[Debian-eeepc-devel] Help cleanup wiki: standard install, elantech, synaptics, etc.

[Ben Armstrong]

Our wiki at http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC is riddled with out of
date & misleading info.  I am making a pass at cleaning some of it up
today. I have just eviscerated from
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/InstallUsingStandardInstaller
any out-of-date info regarding atl2 / atl1e.  To the best of my
knowledge, the Lenny installer release candidate should work fine for
all models installing over ethernet without installing any extra
packages because it detects and installs the appropriate modules now.
Please correct me if I am in error.

Also, there is a bit of confusion over Elantech vs. Synaptics.  On the
one hand, we have recently updated the
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Models table based on info provided
by Matty from Xandros.  He has the specs for all models and has access
to all Eee hardware, so I take this info as authoritative.  However,
many of our other pages have inconsistencies, such as claiming that
models 901 or 900 have Elantech.  For instance,
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Configure talks vaguely about
the "900 and 1000 series" (what does that mean? is that supposed to
encompass all models starting 9xx and 1xxx?)

On http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/ElantechTouchpad it
mentions "input-events reports ...".  I see that input-events is a part
of the input-utils package.  In fact, that package appears to provide a
more useful tool, lsinput, that doesn't require you to know which
device to query.  For example, on my model 701 on the 2.6.28-rc8 kernel
it reports:

/dev/input/event10
   bustype : BUS_I8042
   vendor  : 0x2
   product : 0x7
   version : 433
   name    : "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
   phys    : "isa0060/serio1/input0"
   bits ev : EV_SYN EV_KEY EV_ABS

So clearly it has a Synaptics touchpad.  Would owners of various models
please help me sort this out?  Does our table on /Models jive with
whatever lsinput reports on your model (especially using the standard
Lenny/Sid kernel, linux-image-2.6.26-1-686, version 2.6.26-12).

And finally, how do the
packages at http://alioth.debian.org/~dsalt-guest/eee/ apply to the
Elantech?  Why, if they are Elantech packages, are they called
-synaptics?  And do these differ from Eric's Elantech package provided
here? 

http://git.debian.org/?p=debian-eeepc/elantech.git;a=summary

I need to make it perfectly clear what is the *recommended* approach
for each model since there are so many different versions of things
floating around.  Clearly, anything for the 2.6.26 kernel in Lenny
should be recommended and the rest de-emphasized.  As it stands now,
people are too likely to be led off in the wrong direction.

Thanks,
Ben