Acer Aspire One (ZG5) and Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10 UMPC

Ok, got fed up with the Xubuntu installation and thought there’s time for something new. Atleast clean re-installation was needed.

After short tinkering, I remembered that I had stumbled upon Ubuntu UMPC image at some point, which of course had to be checked. The image had Intrepid Ibex, so I thought that it should be given a chance.

Downloaded the latest image from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-umpc/intrepid/current/ and had a quick look at the instruction page, as the image is in .img format. From the page you can download Ubuntu Imagewriter for easy GUI based install media creation.

Easiest way is to create the installation media by downloading the image, installing the Ubuntu Imagewriter and then using 1GB USB-stick as media. This image is intended to be “burned” to USB-stick.

Image creation is pretty easy. After you’ve installed the Imagewriter, insert a USB-stick to USB port and launch Imagewriter from terminal: $ sudo imagewriter

Browse the downloaded image, select the correct USB-stick and click “Write to device”. Then wait. After the writing is done, you can close the program and remove the stick.

Now you can test the USB-stick on a computer which can boot from USB device. Do note that this will not work on every computer having USB boot possibility and all wireless cards are not supported out of the box, like the Atheros card in Acer Aspire one. Don’t worry though, it works after installation and working out the driver files for it.

This image is quite stripped due to the limitations of the image size. You’ll get midbrowser, mozilla based internet browser (which I don’t like..), Openoffice.org, Media player etc. Few things probably will be on you installation list as additions I’d assume and apt-get works fine. Overall feeling is happy. I’ve been on the impression that this is slightly faster than my Xubuntu 8.04 installation, but that’s just me Quite impressive, I’d say.

Installation works like normal Ubuntu LiveCD installation, so no differences there. After the installation is done, you might want to get rid of the automatic window maximize feature. Open terminal and: $ pkill devilspie

Now opening a program won’t maximize it straight away. To enable the feature, open terminal and:  $ devilspie -a /etc/devilspie.cfg

This will enable the window maximization to all open programs/windows.

To get the Wireless work on Acer Aspire one, have a look at my earlier post here. I’d recommend installing nano and mc while you’re on the roll, just to have a fast terminal based text editor which does not require inhuman capabilities and neat terminal based file explorer etc. Firefox might be good to install also, or some other internet browser of you liking.

That’s basically it. Installation is very easy, tweaks for the UMPC world seem fit and thought over.

Acer Aspire One (ZG5) Hands on experiences, part #2

Hey everyone,

I’ve been using this little bugger now for few days with Xubuntu Hardy 8.04.1 and thought that a part #2 post would be good. Otherwise the Edits to older posts will be unnoticed and important notes might “fade to the noise”.

So, those few things I’ve promised to try out:

Movie playback
Playing movie that has been ripped to .iso file from external usb hard drive works fine
Playing movie that has been ripped to .iso file from 8Gb SDHC card placed to Storage Expansion slot (formatted as ext2) works fine
Playing actual DVD from DVD-drive connected to usb – You need to install xubuntu-restricted-extras ($ sudo apt-get install xubuntu-restricted-extras – works fine

At this point some of you are asking “why/how is he using DVD movies ripped into .iso files?”. Quick and dirty answer is that I have most of movies backed up as .iso files, and I don’t have to carry an external DVD drive with me to watch movies.
To get the movies to .iso, I use dvd95 program to “compress” the original DVD to fit to DVD5 disc in case I need to burn the movies back to disk. Kids are quite efficient in destroying DVD’s.. and no, I’m not concerned about the quality. If I want top quality, I’ll go and buy full HD TV or projector and BluRay-player.
When I’ve moved the .iso file to the PC I want to watch it, I’ll mount it as loop device with command $ sudo mount -o loop /path/to/the/isofile /path/for/desired/mountpoint. remember to have the mountpoint folder created. Then open vlc and point it to open the DVD from the mountpoint you used.

Heat dissipation
Ok, this one I noticed yesterday late at night. I was sitting in bed with a small pillow under the laptop for some time. The laptop started to really heat up and the reason seems to be that almost all of the ventilation grille is pointing down and only small part of the grille is facing to the side from the case. As the pillow was blocking the grille facing down, the heat could not dissipate well enough. Not a big deal, but still something to bare in mind.

