to Linpus or not to Linpus

I have been thinking, as fun as it is to upset M$ by running tinyxp on my AAO - I am not sure if it is woth nmy while (and all the crashes I seem to get )

I really only use a web browser, thunderbird/lightening and a twitter client....

maybe i should just go back to Linpus, put ff3 on it and thunderbird, use a FF add-on for twitter... then I would be all nice and legal...

 

I've had my AA0 for 4 months now and in that time it's crept up from being a "novelty" to something that actually gets used.

I've run Live Update (took ages) installed Filezilla and the GIMP, and cloned the entire system using Clonezilla.

I like it fine.

I don't quite "get" many of the folk on here that buy one, wreck it, and then post loads of questions having wrecked it but then you pays your money... and maybe it's the modern day equivalent of a schoolboy and a ZX80.

From what I understand Linpus is Fedora and Fedora is Red Hat therefore it's not as "obscure" as many folk make out.

I had a few months of wishing I'd bought the XP version but that's fading fast now so I'd say if you know how to do it go for it.

 

I wish I had bought the HD version, but XP.. I can take it or leave it... windows 7 look cool... but i would need to upgrade, which I am not going to do...

after saying all this, I just remembered --- ableton

oh well

xp it is.

 

Two small caveats though:
1. Acer Linpus is a modified version of Fedora that does not obey Fedora standards. Hence sometimes failure when one does things "the fedora way".
2. Acer Linpus is based on fedora 8, which is old and no longer receives updates. Kinda like windows 98 (or soon XP)

 

OK, still think its fine though...

Even started reading Linux Format. Though that's one expensive magazine... given its about Linux it should surely be a lot cheaper :lol:

 

I recently image'd my XP install and gave Linpus a try again.

1. First I tried creating a recovery USB key on my desktop computer, but the program erased my secondary harddrive and gave me an error message even though I told it I wanted it to write to the USB key. I managed to recovery the data and found an alternative method to create a bootable USB key for the AAO.

2. Installation went smoothly, live Update takes forever

3. Then I wanted to change to Swedish keyboard layout, since that's the keyboard layout my AAO shipped with. So I find the right icon under "Settings". However, the computer then called me a "SCUM"! Why is the input configuration applet called Scum? It's insulting and silly. In Windows, it's called "Keyboard Properties". It's the same with pretty much every command and program in Linux - sudo, apt, gimp, Kate, Xine.. Can you figure out what those do just by looking at the names? No.. But with "Windows Media Player", "Add/Remove Programs", "Notepad", "Photoshop" etc. it all makes sense.

4. No matter how many times I tried to select Swedish in the Scum, it stuck with the English layout.

5. After some searching, I found a post by a Finnish user who had the same issue. Turns out you need to use the terminal and edit a configuration file just to do something as basic as changing to a scandinavian keyboard layout. In XP it's like 4 clicks and you're never called SCUM.

6. If you want to update to the latest versions of Open Office, Firefox etc., you've got to use the terminal again. Why doesn't Acer just include them in the Live Update list?

I restored my trouble free, reliable and fast XP image again.

It's not that I don't know how to edit configuration files or use a command console. My first computer was a Commodore64, and I've also used AmigaOS, DOS, MacOS9 and early versions of OSX and every version of Windows since 3.1. Some years ago I even sat down with Slackware Linux and taught myself most of the basics.

It's not because I'm lazy either. I just think that in 2009, the least we can expect from our computers is that they just work without too much hassle. Depending on what you use your computer for, it's a tool to get work done or an entertainment machine. Actually using the computer and trying to make it behave like you want should not be your work (unless that's what you want to use the computer for). If you buy a hammer in a store, someone has already figured out the best shape, weight, balance, materials etc. so you can simply take it home and get on with your work. The same should be true for computers.

 

I quite agree with you but you could argue that to keep a Windows PC secure and up-to-date is a right faff also.

All I personally want a computer to do at home is email, browsing, writing and money stuff. The first two are platform independent for me, writing I tend to lean more to Word (though 2007 caused a slight hiccup not being a masterclass in backward compatability), and money has to be Money (and they stopped making that in the UK - the program that is!).

Where I think Linux is shooting itself in the foot big time is the sheer number of distros. Too many cooks etc.

Where both Windows and Linux are shooting themselves in the foot is constant change. As MS have found to their cost with XP once folk are happy with something they don't need constant changes to it especially foisted upon them with Vista.

However, if you'd said to me a year ago I'd have bought a Linux PC for the house and would be using it (quite a lot) I'd have thought you were bonkers.

 

I wish there was a clean, stable ubuntu distro available... I probably find another PC for music apps then (xp is king for music, well apart from OSX)

 

Untrue - the terminal just makes it a whole lot easier. However, add/remove software can do the same things.

But yes, Linpus is far less userfriendly than most other distributions and windows. Probably intentionally.

 

Linpus is more like a ROM than an operating system

 

Exactly. If only Acer would advertise it like that...
Actually, a steady state netbook would be very useful for kids, people who do not know nor wish to learn anything about computers and so on. So maybe Acer did not even take the "we will make it hard to change things" far enough.

 

I just don't see why they didn't spend $5000 paying some guy to port a major distro to the AAO... and give people the option to run either...

 

I wouldn't go back to Linpus, but that's just my personal opinion. Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva (haven't used, but seems to get high marks) are all reasonable possibilities. There are a couple of Puppy Linux puplets (derivatives) designed for the AA1 that work reasonably well too.

 

I need to pick Linpus apart until I understand why it boots so fast.

I fear I'll find a line in there contracting a deal with Beelzebub. I can come up with no other explanation. It's downright eerie.

I much prefer Ubuntu ... except for the boot time.

 

I'm almost certain you're joking, but it's SCIM (smart common input method), not SCUM.

 

They use a few hacks, they start X early in the boot sequence and continue loading other stuff in the background, they have also patched the Intel graphics driver so X loads quicker. This along with being selective about what is loaded goes a long way toward the boot time, however if you pay attention Network Manager doesn't seem to load till about 20 seconds after the desktop appears (at least it does for me), so they are being somewhat deceptive by making you think it boots quicker than it really does, but I expects that gets them extra sales.

If you want to dig into how the boot process works, start by looking at /etc/rc.d/rc.S which is the initial startup script.

 

It would be nice if the Ubuntu Remix was ready, but development seems to be stalled. No announced changes have been made for quite a while, from what I can see.

One of the problems for the majority of people using Linpus is that now insecurity from not being able to update properly is also creeping into it.

FireFox 2 Announcement

 

If a linux distro released a AAO version that was installed like this 1. take 1gig mem stick, format it 2. put this file on mem stick 3. run file on mem stick 4.reboot and let memstick do its thing 5. enjoy new OS

they would be very veyr popular....

 

Acer has already released an update to FF3 on the AAO website. But yes, far from ideal.

 

**** it - I am going back to linpus... 2 days of messing around with antivirus software and the like... i want linux back