My elderly Acer Aspire One

[tattyjacket]

Hi,
I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook computer around ten years ago. Back in those days, tablets were just appearing but out of my price range. The idea of a tiny laptop really appealed to me.
When I bought it, it was running Linux Linpus. It wasn't a very appealing distro. Soon, I changed it to Ubuntu which slowed it down even more. Finally I settled on Lubuntu which was just about OK.
Quite honestly, I forgot about this little phase in my personal journey and for some time my Aspire One took up residence in a cupboard.
Last week, I was given an ageing HP laptop. I decided to try to install Linux Mint to it and was amazed at the result. It made me wonder whether Mint would run on my Aspire One. Well, it does. In fact, it runs really well....finally, it has become the item that I really wanted when I bought it all those years ago.
Phil

[WharfRat]

I'm amazed when a resuscitated dinosaur of a computer springs back to life

[absque fenestris]

Hi Phil

Which Mint did you install and do you still have the original configuration of the Acer One?
In my case, I replaced the hard disk with an SSD and installed 2 GB of memory.

[old_noob]

In my case, I replaced the hard disk with an SSD and installed 2 GB of memory.

I also own an elderly Aspire One and am thinking about getting an SSD for it now that prices are so low. How much difference did it make in your case?

[karlchen]

Hi, guys.

I have got an Acer Aspire On D260 from 2010. Has got a 250 GB Sata harddisk. The real bottleneck is the single core Atom CPU 450N with hyperthreading and the 990 MB of memory, which I have never bothered to upgrade to 2 GB.
Running it as a triple boot Linux machine nonetheless. Must be some kind of technical masochism.

Karl

Xubuntu 18.04.1 32-bit
(fresh installation)

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System:    Host: paulchen Kernel: 4.15.0-44-generic i686 bits: 32 gcc: 7.3.0 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 (Gtk 2.24.31)
           Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Acer product: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A
           Mobo: Acer model: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A BIOS: Acer v: V1.08_Vodafone date: 06/29/2010
Battery    BAT0: charge: 18.2 Wh 100.0% condition: 18.2/48.8 Wh (37%) model: SANYO AL10B31 status: Full
CPU:       Single core Intel Atom N450 (-MT-) arch: Bonnell rev.10 cache: 512 KB
           flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3325
           clock speeds: max: 1666 MHz 1: 1662 MHz 2: 1662 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1024x600@60.03hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Pineview M x86/MMX/SSE2 version: 1.4 Mesa 18.0.5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.15.0-44-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8132 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c v: 1.0.1.1-NAPI port: 5000 bus-ID: 01:00.0
           IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 250.1GB (4.5% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_MK2565GS size: 250.1GB temp: 38C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 69G used: 8.7G (14%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.15GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 180 Uptime: 7 min Memory: 395.8/987.3MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 7.3.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.4.191) inxi: 2.3.56 

Linux Mint 18.3 32-bit xfce
(upgrade from Mint 17.1 to 17.2 to 17.3 to 18 and finally to 18.3)

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System:    Host: paulchen Kernel: 4.4.0-141-generic i686 bits: 32 gcc: 5.4.0 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 (Gtk 2.24.28)
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Acer product: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A
           Mobo: Acer model: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A BIOS: Acer v: V1.08_Vodafone date: 06/29/2010
Battery    BAT0: charge: 18.6 Wh 100.0% condition: 18.6/48.8 Wh (38%) model: SANYO AL10B31 status: Full
CPU:       Single core Intel Atom N450 (-MT-) arch: Bonnell rev.10 cache: 512 KB
           flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3325
           clock speeds: max: 1666 MHz 1: 1666 MHz 2: 1333 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.18.4 ) drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1024x600@60.03hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Pineview M x86/MMX/SSE2 version: 1.4 Mesa 18.0.5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-141-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8132 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c v: 1.0.1.1-NAPI port: 5000 bus-ID: 01:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Broadcom BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 250.1GB (4.5% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_MK2565GS size: 250.1GB temp: 37C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 70G used: 8.6G (14%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.15GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 186 Uptime: 7 min Memory: 265.2/989.2MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.3.56

