Aspire One Recovery - Return to Linux From XP

Hey guys, I have the Aspire One 110 i think, it has the 8gb SSD and comes running linux. I know nothing about Linux and when i got it i decided to put XP on it, knowing it would be slow and all, but at the time i wanted XP as i was familiar with it. I used a USB to IDE cable and my PC's optical drive to install XP. Now i come to restore it back to Linux, so i put in the recovery CD that came with it, i select the restore option on the screen, and then the system just hangs showing a loading bar, then the disc drive spins down, and shortly after, the caps lock LED starts blinking and it stays like that. I used DBAN to "fill the SSD with zero's", thinking that maybe Linux didn't like Windows' FAT 32 file system, and that the installer would work, but it obviously didn't. Anyone got any ideas?

 

Bumping

 

Aha! This is an easy one!

You first need a computer running Ubuntu, and a CD or ISO of the Ubunutu installation disk, which is easily downloadable, and a 1 gb or larger USB stick. Ubuntu 9.04 is a PERFECT OS for the Acer Aspire One, everything works right from the git-go without any tweaks in my experience, it is a big step forward from the prior versions of Ubuntu.

On the computer running Ubuntu, there is a utility to create a bootable USB stick to install Ubuntu. Access it from the System menu (System | Administration | USB Startup Creator). Start this program, tell it what it needs to know about finding the installation CD or ISO and USB stick) and off it goes. You get a USB stick that will now boot your Acer Aspire One into Ubuntu from the USB stick and give you the ability to install Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire One HD.

I suggest selecting the "side by side" option for Ubuntu installation, so you can boot to either XP or Ubuntu. Be sure to set the slider to allocate how much space each OS gets. Follow the installation prompts for everything else, and in about 20 minutes you will never again go back to XP except for whatever indispensible Windows apps you have.

Hope you find this helpful!

 

Oops - I didn't see that you had wiped out the XP system with zeroes. So no big deal, just install Ubuntu 9.04 from the USB stick and enjoy!

 

I have tested several Linux distributions (I know very little about Linux) including Ubuntu 8 and none has got the wireless network to work. Will Ubuntu 9.04 really fix that too?

 

The kernel in the 8.04 and 8.10 Ubuntu versions did not have an Atheros driver that supports the Atheros 5007 series of chipset, whcih is used in the WiFi card on the AAO.

The kernel in the 9.04 version of Ubuntu has an Atheros driver that does support the Atheros 5007 series of chipset, so the Wireless network will work out of the box - Although the version of the Ath5K driver in that kernel don't have the required code to blink the Wifi LED on the casing.
If you feel that the WiFi LED blinking is necessary, you can either use the alternate MadWiFi driver in the restricted-modules package, or update the kernel to version 2.6.30 or higher, since the Ath5K driver in that kernel version has the required code for the WiFi LED.

 

And how do I update the kernel to the latest version? I'm not very familiar with Linux. Why doesn't Ubuntu 9.04, that is a quite recent update, use this kernel already?

 

Last question first :
When the various revisions of Ubuntu gets announced, they state which kernel version they will use for that revision. I.E. for Jaunty (9.04) they announced that it would use the 2.6.28 kernel which was the stable kernel.org kernel at that time. The Ubuntu version will then stick with that kernel for the complete lifespan of that Ubuntu version.

The next version of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala 9.10) will use the 2.6.30 kernel.

In order to install the 2.6.30 kernel on Jaunty, you need to either compile your own kernel, or get the 2.6.30 kernel from the Ubuntu Mainline kernel PPA repository, and install the 2.6.30 kernel package and the 2.6.30 kernel headers package from there. I have described it in a previous thread on the forum, http://aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopi ... 28&t=14044 .

 

That is not correct at all. Kernel versions are indeed updated during the life of a particular version of Ubuntu.

Cheers.

 

Only ABI updates. They are still the same series. I.E. All the ABI updates for Jaunty will be 2.6.28.xx kernels. Not 2.6.29 or 2.6.30.