Boys and girls, this little light-weight linux distro the acer and linpus guys have packed up for our Aspire ONE has a lot of interesting potential and features hidden inside.
I really doubt that no one with a little linux experience with the aONE and the "advanced mode hack" hasn't realized that compiz comes installed by default, only that the acer guys didn't leave us an option to activate it, but if it's there i really think it is because in a future update they will activate it or maybe it is for the future aONE with 1gig of ram...dunno, but they wouldnt install something they're not planning to give some use, as this OS lacks lot of software, just has essential stuff that's going to be used.
Ok, so enough talking, nobody tried activating it then? Well, go boys, as root go to a terminal and type compiz-manager and vualá! you got compiz working...the cube (you can see the fedora logo on top!), expose windows, transparency, wobbling windows, 4 different desktops, etc...all is configured by the CompizConfig Settings Manager in the advanced menu. Beat that MacOSX :-D !!
Strange behaviours encountered:
-you can loose the acer-search-desktop, but only happened to me once, you can reboot (will have to run compiz again though) and it will reappear or you can just click on run program and execute it again, though happened to me that with compiz running it popped up in a different location on desktop.
-when you activate compiz the default "windows-xp like" window manager changes to a reddish style, also can happen that the window square surrounding windows just disappears, but normally doesn't happen. everything comes back as normal when you restart or you can just kill (end task) applications with the task manager that opens like in windows with ctrl+alt+del(supr)...though this way it may leave the desktop corrupted or maybe not responding properly...i prefer restarting, its only 15 seconds
-well, for all of you that don't know, compiz is an opengl based window manager so it needs proper opengl graphics accelerating drivers working. if compiz works drivers have to be installed i thought (people in the forum were thinking maybe not because of poor graphics behaviour in games or videos). This little OS toy (more than that ;-) as we can see) has Tungsten Graphics OpenGL drivers installed for Intel GMA950 (verified twice as its seen in the opengl config window of google earth i installed...yep, and working, though eating more than 100mb ram...need more ram :-S )....with this info being sayed i want to remind people that the last time i tried on another laptop these drivers (tungsten makes opensource opengl drivers for intel) with compiz working i had to desactivate compiz before playing videos as it wouldnt manage both things at a time...you would see black videos with sound (intels opensource drivers are not as good as closedsource nvidia or ati drivers...oh well). But i managed to play 3d quake-type fps games...so if with this machine we cant do intensive 3d things i think its due to the shitty bios settings that only lets us share 8mb of ram for the video card, thats shit, so you can have a computer with very good processor or lots of ram but if your video card has 8mb you're going nowhere...lets see what people can tweak.
Hope all of this helped, i am really lazy to upload some screenshots, i am never on forums so actually i dont know how to...i know how to make the screenshots though, so if i can help ill do it. I really think that with a small screen having compiz its like a veeery big improvement productivity-wise and once you use it you can't live without it. For all of you out there wanting to learn and use this machine further and deeper more than what acer wanted us to, i really recommend 1gig more of ram as you guys will use 3d, more heavy apps, compiz, etc...and keeping this OS as its very well optimized (much better than eee's xandros (till better optimized aONE distros come available in future)...lets all tweak together!
Peace and sorry for my english as i'm from Spain.
Guillermo. :mrgreen:
I really doubt that no one with a little linux experience with the aONE and the "advanced mode hack" hasn't realized that compiz comes installed by default, only that the acer guys didn't leave us an option to activate it, but if it's there i really think it is because in a future update they will activate it or maybe it is for the future aONE with 1gig of ram...dunno, but they wouldnt install something they're not planning to give some use, as this OS lacks lot of software, just has essential stuff that's going to be used.
Ok, so enough talking, nobody tried activating it then? Well, go boys, as root go to a terminal and type compiz-manager and vualá! you got compiz working...the cube (you can see the fedora logo on top!), expose windows, transparency, wobbling windows, 4 different desktops, etc...all is configured by the CompizConfig Settings Manager in the advanced menu. Beat that MacOSX :-D !!
Strange behaviours encountered:
-you can loose the acer-search-desktop, but only happened to me once, you can reboot (will have to run compiz again though) and it will reappear or you can just click on run program and execute it again, though happened to me that with compiz running it popped up in a different location on desktop.
-when you activate compiz the default "windows-xp like" window manager changes to a reddish style, also can happen that the window square surrounding windows just disappears, but normally doesn't happen. everything comes back as normal when you restart or you can just kill (end task) applications with the task manager that opens like in windows with ctrl+alt+del(supr)...though this way it may leave the desktop corrupted or maybe not responding properly...i prefer restarting, its only 15 seconds
-well, for all of you that don't know, compiz is an opengl based window manager so it needs proper opengl graphics accelerating drivers working. if compiz works drivers have to be installed i thought (people in the forum were thinking maybe not because of poor graphics behaviour in games or videos). This little OS toy (more than that ;-) as we can see) has Tungsten Graphics OpenGL drivers installed for Intel GMA950 (verified twice as its seen in the opengl config window of google earth i installed...yep, and working, though eating more than 100mb ram...need more ram :-S )....with this info being sayed i want to remind people that the last time i tried on another laptop these drivers (tungsten makes opensource opengl drivers for intel) with compiz working i had to desactivate compiz before playing videos as it wouldnt manage both things at a time...you would see black videos with sound (intels opensource drivers are not as good as closedsource nvidia or ati drivers...oh well). But i managed to play 3d quake-type fps games...so if with this machine we cant do intensive 3d things i think its due to the shitty bios settings that only lets us share 8mb of ram for the video card, thats shit, so you can have a computer with very good processor or lots of ram but if your video card has 8mb you're going nowhere...lets see what people can tweak.
Hope all of this helped, i am really lazy to upload some screenshots, i am never on forums so actually i dont know how to...i know how to make the screenshots though, so if i can help ill do it. I really think that with a small screen having compiz its like a veeery big improvement productivity-wise and once you use it you can't live without it. For all of you out there wanting to learn and use this machine further and deeper more than what acer wanted us to, i really recommend 1gig more of ram as you guys will use 3d, more heavy apps, compiz, etc...and keeping this OS as its very well optimized (much better than eee's xandros (till better optimized aONE distros come available in future)...lets all tweak together!
Peace and sorry for my english as i'm from Spain.
Guillermo. :mrgreen:
