Ive been looking at the Eee 901 just because of its battery life (I want to use it to take notes at college), but I don't want XP or the type of linux it comes with, so is it possible to boot from USB to put a new OS onto the Eee? Input from owners of any of the Eee's is appreciated, as I doubt they changed it.
Yep it is possible. You have the choice of preserving the existing system in the read-only partition and installing a new system in the read-write unionfs partition, wiping the whole disk and starting again, or booting from USB. I chose to wipe the disk completely and start again and install Arch GNU/Linux.
Sorry to wade in late, but I have found this site in the UK that really explores the eeePC. Spend some time looking there and especially in their forumns. These guys have diagrams, schematics - everything. They do eee mods like we do full PC mods. Just a hint: http://www.eeeuser.com/ John
Wow. good tip. thanks. I dont plan on doing any modding to it for awhile though, except to maybe throw in a 2 gig stick of RAM.
Having run both on my 701, I'd go with Ubuntu if you're going to use it at school. I've got the latest version installed on the ssd and backtrack3 final on a 4gb sdhc card. Best of both worlds that way. I also really recommend the 2Gb ram upgrade if you're going to run anything other than the stock os.
I use eeeXubuntu. Ubuntu (with Gnome) is too slow on Eee. http://www.eeehacks.com/installing-eeexubuntu
