Arch Linux

dryhte

Member

Registered: 2005-06-29

Posts: 34

How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Hi people.

I've tried out Arch (as well as countless other *nix distro's) a couple of times, but I've never really used it for a longer time. Now I'm tempted to buy a mini Atom nettop system (maybe NVidia ION based, don't know yet) as an 'always on' alternative for my power guzzling gaming machine. And of course, it should run linux ('cause otherwise I'll never learn it, and gaming wouldn't be an excuse on a low powered system as this)

Does anyone have an idea how good hardware support is going to be for a relatively new processor/chipset as Atom + ION?

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

It should all work just fine.

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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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mianka

Member

From: BE LEUVEN

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 229

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

See http://fireflylinux.com/

This is an Arch derivative for small computers.

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

No real need to use any derivative, regular arch runs beautifully on my eeePC. There's a handful of packages in the AUR that get ACPI and keybindings setup perfectly, and it 'just works'.

ise

Developer

From: Karlsruhe / Germany

Registered: 2005-10-06

Posts: 404

Website

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

I'm running regular arch on my eeePC 701 and on my eee Box B202. No problems and everything runs fine.

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the_isz

Member

Registered: 2009-04-14

Posts: 280

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

I also run Arch on my Medion Akoya (basically a MSI Wind relabel) and everything works perfectly.

chrispoole

Member

Registered: 2008-12-30

Posts: 121

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

I had Arch running on my EEE 1000H with GNOME and compiz effects a-plenty.

Occasionally there'd be a small jitter in the compiz effects, but other than that, I can't really see much difference in operation compared to my Core2Duo machine with beefier (but still Intel) graphics chip.

madalu

Member

Registered: 2009-05-05

Posts: 217

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Ditto here. Arch is very fast and responsive on the Asus 1000he. (Much faster, IMO, than lightweight netbook derivatives of other distros.)

dryhte

Member

Registered: 2005-06-29

Posts: 34

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Oh well worth a try Mind you, I'm talking about NVidia's ION platform (which doesn't currently exist in a netbook iirc)

kgas

Member

From: Qatar

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 718

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Arch is running fine in Dell Mini 9 and AAO (a separate thread is there)

Nezmer

Member

Registered: 2008-10-24

Posts: 559

Website

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Oh well worth a try Mind you, I'm talking about NVidia's ION platform (which doesn't currently exist in a netbook iirc)

If you're asking about hardware support , Arch supports whatever Linux supports .

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loudtiger

Member

Registered: 2009-01-08

Posts: 68

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Oh well worth a try Mind you, I'm talking about NVidia's ION platform (which doesn't currently exist in a netbook iirc)

lenovo s12 : )

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

I have a system using the Intel Poulsbo graphics chip. No Intel X drivers work, and are probably not going to work for a while (unless you're into really crappy hacks and have a bunch of time on your hands). This includes the Acer A0751H series.

pooflinger

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2007-10-05

Posts: 53

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Oh well worth a try Mind you, I'm talking about NVidia's ION platform (which doesn't currently exist in a netbook iirc)

lenovo s12 : )

I too have the S12 Atom, and I'm experiencing one really annoying problem.

I noticed it first when I was installing arch as netinst. While downloading large files, the system would occasionally "soft-freeze". It seemed fully hung with no network transmission happening. Pressing the alt or shift (or brobably any) key would instantly unfreeze it and downloading would commence as if nothing happened.

This behaviour persisted post-install. I suspect this might be the cause of the networking problems I've been experiencing with both wireless and ethernet. See this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85602

Has anyone else seen this?

eldragon

Member

From: Buenos Aires

Registered: 2008-11-18

Posts: 1,029

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

Oh well worth a try Mind you, I'm talking about NVidia's ION platform (which doesn't currently exist in a netbook iirc)

If you're asking about hardware support , Arch supports whatever Linux supports .

not quite... only i686 and X86_64 platforms

jocheem67

Member

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 243

Re: How well would ArchLinux do on the average Atom system?

No problems here on an Asus1005-HA-H
Only attention needed towards the wireless which is choppy ( ath9k ). Solved with ndiswrapper though..
Still have to configure the mic for skype, there's some issues there...

Speed compared to Ubuntu UNR is significant, let alone win xp or 7..