Official End of life (EOL) for i386 will be 2026-06-11.

The LTS team (they are not debian officials, but volunteers) will probably give LTS till 2028-06-30.
https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/

But you could pay Freexian to get 10 years of LTS: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended
EOL for 32-bit kernel would the be 2033-06-30.
Maybe that's an option for Devuan, depending on their pricing, we could run a donation campaign.

Nice work!

But I think it will be useless a year after the Debian 13 release, because there will be no security and compatibility updates anymore.
Sure there could be community updates, but that's not for sure and not a reliable source, because you don't know how long someone is willing to offer non-paid support.

Debians politics indicates only one thing imo: it's a sinking ship, supported only by yeasayers and (traumatized) people, who are not accepting the reality of all the bad things that happen to the whole project since many years.

A genuine Devuan kernel would be nice, I agree.
It would make Devuan more independent from Debian and their dumb decisions like the drop of 32-bit kernels.

For myself I use Linux-libre since years.
It's the upstream kernel but all unfree code and all BLOBs are removed.
Works perfectly fine ever since.
I use the LTS version, so you don't get tons of updates all the time.

There is an offical .deb-Repository, with support for a lot of CPU architectures, including 32-bit x86:
https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/l … sh.en.html

Ok done.

Happy flashing!

Method 2: Using an external CDROM drive connected via USB (my favorite)

Works with the following Eee PC models:
* 700 (2G surf)
* 900A

Works __not__ with the following Eee PC models:
* 1201N

- Download the BIOS ROM file, rename it to Modelname_here.ROM and burn it to a data CD (__not__ DVD!)
- I used for burning xfburn.
- Connect the external CDROM drive via USB and insert the disc.
- After Splashscreen appears press and hold Alt and then press and then hold F2.
- EZ Flash will do the flash automatically.

Method 3: Messing arround with partitioning an USB stick or an SD card with small partitions, like 32mb and such, using FAT16 for it and cylinders instead of sectors to allocate the partitioning size.

Read this to mess arround with it if you like to (it's where I started from weeks ago):
https://www.reddit.com/r/EeePC/comments … us_eee_pc/

I am pretty sure, that the HowTo I described in the first post is exactly this, only that dd write the FreeDOS image with all formating that is needed just in the correct way.
I tested the reddit suggesstions, with cfdisk, gnome-disks, gparted...
I really made several attempts with different combinations of the suggessted techniques using different USB flash drives and SD cards with different storage capacity.

I got some combinations to work on the 900A.
One example:
- 4 GB SD-Card with to partitions:
1. Partition: 32 MB FAT16.
2. Partition: remaining storage as Ext4 (I did that to have EZ Flash ignore it, because I thought it can not reconize it and would threat it as non-existent, what is probably the case. Leaving the reamining space unformatted did not work).
- Copy the Modelname_here.ROM to the 32 MB FAT16 partition and run EZ Flash.

But for me the easiest way was to burn the ROM to a data CD and run EZ Flash and if that not works copying it to a FreeDOSLite partition and run EZ Flash.

Method 4: Using AFUDOS (good for backup your BIOS!)
- Copy an AFUDOS.exe to a FreeDOSLite partition.
- Start FreeDOSLITE.
- Set language.
- Then break up the installation (it will ask you after choosing language, choose "No...foobar").
- You will get a FreeDOS shell
- Run AFUDOS by typing:

AFUDOS /Some_commandSome_file

It knows two commands:

1. For backup up the actual BIOS (highly recommended!)

AFUDOS.EXE /oBACKUP-BIOS-Eee-PC-Modelname.ROM

(You can choose whatever filename you want, but better be precise).

2. For flashing a new BIOS ROM:

AFUDOS.EXE /iModelname_here.ROM

That's it.

Method 5: Using Bupdater
!!! Use Bupdater at your own risk !!!!
Only tried it once and it failed for me.
On the 1201N I couldn't get any of the methods this HowTo listed to work (except the FreeDOS + EZ Flash method described in the first post of this thread, but I only found that out after I messed arround with all other methods, described in the second post here).

The Bupdater tool can be found here for example:
https://www.asus.com/supportonly/eee%20 … desk_bios/
under Tab: Driver & Tools -> Section: Driver & Tools -> Tab: Driver & Tools
(What idiot came up with that structure and more important: is someone paying that idiot for this?)
It is downloadable from the vendor page of a specific Eee PC model, in this case the Eee PC 1201N, but maybe it could work for other Eee PCs too (I saw some videos on youtube where people flashing different Eee PC models with that tool).

You also have to run it from FreeDOSLite and it has the same syntax as AFUDOS (its probably the successor of AFUDOS).
It gives you some curses interface and everything runs automatically, but for me it errors after the write started.
I waited for half an hour and after that I couldn't turn the Eee PC off.
So I pulled out the AC connector and the battery.
I was ready for a bricked device but it just started normal.
But it did not flash the new BIOS.
!!! Use Bupdater at your own risk !!!!

Good reply einpoklum.

But an official reply would be nice, since the question from stopAI was posted two weeks ago.

What did you fear? Dataloss? If so do redundant backups!

igozwx wrote:

So that is the problem!
wtf?!

firefox became poetterware 8 years ago as it seems:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/5 … easenotes/

Update:
Today I removed plymouth from the computer.
After that grub and intiramfs were updated.
I did a reboot.
Since then the layout is eu everywhere, also in the decryption screen.
So of course the issue I described has (probably) nothing to do with plymouth, but with the initramfs and grub.
So updating them after running the steps in the first post should keep those settings permanently.

On my productive system I got the following messages after the reboot:

CHKBOOT ALERT!

Changes have been detected in your boot files!
The following list of files contained in have changed since the last time this script was run (filename sha512):
List of changed files on date_and_time_here:

338c338
< ./grub/grub.cfg foobar_with_a_lot_of_numbers
---
> ./grub/grub.cfg foobar_with_a_lot_of_numbers

This notification will continue to appear until you either run "chkboot" again as root or restart your computer

I then log in as root and runned chkboot.
After that the message not pop up when i changed the tty.

The next day i rebooted the computer and the eu layout was gone on the tty.
I runned the process again and after a reboot I did not get that "CHKBOOT ALERT" and eu was working again.

Any clues?

Next problem: the eu layout is not active in the decryption screen before boot. Hot to fix that?

(This How To! changed to a How To? as it seems :/)

@stopAI: I think it will be used to pay the devs. They deserve it.