Gentoo on the U100

I finally got gentoo to install on the MSI Wind U100.

First i tried the minimal install cd (usb stick) which worked great, but then when it came to fetching the stage3 tar ball & portage snapshots... & kernel... it couldnt because it had not networking drivers... (both wired & wireless were not working )

so i downloaded the livecd install & made a bootable usb of it. it booted, but after it set the clock, it would come with a message... something about the delta...

Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -338627902 ns)

if wait about 5 minutes it continues to boot the livecd...

gdm fails to start up becasue of a the video driver...

just do nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the driver to vesa, then killall gdm, then gdm and you should have the gui XFCE.

i clicked on GUI installer, made my partitions...
100M ext2 /boot
10G ext3 /
44G ext3 /home
1.5G swap

continued with the instillation... which failed near to where the end of the install should be...
grub could not list all the kernels in /boot... here is the bug...
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230998
after reading that, i mounted / and /boot, copied the "gentoo" kernel that was on the livecd to boot, then manually installed grub & wrote a grub.conf.

then i added myself as a normal user... useradd...
unmounted everything... & here is the result


gentoo boots on natively on the MSI Wind U100!

My next step would be to:

1. get the installer to install more packaged
2. get the networking sorted out... im guessing it will be easier to get the wired interface to work...

i just cant believe that there was not default wired driver in that livecd kernel...
the drivers are all here... http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=driver&maincat_no=135&prod_no=1474 im just going to have to fiddle with it when i get more time.

MSI Wind U100 - Gentoo LiveUSB boot

I recieved my MSI Wind U100 on Wednesday the 8th of October & was smiling the whole way home...

I wanted the Linux version, but it came with less impressive hardware, so i went for the Windows XP Home version for the sole purpose of the extra 512MB ram, better web cam & Blue Tooth.
Here you can see it next to my HP DV9607US currently running Kubuntu 8.04 64bit - also due for gentoo in the December holidays.

The keyboard takes a bit of getting used to. I'm used to a full size keyboard. & a 17" screen :)



Video shows XP running. Here is what i changed:

1. Uninstalled MS Office 2007 (it was a trial version i think?)
2. Installed OpenOffice
3. Removed Norton
4. Installed Avast (Home Free version) - WinClamAV would have been just as good

Then i de-flowered the "Designed for Windows XP Home" Badge :D

Rebooted with the gentoo 2008.0 LiveUSB ( http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml ) - Press F11 repeatedly at boot time to choose the boot menu, then select the USB key. It would also probably have worked with a SD card or something similar. I used the minimal iso. Its 80MB.