Best Linux for the AAO?

I recently bought an Acer Aspire One with Windows XP (same price as the Linpus, but I got a free 8GB SDHC card with it, so it was a better deal) and almost right away replaced it with PupEee. I really disliked the interface and off of the LiveCD (I have a USB CD drive) I could not get a wifi signal. So I tried Puppy 4.01 and it was working (without wifi though), but it would not start up on my second boot. I'm currently running Ubuntu off of a 250GB USB hard drive (I downloaded a kernel with the appropriate drivers for the wifi) and I like it, but it's cumbersome to carry something extra with my computer - added weight and a second peice of baggage.

So, I'm wondering what everyone thinks is the best Linux to run on the AAO. If you run it and could provide a tutorial (or link to one) on how to install the OS and appropriate drivers, that would be greatly appreciated! I'm considering getting Linpus, though I prefer a "desktop" interface instead of the categorical and iconic one offered by Linpus.

 

Bump?

 

Hey Russet,
Its really a matter of personal taste and experience. I triple boot Windows, Linpus and Crunchbang. I use windows when I have to (usually for powerpoint presentations), Linpus on a plane or traveling for its quick boot and long battery life, and crunchbang for everything else..... Crunchbang has many of the advantages of puppy - quick boot, light window manager, etc but is based on ubuntu so a ton of software is available and lots of support. Having said that I have used puppy and really, really liked it. I still have it on a usb stick and occasionally use it. The following forums may help you get started:

For a puppee distro for the aspire one:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35424

For crunchbang see the excellent how-to by bassetts:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/howto/aspireone

For linpus see the posts here and downloads provided by mercado76. He really has done a nice job and provides the downloads.

Good luck!

 

Hi Russet

You mean you would prefer something like the following:

[attachment=0:2ezo6pny]Bird.jpeg[/attachment:2ezo6pny]
Then no reason not to stick with Linpus BUT with an XFCE desktop. Also all the same functionality works.

Look at the following link

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=4310

Best wishes

 

For a working Puppy Linux, I run acer-puppy-410-27
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35424
I also run an updated Ubuntu 9.04alpha with Sickboy's kernel
http://www.aspireonekernel.com/
and Fedora 10, and and updated Fedora 11alpha (i.e., Rawhide).
You can also install the Ubuntu version you're using onto the AA1 - just install the kernel you're currently using in place of the stock Ubuntu kernel.

 

I stuck with Linpus until I decided the choice of installable SW was just too small, limited by it's Fedora 8 origins, and very dependent on Acer's lcontinued support.

So I put Fedora 10, XFCE spin on it (following Dan Goodwin and Jorg's guides), it's working OK now but I'm still pretty unsatisfied. In a month or two I'm going to do a full ArchLinux+Gnome install, there is a excellent guide here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_Aspire_One.

I'm a oldschool geek (At home/work I'm currently running Debian, Gentoo, Ubunto, Fedora and FreeBSD), so the command-line nature of Arch actually appeals to me, as does the gentoo-like ability to fine-tune the install. But a decent gentoo install needs to be compiles, which is simply tooo slow an a low-end SSD based device. Please note that the biggest advantage of Arch is that there is a dedicated aspire-one kernel available, and it is 2.6.28, therefore incorporating the latest HW drivers in the kernel, things like wifi and MMC cards work correctly out of the box! Fedora is not due to get this until later in the 11 release cycle. :-(

 

??? Fedora Rawhide is already using 2.6.29-rc kernels. Getting MMC & SD cards working out of the box with Fedora just means loading a few modules already present in the kernel. Does the Arch 2.6.28 kernel to which you refer support the xD card reading capabilities of the right card slot?

 

Hi everybody !

I recommend the distro Absolute. I used an external DVD or if you wish to use USB Flash give a try to Vector Live.
I personally prefer Absolute because it come with 2 default dictionaries ( gcide and WordNet ) and the commercial dictionaries OALD and LDOCE are working excellent including sound ! OALD is Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionaries and LDOCE is Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
The speed and stability are impressive !
For download Absolute go here : http://www.absolutelinux.org/download.shtml

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I have Aspire One 150 ,1Gb RAM, HDD 120 Gb.

 

Hi again !
If somebody is interested in Compiz Fusion than the answer is in Knoppix distro (v 6.0.1).
You don't have to install nothing for Compiz Fusion because is there in 3 seconds !!
Knoppix is based on Debian - so you have over 25000 packages at your disposal ( for download + install with Synaptic ).
I still wait to try Kuki its not released yet.

All the best for Acer Aspire One users!

-------------------------------------------------------------
I have Aspire One 150 ,1Gb RAM, HDD 120 Gb .

 

But how is that relevant? Rawhide is an unstable development branch, only useful to people who don't care if their machine becomes randomly unavailable. F10 and F11 are all that matter to real users, F10 will probably never get a official .28 kernel and F11 is still in alpha as of this writing.

AFIK Arch supports all the slots; but I only know about/use the LH SDHC device, the multi-reader is untested on my system. It's far from being a beginners OS though; command-line configured from start to finish, with plenty of pitfalls, and documentation that is only sporadically complete. The only thing not really working for me on Arch is getting my external 1680x1050 monitor to display at decent resolution, but then, I cannot get that working properly with Fedora either..

 

A randomly-unavailable AA1 is not acceptable to me, which is why Fedora Rawhide gets its own partition; when it breaks I revert to F10, which does work for me, or Ubuntu 8.10 which also works, or Ubuntu 9.04 which also randomly breaks, but differently than Rawhide. Obviously not an acceptable solution for Joe or Jane average-user.

What I would like to see is a standardized checklist of commonly-broken (and even uncommonly-broken) features, whether they work ootb with various Linux distros, and links to various fixes. This has the potential of actually being useful to folks trying to decide which version of Linux to install on their AA1s. My installations have been tweaked so much that for the most part I can't even recall what worked ootb and what didn't. Now, the broken features I've encountered in my almost six months as an AA1 owner:
AA1 itself
card readers
sound
wifi leds
wireless
X

Working card readers to me means working even when cards are not present at boot time. I don't use suspend/resume or hibernate, and I haven't tried connecting the AA1 to an external monitor yet, but if my 1680x1050 monitor can't display at that resolution, when hooked up to the AA1, then that feature is broken in my book.

 

I've tried several builds, Linux4One, full blown Ubuntu, & Suse.

All of them worked but all had some issues with respect to the AA1. None of them real show stoppers but all things that irritate a techie. :lol:

In the end I decided to stop playing with it and reverted to Linpus but got rid of the Acer interface. After all it does everything I bought it for, email and browsing away from the study/office. I've installed a few apps with varying degrees of success, Gimp for photo stuff out in the field went on without any problems. VLC was a bleedin' nightmare!

As a machine it's grown on me enormously, in fact I find I'm using it as much as my main desktop these days and because of it's lack of bulk and weight I also take it out with me, it's great for those IT support visits that friends and family rope you in to.

Regards
Nick

 

I also reverted to Linpus after a while with Windows 7. Linpus boots and shuts down fast, and you can get a standard desktop if you so choose. Now if only someone could figure out how to put gnome or KDE on Linpus...

 

Most of my AA1 use is without a mouse, and given the marginal trackpad, I appreciate the big icons of the default Linpus desktop. I've installed some additional apps, and have tweaked group-app.xml to put my most-used apps on top. Everything works; it starts and shuts down reasonably quickly, and I have all the apps I need for this machine. I see no reason to get rid of Linpus, especially if doing so means losing features or speed.

 

Mepis 8 (32bit version) works great! Everything runs quickly and neatly. Only thing that doesn't work out of the box is the SD card slots.