I have a lime green EeePC that I bought to toy around with. I was curious about this sub-$500 laptop.
The EeePC is made by Asus. It is a tiny laptop with minimal specs. I was interested in it as a cheap appliance for some tasks we do here in the office.
I bought my EeePC from ZipZoomFly, one of my favorite vendors for PC hardware. I paid less than $300 for it. The software that is included provides basic functionality but I wanted to customize it.
After attempting an install with CentOS 5, I gave up on building a custom netboot image and just went with Fedora Core 9. I had to use 9 as it has built in support for the Atheros ethernet card. On FC9, I was able to PXEBoot and install the OS over the network.
I did a network install selecting a kickstart file with the minimal options.
#Package install information
%packages --nobase
wget
%post
I then used wget to load up other packages. I had no problems with getting FC 9 working on the system. I wanted a minimal install because after formatting there is only about 1.4GB of usable space.
We mainly needed SSH, GnuPG, and a couple of other tools on the system. Once I got yum installed, these were easy to get going. We mainly use this as a gateway system between some sub-networks in our office and data center.
One reason I liked the EeePC is the solid-state drive. Solid state drives are not subject to the same physical issues as older disks since there are no platters whipping around at 7200 plus RPMs.
Also, the thing is tiny, includes a battery and a screen. Right now the box running our system is a tower with no screen. It is attached to a UPS to keep in running in case of a power failure. So the EeePC will save a ton of space and eliminate the need to hook up a console when there is an issue.
We've just started using it for some tasks this week, but overall I am happy with it. However, the keyboard is nearly unusable for anyone with fat thumbs like me. I thought my ThinkPad x60 had a small keyboard, but the EeePC makes the x60's keyboard look like a 40 acre farm.
Fortunately, the EeePC comes with 3 USB ports so you can plugin a full size keyboard.
I would not consider an EeePC a replacement for a normal linux laptop but since you can easily dump in Fedora Linux on it, there are a lot of options. For example, you could load it up with IPCop and have a very small and inexpensive firewall and IPS system.
