- VIA Eden ESP Samuel 2 processor 600 MHz
- for exact details have a look at VIA's page
Debian GNU/Linux (sid) on the VIA Epia Eden CL-6000 |
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In order to avoid a lot of patching, I decided to use a 2.6 kernel even though I hesitated because it should become a stable and reliable system. So far I'm not disappointed with my choice. Here's my config-2.6.16 in case you want to have a look at it.
First I was using the unaccelerated VESA driver of XFree86 4.3.0 without any special effort. Now I use the accelerated VIA driver. In addition, you may want to compile the DRM module. Check it out from CVS and compile it like this:
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@dri.freedesktop.org:/cvs/dri co drm cd drm/linux-2.6 make DRM_MODULES="via" mkdir -p /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm cp via.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm/. depmod -ae reboot
For this to work, you'll need the Linux kernel source available. For your reference, here is my XF86Config-4 that I use with that configuration. I use the same ~/.xsession, ~/.Xdefaults and FVWM configuration than on my Omnibook XT 1000, so please have a look there if you're interested in those files as well. The ~/.xmodmaprc on my CL 6000 is empty.
Sound was straight forward. I used the OSS driver via82cxxx_audio.ko and it "just worked" out of the box.
Alternatively, you can use ALSA which is included in the 2.6 kernel series. In order to get the modules loaded automatically and the mixer settings saved on shutdown and restored on boot, you need the packages hotplug, discover and alsa-base. Configure the relevant modules (see my kernel config file above), put the ALSA configuration file into /etc/modprobe.d/ and run update-modules afterwards. Now your ALSA sound should work.
There are two network controllers onboard: one VIA Rhine-II (VT6102) and one VIA Rhine-III (VT6105). They appear as eth0 and eth1 when the via_rhine.ko module is loaded. There was no special configuration necessary to make it work.
USB just works (that is USB 1.1 and USB 2.0). I installed discover and hotplug in order to make hot-plugging possible.
Although there is a floppy connector on the board, I have not connected one. In fact, my machine runs without any removable media whatsoever. The hard disc is the only moving part, there's not even a fan. ;-)
With ACPI you get processor and button support. Sadly, there's no thermal_zone support. This would be interesting as I use the board without a fan. Therefore I installed lm-sensors on it. As the vt1211 driver is not yet included in the 2.6.8 kernel, I had to compile it for myself.
As I didn't connect any removable media to the board, installing Debian on it was a bit "exciting". I set up a TFTP server on another box, installed netinst images on it and booted the network installation itself via the BIOS' LAN boot option. The problem was to get a Debian netinst set that was working. But it can be done.
None so far.