The Asus EEE PC701- Does it need an LQ forum?

Well, I have had one of these for a while now, and it is excellent.

It is particularly interesting as, for the first time ever(?) we have a bunch of individuals all running linux (and for once, mostly the same distro) on the same hardware - this is very different from the situation we are used to.

I spend quite a lot of time over at forum.eeeuser.com and wiki.eeeuser.com, and increasingly find myself redirectinq LQ members (and even an LQ newbie, just today) over to those places.

So, a few Q's:
1] Am I being disloyal to LQ ?
2] Should LQ offer to host eeeuser.com ? (I don't know if they'd appreciate such an offer, or even if Jeremy would be interested).
3] Should LQ have a Sold with Linux PC -> Eee Forum? (I think not as it would just split and dilute the knowledgebase that already exists at eeeuser.com)

I suspect that many other manufacturers are going to be following Asus' lead, and introducing similar devices soon. I am trying to be constructive and think ahead here.

Asus EEE questions would fit perfectly in our Linux - Laptop and Handheld forum.

--jeremy

Thank you, I look forward to it!

I think you misunderstand - I read Jeremy's answer as "if you or anyone has a question relating to the EEE, you should post it to the Laptop forum", rather than we will have a sub forum dedicated to it.

Of course, if the Asus forum would like to get in touch with Jeremy to see if there is a way we can work together, I'm very sure Jeremy would be open to a discussion

I think you misunderstand - I read Jeremy's answer as "if you or anyone has a question relating to the EEE, you should post it to the Laptop forum", rather than we will have a sub forum dedicated to it.

Quite right, I did.
It just seems to me that with 300,000 eee's already sold, and a further 3-5 million expected to be sold this year, the Handheld & Laptop forum might get a bit crowded!
Well, we'll see.

If we get that much demand we'd certainly be willing to re-evaluate the situation.

--jeremy

It would make more sense to me to have a sub-forum for the OS**--using the same criteria already in place for distribution sub-fora. Having a sub-forum tied to a manufacturer or brand-name would be a whole new precedent. Also, hardware issues are often tied to specific processors, chip sets, etc.---not to companies.

** is it gOS, or am I getting confused with Walmart/Everex?

Originally Posted by pixellany ** is it gOS, or am I getting confused with Walmart/Everex?

Yes, gOS is on the Walmart/Everex machine. FWIW, I spent 20 minutes on several sites mapping the specs on the Asus, and couldn't find which distro is installed.

Cheers

The Asus eee PC701 comes with an eee-customised Xandros (no idea which version, or why Asus chose xandros, but it "just works").

People have installed other distros, mostly [?]ubuntu on the eee. See http://wiki.eeeuser.com

Some (perhaps misguided) people have also installed Win XP on it, but they seem to be happy too.

The only reason I started this thread is because I can anticipate many (possibly, millions) of people will be receiving their eee's running the default xandros, and will have linux questions as a result. There is currently nowhere specific for them on this site, and at the moment google will not point them here. As I said in my first post, this is a new situation: Many new linux users. Mostly running the same distro, on the same hardware.

Perhaps they should all hang out at http://forum.eeeuser.com, but I thought it might be an opportunity for LQ to increase its user base. If that is what Jeremy would like.

But maybe we do not want or need that, the quality of the posts on those *.eeeuser.com boards is perhaps not generally as good as it is here, but there is some brilliant hacking going on: "Overclocking" (to its rated speed) of the CPU, all sorts of hardware modifications. Much fun.

Perhaps it is better to leave things as they are: Eee users can go to *.eeeuser.com when they need help.

So, to answer my original question, am I being disloyal to LQ, by referring eee users, not to LQ, but to *.eeeuser.com ?

Originally Posted by jeremy If we get that much demand we'd certainly be willing to re-evaluate the situation. --jeremy

Judging from this quote, Jeremy seems pretty flexible about it. I'd point them here and see what happens.

Originally Posted by tredegar Quite right, I did. It just seems to me that with 300,000 eee's already sold, and a further 3-5 million expected to be sold this year, the Handheld & Laptop forum might get a bit crowded! Well, we'll see.

So what about the millions of Thinkpad owners who run Linux? Or the millions who own Dell laptops? Should we create a sub-forum for every type of hardware and laptop there is? I don't see this happening. It's a laptop that is sold with Linux pre-installed. If a user has a question about using Linux on this Asus with a particular component, they need to pick the most relevant forum. If it's regarding networking, it can fit in our Networking forum. If it's hardware and it's a laptop, it can go in the Laptop and Handheld forum. If it's a Newbie with a software issue, it can go in Newbie or Software.

Point being, I really don't see a need to narrow down and create sub-forums for a particular brand, make and model of any computer, that's just being silly and cause confusion. I could argue we need an Apache, MySQL and several other forums before creating a Asus EEE forum.

OK, points taken.
I asked ... and was answered
Thanks.