[Debian-eeepc-devel] Intel Atom Processor

[Steffen Moeller]

Dear Ben and dear Jose,



Ben Armstrong wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:09:57 +0200
> Steffen Moeller <steffen_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
>> The EeePCs are sold throughout large resellers (Saturn, Staples, ...) in Germany and at least until the new ones get out they all ship with
>> Debian - perfectly visible to every potential customer passing by. I have not seen Debian or Linux on any product before in these shops. So, I
>> really think that for the perception of Debian (and Linux at large) it would be good if there was some initiative that gives Debian on these
>> machines some backup.
> 
> You are aware of http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC I hope?  (Aha, I
> see it has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, good.)
many thanks for your reply. Your web sites are indeed what I wanted to see,
possibly a bit too far away from John Doe who just bought such a machine
as a Newbie Linux user, but nevertheless, I particularly liked the
status page on http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Status.

Your site has no visibility to anyone in the shop who needs to make an
informed decision about whether taking the risk to go for the XP route
(which that guy probably knows well) and the Linux route (which saves some
cash but gives you the impression to be alone). Sales of the Linux version
are reportedly going sufficiently well to keep it in the shop, but they
are selling far more Windows machines.


> We take a very practical, bottom-up approach.  Get Debian working well
> on one platform, the Eee PC.  Then make things as general as possible
> and support it as quickly as possible in Debian itself.  I think if you
> start top down: "let's tackle the problem of making Debian well
> supported on this whole class of systems", a laudable goal, mind you,
> then you will very quickly bog down in the execution unless you have
> resources that go beyond what we currently have in the debian-eeepc
> project.
> 
> So what do you think you could do particularly with regards to the Eee
> to see it on these systems in shops?  We've talked a bit to Asus and
> they've even assigned some people to talk to Debian about development
> for the Eee.  But I'm afraid so far our focus has been very much on
> just getting Lenny out the door with solid support for the Eee and not
> so much on these bigger-picture issues.


I'll translate that status page to German tonight since I liked it. Also
will I then use some scribus or LaTeX magic to transform that page into
a flyer that, if you agree to it, I will then carry to the local stores
and just see what they say. Those stores will fight a lot not give the
impression that they would do support themselves, so I need to think about
the right wording here. I'll do that both in English and German, should
not be too hard.

Best,

Steffen