ASUS releases Eee SDK, open source continues to be open

Word on the street is that ASUS has joined the fray and released an SDK for its Eee line. According to the folks over at Eee Site, the Xandros-based software package is available for download as a 1.2GB disk image. Of course, since the mini-laptop's Linux-based OS is... well, Linux, it doesn't really seem like an SDK would be necessary. Could it be that the company is just jumping on the development bandwagon, which has gone from obscure hacker-geek territory to front page Apple news? Perhaps, but it's still nice to see developers getting some attention for once. Hit the read link to get your downloads -- and apps -- started.

[Via Eee Site]

[RijilV @ Mar 26th 2008 11:11AM]

having an sdk would still be useful. perhaps not all developers have a Linux install, and even if they do having all of the correct libraries and versions of everything all conveniently bundled up together sure does make things much easier.

[Flashpoint @ Mar 26th 2008 11:18AM]

i just wanna play Crysis on it.

[Zeus.:God @ Mar 26th 2008 11:19AM]

You know what? I'm going to call you a noob.

Get ready... Here it comes!

You're a- wait; now that I think about it, Crysis running on an Eee would be pretty cool...

[emailtabs @ Mar 26th 2008 11:36AM]

Oooh that would be nice.
I still haven'e managed to get TA up and running on mine yet.

Hopefully someone out there has the info/brains/geekiness to sort out a proper graphics driver for it. i'm running a modified intel driver and i can't get the touchscreen to wake up after standby.

tempting to get the sdk down just for the experience. -- I'll probably kill me eee though

[fgpx78 @ Mar 26th 2008 11:48AM]

And then...on a 800x448 screen (or something like that) Crysis would play well with just a low ranked video card :D

[OneLove @ Mar 26th 2008 12:04PM]

Only Zeus.:God's opinions matter! Hes the kind of person who hacks in call of duty 4 and still thinks he is good at the game. lol.

[John Stracke @ Mar 26th 2008 11:27AM]

I decided to grab it just to see what's in it. Turns out their servers are *slow*. Of their 5 servers (US, Europe, China, Japan, and "Global"), the best speed I could get was something like 30KB/s, which means it'd take over a day to pull down that 1.2GB. These guys need to invest in some Amazon S3.

[Rex @ Mar 26th 2008 1:09PM]

Torrent would also be a good solution considering that many Linux Distros are also released that way.

[John Stracke @ Mar 26th 2008 1:15PM]

Wouldn't help me; I'm stuck on Comcast.

[phanbouy @ Mar 26th 2008 7:31PM]

use the RC4 encryption option thru Azureus

[John Stracke @ Mar 26th 2008 9:26PM]

@phanbouy: Thanks, that worked.

[John Stracke @ Mar 26th 2008 10:30PM]

OK, I've got it (the server sped up after 5:00 or so). It's an RAR file which contains an ISO image. (I'm not sure why they didn't just ship the ISO itself; putting it into RAR saved a whopping 17M, or 1.3%, and RAR support isn't easy to find on Linux. Zip would've been OK.) And, yeah, the ISO image is a LiveCD of Xandros, including some development tools (e.g., gcc, Eclipse, the Linux kernel source, QT Designer). Oh, and unrar, which is getting pretty recursive.

I haven't booted it yet, though; it's late, and I don't feel like rebooting my machine. I'll feed it to qemu in the morning.

[John Stracke @ Mar 27th 2008 11:46AM]

OK, I've got it running, and, yeah, it's just a stock Xandros distribution with a few development tools and a 48-page PDF on developing for the Eee. They didn't even bother to add icons for the development tools to the desktop or the panel; they're buried in the menus as if this were a general-purpose distro.

I wonder if they realize that distributing Xandros means they're obligated to provide source for all its GPL components?

[luzzio @ Mar 26th 2008 11:30AM]

Do you have to buy an EEE pc to use the SDK?

[Paris @ Mar 26th 2008 11:31AM]

I don't get this. Is this just a Xandros installation image for desktops bundled with eclipse?

[cmonkey @ Mar 26th 2008 11:42AM]

It's probably just a rar'ed tarball of the sources to stay GPL compliant.

[hypereric @ Mar 26th 2008 11:43AM]

A little off topic, but anybody know where I can get a LCD screen that small with a VGA connector that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg (everything I have found with google costs an arm and a leg because people want them in their cars). It's for a robotics project, so please help a brother-nerd out!

[Stevo @ Mar 26th 2008 11:48AM]

Get an EeePC....

[packetsniffer @ Mar 26th 2008 11:57AM]

@Stevo
The LCD screen on the EeePC -- and every other device with an integrated LCD screen -- doesn't have a VGA connector...

The only VGA connector available is an *output* from the integrated video card.

[JB87 @ Mar 26th 2008 12:23PM]

The Sony "official" PSOne LCD screen can be wired for a VGA connector (needs composite sync input) with no extra circuitry, they aren't terribly expensive if you go through ebay or similar.

[hypereric @ Mar 26th 2008 12:35PM]

@Stevo:

While I appreciate your attempt to help me, a quick search will reveal that the Eee is more expensive then a 7" standalone VGA controller & connector-equipped monitor, which they themselves are more expensive then standalone 19" VGA controller and connector-equipped monitors.

And then there is the teensy tiny problem of: is the VGA controller mounted onto the MB, or does it sit behind the screen... a serious question because having to diconnect the screen from the lappie portion might give me just a LCD panel with no controller (7" LCD panel *alone* price: around $11 wholesale). To which I would then have to add a controller and a VGA port... the former is no small electronics feat.

[Mace Moneta @ Mar 26th 2008 11:48AM]

Doesn't every major Linux distribution include a full development environment for almost every programming language in existence? It may not be installed by default, but getting it is trivial. On Fedora, for example:

yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

This seems like a PR thing to me, a "Me Too!" for journalists that really can't get their heads around the whole Linux thing.

[Phantom @ Mar 26th 2008 12:15PM]

Only waiting for 3G broadband.

[hypereric @ Mar 26th 2008 12:45PM]

@JB87:

Thanks, Ive been looking at portable gaming screens (Intec, Mojoplay, etc) as well... they all have pretty crappy image quality, but their cheap. I was not aware you could go VGA --> composite/s-video(?) W/o a graphics card that already has such outputs, of course(?) I thought I would need a source converter, which would be too bulky.

[JB87 @ Mar 26th 2008 3:01PM]

You can't do direct vga -> composite/s-video, but that specific screen has pins on the circuit board that can be wired to a vga connector. It's popular with homebrewers apparently, I've seen it modded into several PC cases.

[Dan @ Mar 26th 2008 3:47PM]

If I recall correctly, the Xandros distro is open source. However, there are some bundled apps that aren't open source, such as the voice command. That was a fantastic little app, but without an SDK or source, it's not really possible to work with it.

Even still, the EeePC has a very small form factor for a full fledged PC, and I know of quite a few apps that don't play nice with the screen. If an SDK makes for easy gui apps that properly work with the small screen, I'd call that a win.

[Baz @ Mar 27th 2008 8:41AM]

Well, given that ASUS has been terrible so far in producing stable updates and patches and in creating any sort of a useful repo of software (thus requiring eeePC users to hack their OS so that they can get into other repos - and then pray the software doesn't brick their device), 'opening up' their OS to software developers can't be a bad thing.

Rather like Apple and their iPhone/Touch - why build useful software when the user will pick up our devices with any old crap on them anyway.....