Linux Mint 18.1 32-bit xfce
(fresh installation)

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System:    Host: paulchen Kernel: 4.4.0-141-generic i686 bits: 32 gcc: 5.4.0 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 (Gtk 2.24.28)
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Acer product: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A
           Mobo: Acer model: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A BIOS: Acer v: V1.08_Vodafone date: 06/29/2010
Battery    BAT0: charge: 18.6 Wh 100.0% condition: 18.6/48.8 Wh (38%) model: SANYO AL10B31 status: Full
CPU:       Single core Intel Atom N450 (-MT-) arch: Bonnell rev.10 cache: 512 KB
           flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3325
           clock speeds: max: 1666 MHz 1: 1333 MHz 2: 1666 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1024x600@60.03hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Pineview M x86/MMX/SSE2 version: 1.4 Mesa 18.0.5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-141-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8132 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c v: 1.0.1.1-NAPI port: 5000 bus-ID: 01:00.0
           IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Broadcom BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 250.1GB (5.7% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_MK2565GS size: 250.1GB temp: 38C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 70G used: 12G (18%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.15GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 173 Uptime: 7 min Memory: 253.7/989.2MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.3.56

[absque fenestris]

In my case, I replaced the hard disk with an SSD and installed 2 GB of memory.

I also own an elderly Aspire One and am thinking about getting an SSD for it now that prices are so low. How much difference did it make in your case?

I could take the 120 GB SSD from a broken HP mini. The 2 GB RAM was contributed by a broken MacBook.

I can only say that the Acer One in its original state with Windows 7 (stupid version) was an absolute piece of crap.
Now with Mint 18.3 it is much more usable than my Android tablet.
Well, the screen - it's just a mess.

[karlchen]

Well, the screen - it's just a mess.

No, not a mess. It is really, really small, not to call it tiny, 1024x600 pixels.

[absque fenestris]

Well, the screen - it's just a mess.

No, not a mess. It is really, really small, not to call it tiny, 1024x600 pixels.

It is really, really small, not to call it tiny - and this poor 1024 x 600 pixels in the worst possible quality - Yes.

But - somehow - we like all these technical cripples.
Is it the challenge? A certain pity?
A Trabant or a Deux Chevaux on a German motorway in 2019 should also pose a certain challenge...

[tattyjacket]

Gosh, thanks everybody.
I would like to proceed with a RAM upgrade. Will it go to 2Gb?

I'm really rather fond of this little machine as it comes from my previous existence.....pre-divorce.
I also have what some people would describe as over fondness for my elderly vacuum cleaner.

On the plus side, this little Acer Aspire has a lovely screen and to my mind, a really nice keyboard.....maybe I like it because I'm a musician?

Thanks.....and great to come across other Aspire One owners.
Phil

[AZgl1800]

Hi,
I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook computer around ten years ago. Back in those days, tablets were just appearing but out of my price range. The idea of a tiny laptop really appealed to me.
When I bought it, it was running Linux Linpus. It wasn't a very appealing distro. Soon, I changed it to Ubuntu which slowed it down even more. Finally I settled on Lubuntu which was just about OK.
Quite honestly, I forgot about this little phase in my personal journey and for some time my Aspire One took up residence in a cupboard.
Last week, I was given an ageing HP laptop. I decided to try to install Linux Mint to it and was amazed at the result. It made me wonder whether Mint would run on my Aspire One. Well, it does. In fact, it runs really well....finally, it has become the item that I really wanted when I bought it all those years ago.
Phil

Reading this reminded me that I have an Acer Aspire 5253 released in 2010 IIRC ??
I dug it out, and booted it up, it has Mint 18.3 Xcfe on it, and the Update manager tells me there or 97 Updates waiting to be installed.

