Linux Mint Forums

Has anyone tried an Acer Aspire One and have you tried it with Mint?

I tried one the other day over at Circuit City, the linux version not the xp one. Overall I was very impressed with it. Frankly I think it has one of the best keyboards I've seen on one of the mini's, has a good feel to it not cramped or spongy. Screen is very clear and bright. I am not too crazy about the touchpad but that's not a huge issue for me. It comes with Linpus lite which is Fedora based. I also like the fact it has two memory card slots, one slot being totally dedicated to expanding the 8gb ssd space. The salesguy put a 8gb sd card in the slot (left side) to show me and instantly it showed 16gb all the same drive, not two separate drives.

The biggest drawback in my book was their lack of an access panel underneath to add extra ram, it comes with 512mb and can go up to 1.5gb. When I got home I looked up some Aspire One videos on youtube on how to add ram. Oh my gosh what a nightmare . You literally have to disassemble the entire notebook to access the available ram slot underneath the motherboard . Then you get to put it all back and hope all those tiny cables you unplugged are seated right let alone the ram be good. Watch one of the videos and you'll see what I mean.

Overall however, the price is right, the hardware - processor, wireless, webcam etc are basically the same as the other comparable minis out there. I am seriously considering getting one for either my oldest daughter or even myself.

You are correct the Main 5R1 is 8.04 and not 8.04.1.
Main 5R2 sould be updated to 8.04.1, clem is waiting for flash 10 final to be released 1st.
The XFCE CE and KDE CE are updated to 8.04.1.

Hi!

I've received my AAO recently and both Mint 5 KDE and XFCE CE work. I didn't tried the Main edition. As aj_nc stated, you just have to create a LiveUSB using unetbootin. KDE CE was a bit slow so I tried XFCE (Linpus, the pre-installed distro, uses it as well) and it works great even with compiz.

There are some hardware issues but most of them have now a workaround. You can use this guide from Ubuntu, it worked for me: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

I just ordered 2 of them off of Amazon.com for my daughters in high school. Looking forward to trying them out.

XFCE CE on an Aspire One would be very sweet.

The worst thing about the Acer Aspire One Linux version is as it comes it is very anemic in the software area and to add more software you need to do a little terminal work to hack into the advance features. Once you do this then you end up using, I think, XFCE from a right click on the desktop. Here is a link to a tutorial on how to access the advance features....
http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/ ... spx?step=1

donec wrote:The worst thing about the Acer Aspire One Linux version is as it comes it is very anemic in the software area and to add more software you need to do a little terminal work to hack into the advance features. Once you do this then you end up using, I think, XFCE from a right click on the desktop. Here is a link to a tutorial on how to access the advance features....
http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/ ... spx?step=1

The fact is that you can use Alt+F2 as normal, and access a terminal (executing xterm or terminal). Then, you can install whatever you want with yum from this terminal, it uses Fedora repos (Fedora 8, I think). And with this little hack you can then have access to all the apps from the menu. Linpus is actually the faster Linux distro on the Aspire One, and it has no hardware issues. It's a bit restrictive but, at least, they allow you to install almost anything.

I want to share some links with you, they have lots of tricks and information about the One. Here they are, maybe you already knew about them :

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/
http://macles.blogspot.com/
http://jorge.ulver.no/2008/08/06/acer-a ... d-tricks//

Have fun!

I'm mildly put off from the Aspire One due to the problem with upgrading RAM. I'm seriously considering the Dell Ubuntu model with upgrade to 1gb/8gb, but the 512k/8gb Aspire One. Any word on REAL WORLD battery life on the Aspire One?

This is what I'm considering:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-8-9-i ... 490&sr=8-2
VS:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/pr ... ref=homepg

The 3-cell battery of my One it's about 1,5-2 hours. But there's a 6-cell battery projected .

wuying_ren wrote:The 3-cell battery of my One it's about 1,5-2 hours. But there's a 6-cell battery projected .

The 3 cell last about 2.5 hrs for me and the 6 cell battery is already being sold in Canada.

I have been trying to get a different distro of Linux from Linpus to run on my AA1 (Acer Aspire One) and having problems. However! I tried OneLinux from....
http://onelinux.org/index.php
And it work right out of the box for everything I have tried except hibernation which works but not properly.

Just wanted to say that Felicia RC1 works just great on the AAO. Every piece of hardware is detected, and only in some models the wifi adapter needs some attention. Anyway, disabling the default driver and installing a package solves it so it's not that important

What package worked on the AAO wireless? I'm trying to run Felicia on an AAO and having problems w/the wireless.
Having a hard time finding good steps to fix it.
can you help?

I found a page that fixed my problem... Hope it helps

http://netbook-experience.com/2010/02/h ... spire-one/

Running Helena with great success on original AOA 110 configuration - until today only serious outstanding issue was lack of recognition of E220 dongle but I think I have cracked that problem - see my other post E220 SOLUTION. I am very pleased with Mint on my much favoured Aspire One!!

I ran Helena from a USB and when that was loaded installed to hard drive from the desktop. No hiccups at all.

Hello All,
I am new to this forum but have had an Aspire One since shortly after their introduction.
I have spent rather too much time putting stuff back in to Linpus Lite that they and Acer had decided in their wisdom to remove. Thanks to the Aspire One user forum I managed to reinstate Bluetooth - to run a GPS BT receiver' - and video-for-linux (v4l) to run a WinTV TDT USB stick - successful but broke the webcam.
As a dabbler in music recording I also wanted to bring my Tascam US-428 and M-Audio Oxygen MIDI keyboard/controller to the party. Here Acer surpassed themselves by metaphorically eviscerating ALSA removing all the drivers etc. that were deemed unnecessary to the functioning of the onboard sound chip.
To cut a very long story short, installing missing drivers, trying different distros - full Fedora + CCRMA real time kernel, Dyne-a-bolic, Ubuntu Studio - all proved unsatisfactory then, following a thread on the One forum eulogizing Mint, I decided to try it in its Fluxbox form.
Result: Brilliant. What took me about 6 months to achieve, or fail to, previously took 6 days to do on Mint including the Tascam being recognized and almost completely initialized (us428control is not run automatically but that is for another thread) on being plugged in.
There are still some latency issues - rt kernel experiments here we come - but my little netbook is now viable as a pocket music studio.
Thank you all at Linux Mint.

Mike