get update I get the following error:

E: Type 'deb' is not known on line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list

JSH:

I would not now recommend the Linux version of the Eee unless you are familiar with Linux or you want a very small computer and, like me, you hate Windows. I think a conventional Linux laptop or desktop would be a better place to learn Linux. Or if, like me, you just want a tiny computer that will do what the Eee does out of the box. (In my case, OpenOffice and Firefox.)

There is a Windows version of the Eee. But I think that anyone who runs Windows is begging for malware. If 3 lbs is not too heavy and you don't mind the price, the Macbook Air would probably be a great choice. But at $250, the Linux Eee is a LOT cheaper, and with no optical drive or HD, it's a lot more rugged.

 

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The above is screwed up. I am going to post over again.

 

Formatting gets messed up when I post to PC. This is how the lines appear: (Best if you just look at the actual file.)

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ stable/non-US main contrib non-free

 

I give up!!!

I decided that maybe, since I had created the sources file in OpenOffice, and saved it in TXT format, maybe it wasn't entirely free of formatting garbage. So I did the file over again in vi, (which is a program I absolutely hate!!!) and this time I did not get the same error:

What I got instead when I ran "sudo apt-get update" was a fleeting glimpse across my screen and off the top of the terminal of a long list of "failed" and "error" and "could not resolve." I decided to go ahead and run "sudo apt-get install knights" anyway, and got a bunch of "couldn't stat source package" and "no such file or directory".

Please note Linux fans: With Mac OS X you go to a web site, download a file, double-click it, double-click the resulting "package" and it installs your program, which then runs when you tell it to. All this editing of sources files and updating of apt-get and then seeing a long list of errors fleeting across the terminal is not my idea of user-friendly.

 

Other folks have reported on the eee chat board that they got knights to work. So the software should run on Xandros. And in any case, I could not even get apt-get update to work.

I did make the mistake at first of using OpenOffice (I thought saving it as a txt file would eliminate anything other than plain text) but then I did it in vi, typing directly into the editor without copy/paste, at which point apt-get did seem able to read it.

I do know something of the command prompt. I started out in CP/M and then Dos, and even had Unix on my PC-AT (genuine AT&T Unix from Microport for the 80286). However, I do not know systems-level stuff or administrator stuff.

All I'm saying is that Linux is not user-friendly. And as I'm learning, Xandros is even less so. Linspire actually makes it pretty easy to install software.

But you are probably right that I'm asking too much of an OS that is really intended for computer techs. I will just be grateful that I have a two-pound computer that does not run Microsoft garbageware.

Thanks for your help. I do appreciate the attempt to talk this non-tech through a complicated process.

 

There was no sources.list file. I did an ls on /etc/apt before I did anything else. Finding no sources.list, I created one.

There was no preferences file either, so I created that.

After posting my "I give up" post above, it occurred to me that I had made the preferences file with OO also, so I went back in and re-did it with vi. Then I ran apt-get update again. It seemed to like it better, so I ran synaptic again, and this time synaptic showed me a list of available programs, including knights.

But when I selected knights, synaptic showed me a mile-long list of programs (including some I use) that would have to be deleted, and another long list of files that would have to be updated, in order for knights to be installed. I balked again at that.

I renamed my sources.list and preferences files to "hide" them without losing them, just in case, ran apt-get again, and then synaptic. Synaptic now shows me its original list of available files, which does not inclide knights.

So I think I'm back where I began. See, I'm not totally ignorant. I just don't know how to install a program.

By the way, although there was no sources.list file, there is a directory called sources.list.d with no files in it.

 

Synaptic wanted to delete a bunch of programs and update a bunch of files. Apt-get won't do that?

 

Okay. I'll give it a try and post the results.

 

Wowee kazowee!!! Take a look at these outputs. outt.txt is the output from the apt-get update and outtt.txt is the output from apt-get -s install knights. (There was an out.txt because my first try I had forgotten to plug in the ethernet cable and the eee was not connected to the internet. :frusty:

Why in the blinking blank does it want to REMOVE OpenOffice and Amarok and all the rest of that stuff???

 

I am certainly amenable to moving this to the eee chatboard. But for now:

I ran apt-get update first without the sources.list and preferences files, and then with the files after deleting the line you said to delete. The outputs are in nomod.txt and yesmod.txt, but with this odd discrepancy:

In the latter run, there was an error printed to the screen that was not printed to the file. I cannot copy from the terminal, so I copy by hand:

W: There is no public key available for the following IDs:
4D270D06F42584E6
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

Note that after the first run, synaptic showed no programs available for download. Apparently there were no repositories. And yes, I am quite sure I did not delete a sources.list file in /apt/get. After the second run (with the restored files, but only the single remaining line in sources.list) knights and other programs are once again available, but as before, synaptic reports that a boatload of programs would be removed, etc., in order for knights to be installed.

Previously, apt-get install reported the same, so I just used synaptic as an easier way to see that this was still the case.