AAO specs w/ Ubuntu

I have been using ubuntu with my older ladptop and I love it. But now I want to get the aao with SSD. I just cant wait for the 6 cell any longer. The only thing stopping me from buying the aao with 3 cell and 8GB SSD is that the battery life is 2.5hours and the RAM might not be sufficient enough for Ubuntu. I read that 512MB or RAM is barely enough for ubuntu. Is that true? Also, how long does the battery last with ubuntu as OS? I hate to ask so many questions at once but is the fact that SSD has slow writing speed effect ubuntu as it does to XP?

Thanks for your help.

 

I have the 3-cell Aspire One with the 8GB SSD. Using instructions linked from this site, I upgrade the memory from 512 MB to 1.5 GB. Battery life is generally bad - I get barely two hours, not 2.5, although I suspect I could do more to prolong battery life. Speed is not an issue, at least with the memory upgrade - the Aspire One is plenty fast for routine tasks, and I don't think the SSD's writing speed has any impact. If you are concerned about overhead, though, you might try switching to Xubuntu once you have Ubuntu installed.

 

Thanks for your reply. Battery life is important for me because I need this laptop for classes which some last over 2 hours. I guess Ill wait for the 6 cell.

 

I ran Ubuntu on a laptop with 512MB RAM for three years - until I sold it two weeks after purchasing my AAO. Never had a problem with it, but I did have a 512MB swap partition, and I didn't try to open 20 apps at once.

 

I run Ubuntu on the AA1/8G SSDD wiht 512M RAM. It's just fine, the system feels very lively. Most of my work is in OpenOffice applications, Opera, and Thunderbird with the occasional Wireshark session...haven't had any trouble to date.

Battery life is about 2:15 or so. I picked up an external APC battery that gives me an additional 3 hours for a total of just over 5 hours.

Perry
www.kidpub.com