Anger vs Keyboard

Discussion in 'Acer Aspire One' started by ice_cold_irony, Sep 26, 2008.

  1. ice_cold_irony

    ice_cold_irony

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    ::SUMMARY AT BOTTOM::
    Sooo....
    Last Friday I bought my little brother an Acer Aspire One, with 1.6ghz Atom, 1gb RAM , 6-cell battery and 8gig ssd,with LINPUS: open box model so we got 50-70 bucks off, somewhere in there. We get it home and the keyboard doesn't work, found the ACER suggestion that it may be a loose connector but it's not. The keyboard works perfectly in BIOS and if you boot off a live cd in Ubuntu. Also external keyboards don't work.

    Sooo...it's a keyboard driver issue that is a little tricky to fix. First issue, is Acer Canada's absolutely useless driver download selection. Next is that the keyboard driver is usually part of the linux kernel<just what I've picked up dicking around forums trying to fix this, I go for macs personally>

    Now we get into detailed problems. My brother hates the slimmed down, ugly ass Linpus that the computer is running now so he would be willing to scrap LINPUS entirely and go with another OS. So we tried installing UBUNTU but it would not because the 8gigs is not enough to hold LINPUS and UBUNTU under different partitions.

    We've tried the route of downloading LINPUS to make a LiveCD but the download is from Asia somewhere and I top at 14kb/s on a 10mb/s connection, basically downloading a 650meg file at 14k just isn't happening.


    ::SUMMARY::
    Basically, can I get a keyboard driver for LINPUS?

    OR

    Can I wipe the SSD and install UBUNTU without voiding the warranty?

    Thanks for your help everyone.
     
    ice_cold_irony, Sep 26, 2008
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  2. ice_cold_irony

    scottro

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    I can't see it voiding the warranty. You can always reinstall Linpus (there should be a recovery DVD that can be written to USB stick that came with it.)

    I think most of us who tried the 8 gig drive would completely wipe Linpus, install something else, then, if we didn't like it, put Linpus back again.

    However, IANAL (I am not a lawyer) so I could be wrong.
     
    scottro, Sep 26, 2008
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  3. ice_cold_irony

    ice_cold_irony

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    I thought so myself, but as it was open box<was a display unit> we only got the computer and power cable I called Acer about the CD and they pointed me to the download, which is as I said, pretty useless.

    Any ideas on WTF happened to the keyboard drivers?

    Seeing as everyone else is doing it, and it's better I'll just start installing Ubuntu.

    Thanks Scottro.

    Any other input is still appreciated.
     
    ice_cold_irony, Sep 26, 2008
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  4. ice_cold_irony

    ice_cold_irony

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    Wow...this quickly devolved into Anger vs Wireless Card.

    So...
    Installed Ubuntu, everything seems to work fine, if a bit jotty except the wireless card. Ubuntu happily informed me it was using proprietary drivers to make my card work...which it didn't.
    I looked around to see what I should do and it seemed like using NDISWRAPPER was a good plan. First try, got the 64bit and 32 bit .inf files and installed both with the 0.8.3 distro of NDISWRAPPER that Ubunutu gives you the option to install in the Add/Remove Programs listings. These clearly did not work.

    I then found and followed these instructions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=885847 on how to trouble shoot your Ubuntu wireless drivers.
    Found that the wireless device was unclaimed which pointed me to reinstalling NDISWRAPPER. The list suggests compiling the program from source so I followed their instructions on how to do so. Pointed me to the 1.53 distribution<why does Ubuntu point to one so old?> and went to work.
    These are the steps it gave me for compiling:
    cd ~/Desktop
    sudo -s
    apt-get install build-essential
    tar -xzvf ndiswrapper*
    cd ndiswrapper*
    make
    make install

    Everything seems fine until I get to the command:
    tar -xzvf ndiswrapper*
    That pops out
    tar: ndiswrapper-1.53: Cannot read: Is a directory
    tar: At beginning of tape, quitting now
    tar:error is not recoverable:exiting now

    gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
    tar: Child returned status 2
    tar: ndiswrapper-1.53.tar.gz: Not found in archive
    tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

    I've found the instructions for installing Ubuntu at www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=164 but the part for enabling WIFI also fails at the tar xzvf step.

    I am beginning to understand what a noob I am...it is discouraging and incredibly angering being at this level of computer user again. I don't think I've encountered something that took this long since I was 12 or 13, but that what you get as a Machead.

    Will doing a clean install of Ubuntu help and begin the steps from there? Should I go with another distro? Or can someone tell me whats going on/how to fix?

    Thanks again everyone.
     
    ice_cold_irony, Sep 27, 2008
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  5. ice_cold_irony

    scottro

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    Well, everyone starts as a newb, so don't even worry about that part.

    Actually ndiswrapper probably isn't the best idea, at least in my experience.

    I have a step by step about that card--some of the ones on the Ubuntu forums might be better, I don't know, but feel free to give it a test drive at

    http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu ... .html#5007

    Looking at your errors, seems like you might have already unzipped the tar file which is why it was having errors with the z (unzip) flag.

    At any rate, take a look at mine and let me know if it helps.
     
    scottro, Sep 27, 2008
    #5
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