ASUS Eee Linux PC dumps on Windows

David M Williams
Monday, 07 April 2008 05:46

Opinion and Analysis

Micro Linux laptop maker, ASUS, have released an open source software developer’s kit – or SDK – for their popular ultraportable, the Eee. Now the Eee is yours to command. Heck, you don’t even need an Eee; the SDK includes a VMWare image dump letting Windows users see just what all the fuss is about. Here’s how to do it. Technically, the software development kit is for ASUS’ Xandros derivatives, but in practice this is only the Eee at this time. The kit includes software and documentation including necessary tools and libraries, allowing users to write their own applications which run on the Launcher – otherwise known as “Simple mode” on the ASUS Eee.

Nicely, there’s a VMWare image too. This means you can emulate the Eee within a VMWare virtual machine. You can do this on a Linux host or even a Windows one, too, if you wish. Or any other platform where VMWare is available. So, that’s right, you can run the ASUS Eee Linux PC image dump on Windows.

ASUS have uploaded the SDK to SourceForge and you can download it from there. It’s a great move by ASUS to host the project on SourceForge; this demonstrates an understanding of and commitment to the open source ideals of Linux, but also means that SourceForge’s range of features is available. This includes project forums, and already at the time of writing 62 bugs are listed in the bug forum. These have actually all, so far, been listed by ASUS themselves and not end users of the SDK – although any SourceForge user can contribute. It’s interesting to see ASUS using SourceForge’s facilities to manage the project and not simply use it as a file repository.

The SDK is actually not a single application but is an entire environment with a rich suite of development applications and tools. The platform used is the Xandros Desktop – Open Circulation Edition, version 4.5. Note this means you can’t actually load the development environment onto an Eee without blowing away what you have – again, it’s not purely an application, or even a set of applications, you can load on top of an existing system. Instead, it’s a replacement operating system with all the tools installed.

You might have a spare PC or Eee you can use, but probably the best option is to use VMWare to run the development environment in a virtual PC. This means you can run it anywhere, including as said, Windows or any other Linux platform. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t actually have an Eee!
When you install the development platform you get, in addition to Xandros Desktop Open Circulation Edition 4.5, VMWare Player, Eclipse, Qt, the Qt 4 plug-in for Eclipse, and Xandros’ Debian packaging wizard.

You cut your code in C++ or Java using Eclipse and Qt. You might already have these tools on another system; ASUS say you can write your code anywhere you have Eclipse and Qt already. Indeed, you can also package your files in the Debian format if you know how to do so and have the means available elsewhere. However, you will need the Xandros Desktop Open Circulation Edition to modify files that define where your application will go in the ASUS desktops.

Please read on to get the development environment up and running!

CONTINUED