it works like a charm, not as fast as my Daily Driver with 12gB RAM and 1.8gHz cpu, but even with a spinning platter, it still is responsive enough to use on the internet w/o feeling like I am being held back.

unlike Microsoft's attitude, these older PCs are still very much usable, and can perform well with some version of Linux on them

[absque fenestris]

Old machines and stuff. I have already disrespected the screen quality of the Acer netbook.
Unfortunately it doesn't get any better with age and I have to say the same about my eyes - after an hour of looking at the Acer, my eyes start watering and I see everything blurred twice.
Well, as an alternate I used my Macbook (also from 2009) where El Capitan and Mate Rosa lived together in a beautiful symbiosis - the screen is by classes - if not worlds - better, and the machine is equipped with an illuminated keyboard. So far so good.
3 weeks ago my Mac hard disk broke down (that means, it's still running, but with absolutely amazing effects e.g. Mac without Finder but Vivaldi and music in operation or dear Rosa works well in her virtual world, while the night has broken at the host...)

Time for a new, nice, fast computer - it's clearance sale now anyway and I'm looking around a bit.

From cheap to about 1000 Swiss Franc/Euro/Dollar: a collection of garbage.
Especially the keyboards: Are manufacturers freaking out? And Hey! - for a thousand they could already be illuminated. Connections? ... !

I saw at least 3 models that I liked:

1. Apple MacBook Air (the old model) nice, but technically obsolete Fr. 864.-
2. HP Omen. i7, lots of ports & DVD, a real heavy brick for Fr. 1700.-
3. Huawei MateBook Pro. i7, 2000 x 3000 Screen, Thunderbolt. Minimalistic, but beautiful. Yes, indeed and with 16GB RAM for Fr. 2000.-

So, I bought 2 x 4GB RAM and a 240GB SSD for my old MacBook...

[lsemmens]

Best bit of money you ever spent, I'd suggest.

[absque fenestris]

Best bit of money you ever spent, I'd suggest.

For a hundred bucks, I redressed Rosa. She's really pretty now and how fast she is...

[BG405]

I'm using an Acer Aspire One D255E as my travelling companion (I use it at the local watering holes); although stickered as having an N550 CPU - dual-core @ 1.5GHz, it reports an N570 @ 1.66GHz & I swapped the RAM for a 2GB module.

Note that (many of) these machines only work with single-channel DDR3 RAM. Check before buying!

Previously using Mint 17.3 KDE 32-bit which runs rather well .. and a world away from the teeth-pulling experience of Win7. (I'll put the Mint KDE HDD back in & update it before 17.x reaches EOL, as I can use that in VirtualBox for printing since I've had no luck so far getting the printer driver to work on 64-bit OSes). Now running Manjaro KDE & it flies, even with the fancy desktop effects .. which are actually helpful for my workflow.

Great little machine although the display viewing angles on these netbooks leaves a lot to be desired; still perfectly good for general use however obviously not ideal for graphics work. Just need to repair the case lugs & put the case screws back in.

[RaphaRB]

Well, the screen - it's just a mess.

I've found somewhere three line commands to adjust screen resolution:

To get 1024x768 squashed just run the following in Terminal:
xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x600 --panning 1024x768 --scale 1.0x1.28

To get 1024x768 panned just run the following in Terminal:
xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x600 --panning 1024x768 --scale 1.0x1.0

To go back to normal "it's just a mess" resolution (1024x600) just run the following in Terminal:
xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x600 --panning 1024x600 --scale 1.0x1.0

These three commands can be saved as txt files in a folder easy to open (Desktop is the best), you can chang propperties/permissions checking "Allow executing file as program", so clicking on them will change resolution almost instantly.

Files are attached bellow to help.

[RaphaRB]

After some searching, I've found a post right on this forum and the page where probably I've seen it first.

Another page teaches how to include one of these commands on autostart. I haven't tried, nor intend to do so.

This one tells a lot of things but I'm a newbye here. Even if it (maybe) don't seems... LOL!

