Linux Recommendation Required

[magnumopus]

I have a first-generation Acer Aspire One and since as I have bought it I have experienced almost endless problems with networking under Linux. At present I am using a Linux Mint 8 and networking fails all the time. Therefore can anyone recommend another version which may work better?

Kind regards,

Rod

 

[Grim Squeaker]

Most Ubuntu derivatives work.
However, the netbook remix is just slightly too heavy for the slow, slow, slow SD card - which causes it to stall ("freeze the system for a while) quite often.
Xubuntu performs somewhat better, but is also not perfect. I never had network problems with it though.

I have also tried Meego, which is cute, shiney and original. However, Meego is very much a product in development - which means that there are very few working applications.

 

[Grim Squeaker]

And an update: I am starting to like MeeGo.
It is still far from finished, but it is fast.
There is also a nice community repo now that makes installation of the multimedia codecs needed to listen to music and watch movies pretty easy

 

[vinceben]

Try Kuki Linux. It is designed for the Aspire One.
I had a lot of problems with my wi-fi connection dropping every 5 to 10 mins and had to keep re-connecting. I tried Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSUSE, Jolicloud, Crunchbang, Fedora and more that I cant remember. I tried all the fixes I could find but none worked. Kuki seems the best so far. I still have the odd dropped connection, but it is down to about one a week. Webcam works fine, Left card reader ok, Right card reader needs a re-boot to mount, but so do all the other distros. Even the Wi-Fi light works. Its not perfect, but it works very well with the Aspire One.
I am using it on a Aspire One AOA110-Ab ZG5.

 

[Reno]

I've been running Jolicloud for quite a few months now and am quite happy with it. It never drops the wifi and never crashes.
ZG5, 8 gig SSD, 512 Ram.

 

[Forone]

I'm married to Windows for certain software I can't do without, but my new mistress is Ubuntu.

What I'd suggest for that, and any other versions for that matter, is to do a trial running OS from a 4GB USB drive and download it onto that using the "persistence" option that will save any changes you make to the interface, FireFox, etc. My machine, specs below, is running great on the Desktop 10.04 LTS running off a thumb drive. I ran it on a 2GB drive but it's a little tight. (One of these days I might go to dual boot, but no hurry.)

The Show Me How instructions for using "PenDrive" to install on a flash drive are at the Ubuntu site and they are first rate - see the USB Stick directions below.

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

A few things about running from a pendrive, might not apply to installing on the HDD:
1) I had real problems running the Ubuntu 10.10 "Netbook Remix" on my machine, much slower than 10.04 Desktop.
2) the HDD has to be "mounted" for access to all the data on it. I was very confused when my DropBox on the HDD kept delinking but learned it's because of the time lag between booting and mounting: answer is to disable apps that require HDD access from system startup,
3) FireFox runs pretty well on the default installation, but much better if you use about:config tweaks to disable disk cache and run it in RAM, and change the pipelining settings. Speed tweaks for FF are easily googled.
4) the wi-fi interface is a little weird for bringing up different screens - I think the 10.10 version is improved in that regard - but once my WPA2 passphrase was registered, it's logging on automatically no prob.
5) there is a system password login app called KeyRing that seemed to pop up from nowhere at first, but eventually it gave up and shut up.