Touchpad
I’m not a fan of this kind of pointer device. Stick is much more user friendly, though it costs much more and replacement part price for keyboard with stick is ridiculous. First few days went on finding the correct setting to disable Touchpad tapping and scrolling. To disable tapping and scrolling, you need to modify xorg.conf file. Open terminal of your favor and..

$ sudo mcedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
now find the part that says
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"

Add the following line to the end of this section, above the EndSection
Option "TouchpadOff" "2"

Now log out and back in, result should be that touchpad is not scrolling anymore, and tapping is disabled.

External display settings
This I’m still working on.. I’ll edit this post as soon as I’ve got some solid settings/info gathered.

EDIT:
Screensaver and lock screen
As I use this computer at work, it’s vital for me to be able to lock the screen when I leave my desk. By default, Xubuntu seems to have a bug that prevents screensaver and thus screen locking to execute. To fix it, you need to add gnome-screensaver to autostarted apps under Settings – Settings Manager.
Click + Add then enter a preferred name, for example Gnome-Screensaver, description can be for example Gnome Screensaver Daemon and command is /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver and hit Ok. Log out and back in, modify screensaver settings to your desired choice, then right click the little icon for Quit-button in panel and click on properties and select action type as Quit + Lock screen.

Tsclient and tsclient panel applet
Again an work-required program/tool issue. As I work also with several Windows servers, I need to have terminal server client (RDP client) installed, with panel-applet so it’s fast and easy to open connections to remote servers.
Install tsclient package ($ sudo apt-get install tsclient) and try that it works. Create one quick connect entry as saving connection details for testing purposes. Now install xfce4-xfapplet-plugin ($ sudo apt-get install xfce4-xfapplet-plugin) and right click on panel – add new item. Browse to end of the list, click on Xfapplet, then Add, and then choose Terminal Server Client Applet. Terminal server panel applet should now show up on your panel.

Acer Aspire One (ZG5) hands on experience

Hi everyone!

Got one of these little subnotebooks to my hands for a short period and here’s a small summary about it.

So far I’ve tried out the Linpus Linux preinstalled to the laptop very briefly, as it had to make way for Windows XP SP3. Yep, got that right and no, it was not pleasure. Pain would describe the experience more.

Biggest reason is the very slow SSD hard drive. It just isn’t even feasible with Windows. Not even if you try to use fast SD card on the storage expansion slot for swap. It’s quite easy to get devices work in XP, as Acer kindly provides drivers for the laptop.

So, that was covered fast. Then to the part that was more interesting for me personally. Xubuntu 8.04.1 in a very, very small laptop. I was a bit afraid how the keyboard would fit for me, as i’m almost two meters tall. So far, I’ve had at least decent experience with it.

Biggest problem with the laptop and Xubuntu is the wireless card. It won’t work “off the shelf” and little tweaking was needed. Installation instructions will be posted on a separate quide and I will also post a separate post about device technical spesifications and how I installed Xubuntu to it.

Everything else seems to work out of the box.

As the out of the box configuration has only 512Mb of memory, I did an memory upgrade also. Didn’t take any pictures though, so we’ll have to see if I come across dismantling the laptop again. Will take pictures then, I promise! Verbal instructions coming up in a separate post also.

After the upgrade, things seemed a bit faster, but that was when the XP was installed. Xubuntu was installed onto the laptop with the additional memory already in place.

Next things to try out include bluetooth connectivity to phone to gain mobile internet over GPRS/EDGE/3G and how well the battery lasts in usual work/everyday usage. Also thought to try out playing videos, I have some movies in MPEG4 H264 which should stress the video playback enough. More about those when I have some experience..

EDIT: Tried to get Bluetooth connectivity to phone and internet-access via that way, and was not too hard. Biggest part is to find out correct settings for your service provider and phone model. Rest is just finding out correct channel etc. (I think I need to dump a post about using BT and mobile phone as internet connectivity)

Also, video playback seems to work out fine, just remember to ditch Totem Movie Player and get VLC. Tried with MPEG4 H.264 clip. Still need to try out DVD-playback with DVD-drive connected to USB and .iso file from internal storage and external USB drive..

Battery life with 3cell version is weak. There’s few tweaks that should help out, just remember to keep backlight as low as your eyes can take..