A page in Portuguese tells we gotta run "xrandr" without parameters to see (1) name of screen (I've never seen other name than "LVDS1", at least for integrated screen) and (2) all supported resolutions of this screen.

I think that if we have another screen attached (VGA or HDMI), we would be able to change its virtual resolution just replacing "LVDS1" by "HDMI1". I haven't tried it and I don't know if I will be able to.

[absque fenestris]

Well, the screen - it's just a mess.

I've found somewhere three line commands to adjust screen resolution:

Hello RaphaRB

thank you very much for your recommendations. But the resolution is not the problem - I even found a script that displays GIMP completely on this mini monitor...

The problem is simply the poor quality of the screen - Well! - the thing was cheap and stays cheap, even the best software won't help if the cheapest hardware was used.

[BG405]

I even found a script that displays GIMP completely on this mini monitor...

I'd be interested in that, where did you find it? GIMP is the only program I currently use for image editing. I did some searching but no luck so far.

[secureIT]

Tipp for handling the resolution of this and other netbooks that have a small screen-resolution:

LM is designed for desktops and so some of the native LM-screens and apps are not fully viseable on the native screen of the netbooks.

There is a script, that let you change the native netbook-resolution virtually to a higher Level.

Its called newrez and you can get it here :

https://dl.opendesktop.org/api/files/do ... rez.tar.gz

Once you downloaded and upacked it you have to make it executable with terminal-command chmod a+x ...
or (if installed Xfce) with thunar by : Properties >Access rights> File may be started as a program.

Next step : rename it from newrez.sh to newrez ( without file extension)
Then open the folder

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/user/bin/

(with admin-rights) and copy it into the folder.

Next step : install zenity (its needeed for handling of the change of resolution within a settings-window.

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apt install zenity

After that : reboot.

Now you can run the terminal-command :

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newrez

and you will see a window for the settings.
There you can enter 1280x750 e.g.
To go back to the native resolution ..... same way and enter 1024x600

If you confirmed by clicking o.k. the resolution will change immediately (no reboot necessary)

You can do the same thing if you create starters for it.
Commands will be : newrez 1280x750
or : newrez 1024x600
You can even run at startup with the higher virtual Resolution by adding the command to your start-programs.

Note : newrez will not damage your hardware-screen.
It is only a script for tunneling the higher resolution to the low-resolution Screen.

edit: tested and worked on compaq-mini cq10, hp-mini 110, hp-mini 5101 …… with LM 18 and LM 19

[BG405]

There is a script, that let you change the native netbook-resolution virtually to a higher Level.
Its called newrez and you can get it here :
https://dl.opendesktop.org/api/files/do ... rez.tar.gz
...
Now you can run the terminal-command :
newrez

and you will see a window for the settings.
There you can enter 1280x750 e.g.
To go back to the native resolution ..... same way and enter 1024x600

If you confirmed by clicking o.k. the resolution will change immediately (no reboot necessary)

Excellent! This is something I'd been thinking of but wouldn't have known how to do myself. It works OK on Manjaro KDE too but with some resolutions, the panel is confined to a 1024x600 area, i.e. it can't be moved to the bottom of the screen. Works fine on 1280x720 and a few other resolutions. I'll see if I can contact the author about that.

Note the directory is /usr/bin/ & also, the file in the archive was already "newrez" without an extension; the author must have changed that, so I just copied as-is to /usr/bin/ & made executable
(I used sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/newrez).

In my case, zenity was already present so no reboot necessary. apt policy zenity might be worth a check. I just had a look at my LM18.2 KDE system & it's already installed there, too:

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brian@BG-Aspire-ES1-111M ~ $ apt policy zenity
zenity:
  Installed: 3.18.1.1-1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 3.18.1.1-1ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 3.18.1.1-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Easiest way to change is e.g. newrez 1280x720 as this avoids having to use the popup GUI dialog & you get to keep the tested resolutions in your bash history.