Ubuntu on an Asus EEE PC 4G (701)
I'm a new user to Ubuntu, but having installed it on my main laptop I found that I really like the UI and the usability.
I have an Asus eee PC 4G that's been sitting spare for a few years now and would love to be able to get Ubuntu installed on it but I'm unsure on what distro to pick for it as when I tried with the same version I put on my main laptop it came up with a CPU compatibility error.
So any help is really appreciated.
Solution 1:
For the benefit of other nostalgic owners of the (old but still cute) Eee PC.
After some fight, today (2018/12/8) I managed to install Lubuntu 12-04 on my Eee PC 4G, portuguese keyboard and all.
What I learned:
The oficial repository seems to be broken but this mirror is up: https://phillw.net/isos/lubuntu/precise/
The alternate installers of versions 16.04 and 12.04 won't install.
The desktop versions of 14-04 and 16.04 won't work al all.
The desktop installer of 12.04 works but when trying to install complains about the SDD being smaller than 4.4GB. The trick to overcome this was to plug in a pendrive with more than 4.4GB and then it installed by default on the internal SDD with 1GB still to spare.
Solution 2:
So for whatever reason I found myself looking for a Linux distribution for the Asus Eee PC 4G (701) today, in 2019 :D
Right now I am running BunsenLabs Linux Helium on it, from image bl-Helium-4-i386.iso. For installation troubleshooting, see my other answer. This distro is based on Debian 9, so pretty close to a recent Ubuntu. It runs nicely, with most of the Fn keyboard shortcuts etc. working out of the box, and still is very compact (~120 MiB main memory usage after start). Also, since it's Debian based, the .deb packaging system and package names etc. are all the same as in Ubuntu, and you can even add packages from Ubuntu repositories.
About the CPU incompatibility issue
My first guess was that you might need a non-PAE kernel for this computer. PAE is "physical address extension", allowing a 32-bit processor to access main memory beyond 4 GiB. Normal Ubuntu / Lubuntu boot options in current releases fail to start the Linux kernel on non-PAE CPUs. The Eee PC 4G (701) uses a CPU "Intel Celeron M Processor ULV 353", which supports 32-bit Physical Address Extension (PAE), according to the specs. So it turns out that it is not necessary to utilize a non-PAE distribution. I installed a regular (PAE based) kernel, and it runs just fine.
So I am not sure what causes the "CPU incompatibility" issue in your case. Side note: Though I did not need it for this model of computer, some CPUs falsely advertise that they don't support PAE when in fact they do. In these cases, you can force the execution of a PAE kernel with with kernel options forcepae -- forcepae (detailed instructions).
Solution 3:
Is the architecture version you tried 64bit? For a EEE PC 701 4G, you need to install the 32bit version.
You don't say what version Ubuntu you tried. I have had 10.04 running for a few years now, and have previously booted 12.04 as a LiveUSB.
Solution 4:
For the EEE 701 I have tried a lot of different versions of Ubuntu. Now I am very content with the "Peppermint ICE" version. The connections go very good and you still can add a lot of functional apps.
So try it! Let me now.