This post is nonsensical and misinformed.

First of all, to say that Linpus is not sufficient to unlock the One’s potential is plain and simply wrong. Once the root password is set-up, there is a great repository of software available. Yes, it *can* shield you from the complexity of the OS, but for people who want to get more involved, Linpus is very powerful.

Ubuntu is no more powerful than any other distribution of Linux; the way Ubuntu does well is making install and UI simpler than distributions such as Slackware and Debian for newbs.

There is a lot of misinformation about Ubuntu and Linux coming from people who have only ever used the one distribution and are completely unaware of what other distributions are around and how they work.

So, once you have gone thruogh this pain of wiping a perfectly good installation, you then have to beware that hibernation and WiFi won’t work and others not as well. How on earth is that unlocking the One’s potential?

This post is clearly an uninformed, Ubuntu fanboy/girl who needs to open his or her mind a bit and play more with Linpus and have some of the willingness to learn something ever so slightly different, in exactly the same way he/she did when moving from Windows to Ubuntu.

Oh, and the Ubuntu version won’t boot as fast, one of the great strengths of the Linpus version. Priceless.

I’ve also come across people installing Fedora 9 – and seemingly with more success than Ubuntu. (Not wholly surprising considering Linpus’s origin.)

for instance, from the Fedora wiki:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One

And I’m sure somewhere I’ve read bout people finding drivers for the wi-fi too…

Bottom line, it is your AAO that I’m sure you bought with your own hard-earned money, and you have the right to do with it as you please. And as long as you’re using Ubuntu on it, perhaps you can help volunteer some testing and patches that can help improve its compatibility with the machine, and thus make life easier for other Ubuntu-on-AAO users.

However, I do agree with DiBosco in that it doesn’t take very long to unlock the One’s potential and enjoy a full-fledged Fedore-based Linux OS, complete with a decently-sized repository (maybe not as large as Ubuntu/Debian’s, but large enough). Certainly the amount of hacking required to enable the Programs Menu, access the Add/Remove software equivalent, or even customize the desktop menu is far less than installing another OS and battling with incompatibilities.

Compared to the EeePC’s AsusOS, Acer’s Linpus Lite variant is clearly the superior OS, and one I’m far more comfortable leaving in the hands of inexperienced computer users.

And for a 15 second boot, working wifi and hibernation, hacker-friendly features and a large, reputable online repository, I think it’s worth spending a few minutes exploring it further.

I put gentoo on mine. Gentoo with fluxbox

The boot time is decent (And I haven’t even started to tweak it yet).

I spent an hour with linpus, its okay but since I couldn’t tell it to use fluxbox and didn’t see it as worth the effort I just started plotting a way to put gentoo on it.

I also used xfs <3 (its the HDD version, journaling is okay )

Still configuring gentoo to be perfect though.

Remember the good old day when you were able to buy a computer, you know a box, with some chips and stuff in? Computers were great because they let you use this stuff called ’software’, which meant that you could make the computer into a machine that was good at doing all sorts of completely different things.

So come on, there’s no need to rehearse the ‘you bought an AAO so accept Linpus’ every time someone talks about other operating systems.

Which is not to say to article was not gushy and excessive.

Haven’t seen anyone rehearsing that line around here at all. So far we have two expanded Linpus users, one Gentoo user and one purebred Fedora user, and everyone’s happily installing software.

He did it wrong.

The biggest and very painful problem with Linux is drivers and hardware support. You’re lucky. You buy your Aspire One with the Linux distribution that supports all hardware perfectly.

Now, he has to spend days trying to find out solutions for his hardware problems.
He could’ve invested this time into reading the forums here.

Could some one tell me, How much it takes to boot with Ubuntu?

One of the thinks that really love in my One is the booting time…

If we can get full support for all the One hardware, and same booting times, put me in, otherwise I’ll wait.

I agree, the article was pretty silly. The Linpus that comes in the box works very well, and is a perfectly capable OS.

The only real issue I have with it is that it appears that Fedora’s support infrastructure isn’t as solid as Ubuntu’s — I’m constantly getting 503’s when trying to connect to their repositories, which has never happened to me with Ubuntu.

If this doesn’t change, I probably will be switching distros once the Ubuntu folks have gotten the kinks ironed out and the boot time sped up. (Slow boot + no hibernation = unacceptable, from where I’m at.)

For me,linpus on the aspire one is just a piece of junk.

I agree it boot fast.
I agree the whole hardware is supported.

But the drawbacks are too huge.

