Lynx Blog » Aspire One

NM problems on Linpus Linux Lite

Dougie — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:18:11 +0000

I haven’t touched this distribution in at least a year but someone asked me to look at one earlier today. The symptom – “it wont connect to the Internet – there’s not even an icon in the system tray”.

Linpus is pretty restrictive, I opened Nautilus by clicking “Documents” on the home screen, then a terminal using “File->Terminal”. Running nm-applet from the command line reveals a segfault. Running “sudo nm-applet” doesn’t cause a segfault and allows a connection, obviously lacking access to the keyring. Once connected to a network, running the update application shows a new version of nm-applet available. I ran the updates, rebooted and the issue is solved. It must have been broken in the last set of updates, ran before the user lost nm-applet. I wasn’t near a wired connection, which would probably be picked up and also allow an update.

Hope this helps someone. It does illustrate the downside of obfuscation – in this case the user has no feedback as to why there is no network connection.

Replacing Linpus Linux Lite on the Acer Aspire One

Aspire One flat battery

Dougie — Fri, 28 May 2010 21:06:07 +0000

I have been away for nearly five months. In that time my Aspire One’s battery has, unsurprisingly, gone totally flat. However it wont charge. This device’s power supply seems to have issues, it has gone through more fuses than any device I’ve had. The battery life is not really good enough for a netbook (mind you my Samsung NC-10 doesn’t get much over six hours after the six months I’ve owned it). The weirdest thing is that it will not turn on when the battery is connected – on mains power with no battery it boots fine.

So I stuck the battery in after it was booted and it charges… I’m at a loss to explain this. I’d have thought charging was carried out at hardware level.

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Installing Arch on the Aspire One

Dougie — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:47:27 +0000

I reinstalled Arch from scratch on an Aspire One today, something I haven’t done for a while. I’ve updated my wiki page to reflect the changes since the end of last year.

http://wiki.lynxworks.eu/aspireone/arch

Experimenting with Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Dougie — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:45:08 +0000

I have an Acer Aspire One, which I’m quite fond of. It’s surprisingly versatile or at least it is once I removed Linpus Linux Lite from it. I’ve nothing against Linpus, it has a purpose and most people are happy with it.

Arch Linux has been happily installed on it for several months now but thanks to a combination of curiosity, brand loyalty and the magic that is partimage¹ I decided to give Ubuntu Netbook Remix a bash.

So I grabbed the USB image (1 Gb) and a copy of Imagewriter (not 1 Gb), plugged it in, rebooted and left the rest to the gods of ACPI implementation if it would boot.

That turned out to be a mute point as its a text install which after warning that your hard disk is about to be overwritten proceeded to copy files across and there I left it to run.

Now a sensible person who is working full time, contributing to Ubuntu, training in the gym and studying at the OU would utilise this time productively. I played Call of Duty World at War on the PS3 instead (DougieWougie if you’re interested). I got through a two full HQ games and it was done so I guess that it takes between 20 and 30 minutes to copy across.

Well the boot screen looks cool, boots reasonably quickly too – not as quick as Arch but quick enough. A few questions (language, time zone, keyboard setup, account name, password and if automatic login is required) and we’re up and running. Well after a minute or so but this is the initial boot so that’s to be expected.

Up and running!

I like the interface. Well the first thing everyone checks is their wireless and I’m pleased to say it works out of the box which is a first for me with Linux and a real plus over Arch which was a pain in the backside because of a DHCP bug. The screen resolution is right and the fonts look very crisp.

This only leaves power management to worry about – suspend works, so does resume (even Network Manager re-establishes a connection).

OK I’m off to have a play. This has been the most painless install I’ve ever done. Congratulations to the UDR team.

I have a 16 Gb stick which boots System Rescue CD. Then I can happily create images using partimage.

Acer Aspire One

Dougie — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:08:53 +0000

Checking me server logs (as you do), I’ve seen a lot of hits from people searching for information of the Aspire One – looking for information on enabling the right click menu and editing the panels.xml file.

I don’t have the vanilla install of Linpus Linux Lite (nothing wrong with it – I just prefer Arch) but I thought I’d mention that anything I did encounter while using it is available on my Wiki:

Add an XFCE menu to the Aspire One panel

Replacing Linpus Linux Lite on the Acer Aspire One

Dougie — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:18:35 +0000

I love my Aspire One but have come to be less impressed by the Linpus distro installed. So at the weekend I decided to try Arch Linux, which as a long time Slackware fan I had heard worked well and had good documentation.

Its all up and running and other than two quirks, the guide on Arch Wiki is spot on.

As I said, I came across two quirks – the install image used kernel 2.6.26, which detects the r8196 module for the network but for some reason will not answer a dhcp request after reboot (only after reboot) – so replace it with 2.26.27 before reboot. You’ll need to anyway because the Atheros wireless chipset in the Aspire One is supported OOB on the more recent kernel.

The second is well documented, that ext2 partitions on SD are corrupted on suspend. I opted for an XFS partition though and have not had any issues.

The only things I haven’t got working are suspend to RAM and the WiFi light (although the switch works). Neither of these is a show-stopper because I’ve got boot time down to under 18 seconds which is only a few seconds more than resume from RAM.

I’d also advise binning dhcpd and using wicd – which integrates well with XFCE and being a daemon means WiFi is up before you’ve got a desktop.

Really impressed with Arch, a distro I haven’t used before. It’s from the minimalist camp and allows a tailored installation with little or no cruft. Its documentation is fantastic (I have seen a few ideas that I intend to implement in Ubuntu!).

Add an XFCE menu to the Aspire One panel

Dougie — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:51:35 +0000

Acer have made some alterations to the xfce4-panel, you probably noticed that you can’t right click and add launchers.

Edit: For anyone who came here to find out how to enable the “advanced menu” or XFCE menu on right click – Open your documents, click “File->Terminal” and type “xfce-setting-show” or just “xfce-se” then hit tab. Click “Desktop->Behaviour” and then tick “Show desktop menu on right click”.

I have a workaround but haven’t worked out why yet. Open a terminal (from a Thunar window if you haven’t enable the right click on the desktop). Now if you look in .config/xfce4/panel there is your standard xml file to layout the panel. If you alter this, on relaunching the panel it overwrites it with the default.

The odd thing is that the un-patched panel is still there, and works as normal (look in /usr/bin – there are two panels, one renamed xfce4-panel.old). Well for some reason that I haven’t fathomed, if you kill the running panel then alter the config then run xfce4-panel.old then restart it the xml config is not overwritten.

Here’s a screenshot:

Weird

Lynx Blog » Aspire One

NM problems on Linpus Linux Lite

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Aspire One flat battery

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Installing Arch on the Aspire One

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Experimenting with Ubuntu Netbook Remix

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Acer Aspire One

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Replacing Linpus Linux Lite on the Acer Aspire One

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Add an XFCE menu to the Aspire One panel

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