IT’S difficult to write about the Aspire One from Acer without gushing.

Out of the box, this mini-notebook is the perfect traveling companion for anyone who simply needs to surf the Web, send e-mail and perform typical office tasks such as typing up documents, working on spreadsheets or giving a presentation.

Its compact size—6.7″x9.8″ and less than an inch thick—and weight—less than a kilo—make the Aspire One extremely easy to bring along anywhere. The netbook is slightly longer than the pioneering Asus Eee PC, but Acer has put that extra space to good use by building in a larger keyboard that most touch typists will appreciate (about 85 percent of a full-sized one) and a glossy black frame around the LCD screen that makes it look brighter.

“Like the Eee PC, the Aspire One doesn’t make this easy to the casual user. In fact, the default launcher doesn’t even have an icon for installing or removing software.

Fortunately, Laptop Magazine details how to do this:

1) Open a terminal by going to My Documents in the Files group. Then choose File > Terminal.

2) Type “xfce-setting-show” (without the quotation marks) and hit Enter.

3) In the Settings Manager window that appears, select the Desktop icon. In the Behavior tab, check the box that says “Show desktop menu on right click.” Now you have access to the system’s advanced menu by right-clicking on a blank area of the desktop.

4) Open a terminal and type “sudo -su” and hit Enter. Type “password” and Enter. Type in a new root password. The password cannot be a dictionary word but a combination of letters and numbers. Retype the password.

5) Right-click on the desktop and choose System > Add/Remove Software. Enter the root password you set and use the Package Manager to install the programs you want.

Using this method, I was able to install Gimp, a powerful open source image editing program similar to Photoshop and Deluge, a BitTorrent client for downloading large files.”

Further reading here