1..you have to unlock it to be able to add software.And in the end you ends up with just non-easily customisable menus when you right-click..Where is the user friendly thing?Can you easily change the launchers?NO!Can you switch to standard xfce desktop?Yes,but you ends up with the research thing in the middle.Moreover you just have to textedit your way to have xfce looks and respond as you want!
2..Linpus is a fedora 8.0 fork(old).The software repositories may be ok,but the acer libraries forbid you to update it properly and use a lot of softwares (just try to install rythmbox…It jut doesn’t work)
3..Can you easily install drivers for your USB bluetooth dongle or whatever?No,and personnaly I wouldn’t want to try.I already spent to much time to be able to replace the desktop “mediaplayer” icon with vlc.

For me,with ubuntu,you gain a gigantic repository which you can use fully,and you also get support to install whatever hardware you need.You also gain a fully and easily customisable interface…Worth the switch for me.

Actually, it’s much easier to find rpm packages than deb ones if they are not in the repository.

If you can’t download Fedora packages, go to http://rpmfind.net and search for those that are labeled “Fedora 8 updates for i386″.

Fast startup time is the direct result of the kernel optimization. That’s why you have to spend some time installing the bluetooth module, which most of the users don’t need.

>With ubuntu you gain a gigantic repository, and you also get support to install whatever hardware you need.
Gigantic repository means the gigantic space hog. You definitely need hard disk for it.

Hardware supported mostly by the Linux kernel. There is no difference between Ubuntu and Linpus here. But if you want to support the already installed hardware drivers, you have to compile modules for the kernel 2.6.23.9lw
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=608&sid=472fc74448187c59914c776da44ccfd5

>>The only real issue I have with it is that it appears that Fedora’s support infrastructure isn’t as solid as Ubuntu’s — I’m constantly getting 503’s when trying to connect to their repositories, which has never happened to me with Ubuntu.

I wondering if you’re referring to the repository problems over the weekend?

Yeah, I got that too; the repos are set up to connect to a public mirror list, which ensures that you always connect to a working and up-to-date repository. This actually sounds reliable compared to direct URL repositories — but the one achilles heel is that it completely falls flat on its face if the public mirror list ITSELF is down. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen often.

Regarding what guigz said, the AcerOS is significantly easier to edit than the AsusOS from the EeePCs — nevertheless, he does make a valid point that the best aspects of the AcerOS have to be unlocked. Via some minor hacking only, but still hacking nevertheless, and definitely the user will have to rummage through text configuration files.

That’s fine for someone like me, but I can think of hundreds of non-tech users who may not want to bother with instructions on how to download VLC to play that DivX movie. Its one of the reasons why I’m hoping that the final version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix will be as user-custommizable as the vanilla version.

While Acer COULD resolve those weak points by enabling access to a software repository (even if its a prescreened one that doesn’t offer things that break the system) and suppyling a desktop menu editor, it’s still to be seen how committed Acer is to Linux. Asus APPEARED to be committed, up until it became obvious they were willing to neglect their creation in order to keep XP on a pedestal. Here’s hoping Acer is willing to be a bit more courageous.

Still, for the moment, the desktop menu is easy enough to edit that it wouldn’t be impossible to create our own editor for it. There are already several such editors created for the EeePC’s easy mode, and some of them look polished enough to integrate nicely with the rest of the menu. Perhaps now would be a good opportunity for someone like me to start learning something like Python.

i thought aspire one comes preloaded with ubuntu in some countries, australia or new zealand i believe. but i think it’s an older version… so if you have the older version of ubuntu (7 i guess) i assume it should work just fine.

Figuring out and unlocking Linpus, getting rid of the acer desktop and configuring the menus may be a pain initially, especially without a great deal of support from the community at these early stages. But once it’s done, it’s done. And we’re talking mostly xfce conf files here.

On the other hand, boot time, performance issues, lack of fine-tuned drivers and driver updates is something that requires kernel configuration and driver recompilations. Much worse than conf files and a few hacks to turn your Linpus your way.

And I prefer to have issues installing a driver for some peripheral device of mine than having the One running the battery twice as fast with Ubuntu, only so that configuring that $9.99 webcam be a piece of cake. So far, I haven’t had any problems installing packages with yum.

So, for now, Ubuntu with Netbook Remix is not really an option for my One. But I’ll keep an eye on it, because I believe at some point in time it shall become an option (probably Xubuntu, for its smaller footprint). Hopefully this will be accomplished with the support of Acer.

