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Did anybody expect anything else? It's not like Asus is some small company that can ignore licenses and be mostly ignored. I doubt this was more than a simple mistake on Asus side.

It wasn't even that, it was just a matter of time. But some people are rather fast at burning someone then actually thinking.

Its been awhile since I've seen you post around here Moulinneuf, I'm sure everyone has missed thoughtful and insightful dialog like

"Your a **BSD** , you have no credibility at all"

"2) **You** are fast at burning someone. Other's like me just reply in kind , to your intelligence lacking insulting and unrealistic and fabricated reality that is completely unrealistic."

"3) Your a liar , traitor , coward and incompetent. "

"I apparently , also need to actually point to you and take you by your childish hands , that Opening and freeing the source code will enable BSD and other OS to be run properly and correctly on this device and the hardware it's made of."

In a single post, you managed to break rules 1-4 and rule 6 of the OSNews forum rules (http://www4.osnews.com/docs/rules). I have to admit, I do love reading your posts though, especially the wild, barely comprehensible meltdowns about BSD.

Edited 2007-11-28 17:17 UTC

haha. Oops.
Great news.

Yep. And that's good.

now everybody who was bashing them, can crawl back into their holes.

Well, actually - their website still sucks as I mentioned in the previous article comments. It's still difficult to find recent drivers and BIOS updates for some products.

I'm also dreading a call to ASUS to resolve my recent hardware problem on a barebones box that just died. I suspect it will be more productive for me to simply buy a new PSU and/or motherboard and hope that it resolves my "dead machine"... because last time I contacted their support I got the runaround, finally got an RMA # to send them my motherboard, they proceeded to send it back without fixing it, and then asked me if I wanted to pay to ship it to them again to fix it.

So, I feel entitled (as a dissatisfied customer) to continue bashing ASUS for their crappy website and lackluster support - thank you very much.

edit: added a missing word.

Edited 2007-11-27 23:09

Great! So I can get one and install a superior OS! ;D

If u wait a bit longer, u should be able to buy one with XP already installed.

Not much of an upside, but some people do, believe it or not, prefer and LIKE windows xp.

If I had one, I'd probably leave the *nix on it for a bit then install windows just so some of my more oft used apps would run without any hackery.

For people that use applications that are only available on Windows, Linux is less capable. Part of the attraction of this particular product for me is being able to edit and mix audio and program drums and soft synths. I can't do that in Linux with the (superior) applications I use.

A 900Mhz Pentium M-based Celeron is fast enough to handle light duties for audio while on a train ride.

Sadly, Linux audio tools are still far behind what's available for XP and OSX.

Just one example. I could go on......

Point being is there is a time and place for Windows, at least for now.

jeez, modded to 0 already. Someone can't take a joke.

You all did notice the smiley right? It was SARCASM.

Or I'm modded down for being offtopic... In which case, mod away.

I thought XP was sort of on the way out of being sold to distributers because vista was out?

Well, that would make it imposssssible to run windows on the Eeee then, for sure.

I thought XP was sort of on the way out of being sold to distributers because vista was out?

Well, that would make it imposssssible to run windows on the Eeee then, for sure.

Not yet. It was previously Jan. '08 for the cut off to OEMs, but that has since been extended to June '08. Thank God for that!

yeah, people put up a huge fuss over it because they all hate Vista So MS decided to extend support.

Exactly. I was all hyped up and ready to go out and buy two of these things, until they doubled the price. At the current price of these things, it's a bit ridiculous.

The default window manager is IceWM, customised to fit the screen with a tabbed interface.

The full set of KDE libs are installed, though, as most of the apps are KDE apps. All you have to do is install kcmserver and kicker via apt-get and modify the X startup scripts to get a full KDE desktop, though.

The madwifi project is dual-licensed under GPL/BSD, so Asus is not obligated to provide corresponding source code for their modified ath_pci driver. For the time being, the binary driver that ships with the eeePC is the only way to get the wireless chipset to function under other Linux distributions.

Maybe if a lot of eeePC users ask nicely, Asus will release the source. But under the BSD, the distributor ultimately has the legal power.

if its under the bsd license... how are they able to link it with the kernel legally?

Because the 2-clause BSD licence (also known as the modified BSD licence) is compatible with GPL?

That only means you can put BSD code in the kernel or in Linux drivers. But once the code is there only the GPL applies. You can't ship a binary driver and refuse to publish the source because it's dual GPL/BSD licensed.

The atheros sources they use are probably available in the zip-file on their site or from xandros though.

Edited 2007-11-28 08:55

There are two links: the proprietary HAL to GPL/BSD driver and the resulting object to the kernel. How the licensing works depends on whether the distributor or the user performs each of these link steps. The only way the driver can be distributed under the GPL is if the user does both links. If the distributor does the first link, then the result may only be distributed under the BSD, and the user must perform the second link. The distributor cannot ship a completely linked kernel module as this is a violation of the GPL.

I'm not familiar with how Asus handles this situation. It could be as simple as automatically running a script on first boot. But they could be violating the GPL if they aren't doing something to cause the linking to become the action of the user rather than of the distributor.

yeah but if they build it and distribute its not exactly a separate work, as it "links" with the kernel, which btw, is GPL.

also, if they havent released the source for modified madwifi driver, this just goes to show how asus are complete moron mongers, as they simply do the bare minimum, even though its completely a disservice to the customer, and wouldnt hurt them in any way to do.

Didnt they just in this answer to community mentioned that if customers feel that something is missing, they should email Asus and ask for it?


Asus isn't trying to rip anybody off, it's just that they dont have a clue about the software side as they have outsourced it to Xandros.