First impressions with Ubuntu 8.10

Hello out there,

I just run the live CD on my AA1 with SSD. So far 8.10 looks pretty solid, even Skype did work incl. microphone.

The only thing missing was the WiFi was not working, but i guess that should be an easy fix.

Anybody made other experiences? Is it already good to go? I am still with Onelinux, but it seems there is no progress over the last couple of weeks.

Thanks for your feedbacks,

daniel

 

Are you running the new beta on a livecd? 8.10 with all the current updates work with the wifi, however I don't think the Alpha 6 did.

 

somehow my touchpad is not responding to taps. so i have to click the buttons...
is someone else having the same problem???

 

I just installed Kubuntu 8.10 beta. Ethernet has been disabled to avoid damage to the NIC and wireless was not working out of the box so couldn't do an update. Had to copy over the madwifi drivers and compile as before. It runs quite well, but I had to reduce font sizes etc to get some things to fit on the screen correctly. Sometimes it reports the battery as "not present" when it is.

 

I have Ubuntu 8.10 official release installed with Netbook Remix. So far most things are running well, with a couple of minor issues that I can mostly live with

- Right card reader won't recognize something gets plugged into it unless the SD card is already in the slot prior to booting up. Left card reader works without problems
- Wireless needed the ath5k driver to work, the wireless switch works with no on screen notification, and the wireless LEDs don't work with 8.10
- Bootup time compared with Linpus Linux Lite is pretty long, but I knew that would be the case

I have not confirmed functionality on either the webcam or the microphone, but I don't intend on using either of those anytime soon.

 

I am between Mandriva 2009 and Ubuntu 8.10 now.

Mandriva works out of the box exept the Wifi lights, but thats not a deal breaker. The rest looks fine, I am just not sure about the battery life. I have the feeling its less then Ubuntu.

To bad there is not a work all solution out there, except the Linpus version which is just not enough for me.

d

 

I have the Acer Aspire one with 1G ram and 120 G hard disk.
I've installed ubuntu 8.10 using the live cd. The live cd has a new feature to make a live usb absolutely automatically.
So with this live usb its easy to boot in to Ubutnu (same way as live cd) and there is the option to install it on the desktop.
After the installation you have to add the restricted repos and turn all the repositories on.

After this follow the instructions on this page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne but not all of them

These are the selected instructions:

WIRELESS:
ndiswrapper

-- ndiswrapper is an alternative that is known to work, but uses Windows drivers.

Download drivers for your wireless card from: http://download2.dvd-driver.cz/atheros/ ... 0.3.85.zip

Unzip those drivers.

Install ndiswrapper, and launch the installer:

sudo aptitude install ndisgtk
sudo ndisgtk

Find the net5416.inf file, and install it. -> Invalid Driver!

If you have tried madwifi, unload it with:

madwifi-unload

Restart your AA1, and everything should work.

WIRELESS LED:

To get your awesome wireless led to blink for you based on traffic, put these lines in /etc/rc.local, just above the string exit 0 (below doesn't work).

* Note: The 2.6.27 kernel does not appear to have these options anymore (earlier kernels do).

sysctl -w dev.wifi0.ledpin=3
sysctl -w dev.wifi0.softled=1

The led on the front will now do the association blink, as well as blink based on wireless traffic.

rc.local may not be executable so

sudo chmod a+x /etc/rc.local

The wifi kill switch uses these keycodes (also to use in rc.local):

/usr/bin/setkeycodes e055 159
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e056 158

WEBCAM

Install luvcview - USB Video Class grabber

apt-get install luvcview

You may confirm it is recognized

dmesg |grep -i "uvc"

And this is the repply

[ 29.601485] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device USB 2.0 Camera (0c45:62c0)
[ 29.617301] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo

Say hello to yourself with this command

luvcview -f yuv


CARD READER:

*

(NOTE: This section needs to be improved. It seems that card reader is not truly "Fully functional")

According to DebianAcerOne the following command enables the card reader:

setpci -d 197b:2381 AE=47

The card reader works fine now.

* it might help to suspend/resume
* a static entry for the device /dev/mmcblk0p1 in /etc/fstab might help
* powersaving can be done with the jmb38x_d3e.sh script -

wget http://petaramesh.org/public/arc/projec ... 38x_d3e.sh
sudo chmod 754 jmb38x_d3e.sh
sudo mv jmb38x_d3e.sh /usr/local/sbin/

To recognize cards every time.

sudo gedit /usr/local/sbin/jmb38x_d3e.sh

Add the following to line 11

modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1

After reboot cards are recognized.


NOISE (FAN CONTROL)

Aspire One by default commonly doesn't manage Fan speed correctly, resulting in a very noisy AA0. Solution:

* Ensure you have dmidecode installed, so acerfand can detect which bios version you have. It's probably installed by default already. If not, execute:

sudo aptitude install dmidecode

*

Download the acer_ec.pl script (http://aceracpi.googlecode.com/svn/trun ... acer_ec.pl).
*

Download the acerfand daemon script (http://electronpusher.org/~rachel/acerfand). (New version (2008-10-19) adding support to BIOS 3305)
* Execute these lines in a terminal in the directory you downloaded the above scripts:

chmod a+x acerfand
sudo cp acer_ec.pl acerfand /usr/local/bin/

* To run it straight away:

sudo acerfand

==>>*I also add a new entry at the start-up manager (VIA THE UBUNTU UTILITY) because it doesn't start automatically*


VIDEO AND 3D PERFORMANCE:

Out of the box, the graphic card Intel GMA 950, is well detected, however you can tweak /etc/X11/xorg.conf to achieve better graphic card performance:

Section "Device"
(...)
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,VGA"
Option "Clone" "true"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
VideoRam 229376
Option "CacheLines" "1980"
EndSection

The Option Clone is especially usefull, if you want to capture video or photos. Without it you will get a black screen on applications like cheese.

Also add this to your /etc/profile:

export INTEL_BATCH=1

Note: 'export INTEL_BATCH=1' appears to causes graphics faults (artifacts) within 'ume-launcher' (even with Compiz fully disabled).

Reboot and you will have a more responsive system, with better 3D FPS, and improved video performance.

==>> with these settings I'm runing 3D effects (rotating cube and many other with emerald enabled...)

For the AUDIO

I tried to follow the instructions (rebuild alsa) but i couldn't ....
So, I remembered that the official linux software comes with aspire (linspus) use pulse audio instead of alsa.
So I add pulse audio with the package manager and open the utility to change inputs and so...
Result: the built in microphone WORKS FINE

So everythin works.... SD cards, camera, built in mic, usb....


Finally forget the sd slot for expanding the home. is useless...

I'm writing this post from this machine using ubuntu. An yes the rotate cube is very useful on this machine because of
the small screen.You can put windows on different desktops and move on these very fast....

My thanks to the "blackest-knight" because he post these first instructions...

I hope to help someone other to be happy with his little notebook like me...

It's fast, beautiful and powerful with ubuntu 8.10 and you can have everything... !!

 

If I can have everything, please tell me, how do I read an xD card in the rhs slot? The only Linux kernel I've found with working drvers for the Jmicron reader for my xD card is the Linpus kernel. I tried compiling the source, but it doesn't work with kernels 2.6.26+