First of all, let’s start by saying that Linpus, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Gentoo are all different distros, not different OS. The OS (kernel) is Linux. Note that with enough knowledge, you can tweak any of these distros to include custom drivers, remove custom drivers, remove unnecessary packages, change the boot process (udev, sysv, etc.). It’s so plainly obvious that a distro customized and optimized for Asus (Linpus) works much better than stock distros of any kind. Personally, I use Ubuntu (I’m an experienced user of most distros–Fedora/RH, Debian, Slackware, Suse, Gentoo. And I just happen to like apt/dpkg pair better than others and more frequent release dates than debian (and debian unstable can become a little too unstable sometimes). And others will like Gentoo since they can optimize the hell of whatever they need. Some like Fedora because it is probably the best supported distro and perhaps arguably best-integrated security solutions like SELinux and easy-to-use iptables, etc.

So let’s encourage the effort and give valid opinion of the article. (Oh, did you know that you can cut the startup time by removing these modules, these services, switching the boot method, changing the filesystem, etc.) rather than uninformed “keep Linpus as is” comments.

I wanted to try to stay with linpus and minimally change my aspire one, but it seems like every time I turn around, there’s something missing. The latest thing is that I need a vpn; I go through some of the instructions for installing one, and they don’t work or things are missing — basic things that seem to be part of the normal packages (e.g. “pon” and “poff” in the pptp package). I’m not sure whether it’s more work to try to graft stuff onto linpus or to try to get another distro to work with the aspire one…

I have installed ubuntu on the aspire one and am very happy. I followed a guide from the ubuntu website to get my wireless card working (as well as it? light). I was also able to get the usb issue sorted via this same guide. It was all to easy.
The only negative I can see is by moving to ubuntu my battery time decreased to 1hr 50 mins.

the web address for aspire one support with ubuntu is:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

Heads up Guys go download mandriva 2009 one. Itl run live cd and if you want live install. Ive had it running trouble free all day on my AAO. It just works simple as no need to go into terminal & imgetting about 2hrs battery on wireless only downside is a minute boot up but hey pros&cons.

Hi, I also prefer Ubuntu, but since installed 8.04.1 i have no lan connection and so i cannot go on, ….
hope for help

Clearly i have seen here enlightened linux users,although i agree we sometimes have to venture in unknown ways,can’t always afford the cost.
I had linpus installed,didn’t had trouble installing packages for programming(only java,python and sql) when i gave ssh access to a friend(later told me he was trying to install kde)!!POW…no filesystem detected,well gave it a try to ubuntu 8.04.1 hardy heron…wireless problems,slow,a lot slow,graphic problems,hibernating problems,tried most tweaks,solve ones found anothers…can’t blame me for trying and learned a lot in the process,but not viable yet…never had used ubuntu but i will try it in another more “standard” laptop,just liked what i have seen

Unfortunately I have no idea about Linux … but I managed to prodeed to the so called advanced version, where clicking with the right mouse I get to System etc.
I also found a list of software that can be checked and loaded.
After loading a program named cast podder the message came: cannot run, because file manager Nautilus does not ran…
Can anyone help, please !

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These are the steps I took to get my wireless card & led working in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy):

** Install build-essential
$> sudo apt-get install build-essential

** Change to your home directory
$> cd ~

** Download madwifi (adjust url accordingly to download most recent snapshot)
$> sudo wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz

** Disable current Atheros HAL & support for Atheros 802.11 wireless cards
System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

** Make sure that ath_hal module is not loaded in the future (e.g. DISABLED_MODULES=”ath_hal”)
$> sudo vim /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

** Unpack the downloaded tar.gz
$> tar -xzvf madwifi-hal-.tar.gz

** Rename directory created by tar process
$> mv madwifi-hal- madwifi

** Change to the new madwifi scripts directory
$> cd madwifi/scripts

** Execute madwifi-unload and find-madwifi-modules.sh scripts
$> sudo ./madwifi-unload
$> sudo ./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)

** Change to the main madwifi directory
$> cd ..

** Get rid of old crap
$> make clean

** Build the modules
$> make
$> sudo make install
$> sudo modprobe ath_pci

** ath0 & wifi0 should now be listed as interfaces
$> ifconfig

** wlan’s should now be visible from the panel network applet. You may also scan for wlan’s via the command line
$> sudo wlanconfig ath0 list scan

** Updates or upgrades that modify the kernel will effect madwifi. After updating/upgrading repeat the steps from ** Build the modules

** Load ath_pci module automatically. Add ath_pci after last line of file.
$> sudo vim /etc/modules

** Restart
$> sudo shutdown -r now

** Manually load module if you do not wish to restart
$> sudo modprobe ath_pci

** Add the following two lines to the end of /etc/sysctl.conf to get wireless card led to blink based on traffic

dev.wifi0.ledpin=3
dev.wifi0.softled=1

** Restart
$> sudo shutdown -r now

** Manually reload if you do not wish to restart
$> sudo sysctl -p

Power can be tweaked, my battery lasts 5+ hours with 6 cell battery during moderate computing…

Cheers!

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