Asus EeePC 1015T / Xubuntu 10.10 Review
I've had my 1015T for about three days, and I'm super happy with it. I blew away Windows 7 Starter (and its restore partition) and installed Xubuntu 10.10 AMD64 before I even left the store.
The installation went off without a hitch. The folks at Hi-Tech Computers, where I bought the machine, kindly let me use their USB optical drive. Booting the Xubuntu Live CD was simply a matter of holding the Esc key during boot and selecting the USB boot device.
The wifi, webcam, microphone, multi-touch trackpad, and ATI graphics drivers work flawlessly. I have not yet tested sound playback, for lack of hardware to play it from, but I assume it works since the mic on the same sound device works. (I tested the mic by recording in Audacity and viewing the waveform.) I have also not yet tried to play HD video through the HDMI port. However, the HDMI device is detected, and its mixer is on the list.
My only complaint is that the sensitive area of the touchpad extends too close to the spacebar. I'm constantly brushing against it as I type, causing the cursor to move erratically. I might try putting a narrow piece of black electrical tape over the top portion of it.
Edit: Confirmed that sound playback works. Easiest Linux install ever!
I can't recommend the 1015T enough. Sadly, I've read that its big brother, the 1215T, uses a Broadcom wifi chipset instead of Atheros. It's been a couple years since I tried to get Linux to play nice with Broadcom, so maybe things are different now... but be wary.
Edit 2: This thing has speakers?! I didn't think it did. They're inside the front of the handrest area, and play out of the cooling air intake grilles. Neat.
Edit 3: Since I use a USB mouse most of the time, I simply disable the trackpad with
The installation went off without a hitch. The folks at Hi-Tech Computers, where I bought the machine, kindly let me use their USB optical drive. Booting the Xubuntu Live CD was simply a matter of holding the Esc key during boot and selecting the USB boot device.
The wifi, webcam, microphone, multi-touch trackpad, and ATI graphics drivers work flawlessly. I have not yet tested sound playback, for lack of hardware to play it from, but I assume it works since the mic on the same sound device works. (I tested the mic by recording in Audacity and viewing the waveform.) I have also not yet tried to play HD video through the HDMI port. However, the HDMI device is detected, and its mixer is on the list.
My only complaint is that the sensitive area of the touchpad extends too close to the spacebar. I'm constantly brushing against it as I type, causing the cursor to move erratically. I might try putting a narrow piece of black electrical tape over the top portion of it.
Edit: Confirmed that sound playback works. Easiest Linux install ever!
I can't recommend the 1015T enough. Sadly, I've read that its big brother, the 1215T, uses a Broadcom wifi chipset instead of Atheros. It's been a couple years since I tried to get Linux to play nice with Broadcom, so maybe things are different now... but be wary.
Edit 2: This thing has speakers?! I didn't think it did. They're inside the front of the handrest area, and play out of the cooling air intake grilles. Neat.
Edit 3: Since I use a USB mouse most of the time, I simply disable the trackpad with
synclient TouchpadOff=1. GNOME apparently has a feature that disables the trackpad when you're typing, but I'm not installing GNOME just for that.