Tried installing Linux (EasyPeasy Linux, which is Ubuntu specifically for the Asus) on my Asus EEE PC Netbook, and everything works… except the one thing that’s most vital: the wireless. It connects, but can’t get enough signal quality to actually get out to the internet except once in a long while. I can’t roll back to XP (at least without a lot of work trying to create an install image on a usb stick, or buying a usb dvd drive, and yes I probably should have gone the extra mile to figure out how to set-up dual-boot instead), but it’s hard to move forward without wireless.
Reading the forum, there are people who’ve had the same problem with this particular wireless chipset on this model (Atheros AR242x) who’ve managed to fix it by installing earlier (madwifi) drivers instead of the ath5k_pci… but even though I’ve downloaded the driver source, oops, I don’t have the build-essentials package, and getting it without a net connection is a huge pain. I’m going to try going down to the basement tonight and seeing if I connecting directly to the router will let me get the package(s) I need to try the driver downgrade.
If not, I’ve got a friend who has a working version of the one-generation-prior distro on his one-generation-prior EEE PC, and we’re going to try getting the packages on his machine and transferring them, or if that doesn’t work, installing the distro he’s using (which we think has the drivers that work–at least for some people), or if that doesn’t work installing the Xandros distro that came with his PC that according to the forums has much more robust wireless drivers even though nobody much cares for the interface. At this point I could totally live with a less-than-ideal interface if I could have a working netbook again.