Any Linux distros *fully working* on AA1?

I think it's just aufs (http://aufs.sourceforge.net/), but I'm yet to try it myself.

 

Question for Linpus users: Can you place an SD card in one of the slots after booting and have it automatically recognized? I've got an AO-150 (I wanted the 120GB HDD) and am currently running Fedora 10 alpha, but the card slots are not fully functional. I want this functionality!

--
RockDoctor

 

Yes.

 

Jim, could you please enlighten? What is it you exactly did and in which distro?
Thanks!

 

Jim,

How do I pass this parameter?

Thanks,

Allan

 

To pass module parameters..

From the command line or scripts when you load the module..

Code:

modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1

At boot time in Debian lanny, maybe others - in /etc/modules..

Code:

pciehp pciehp_force=1

To set this as a default option for when pciehp is loaded by whatever - in /etc/modules.conf..

Code:

options pciehp pciehp_force=1

I copied (but am not yet using) the Acer supplied /usr/sbin/jmb38x_d3e.sh script from the recovery disk which loads the module and polls for card events.
It does not set that parameter explicitly in that script (maybe it's set in /etc/modules.conf) so unless you set the options in modules.conf you'll need to
add the parameter (as detailed in the first option above) to line 11.

 

Thank you.

That did the trick for me. Next question: how about using an xD card in the right-hand slot with another distro? Is there an existing module or a kernel module source I can compile?

 

Mandriva 2008.1 works flawlessly here. I installed it into a 8GB Kingston DataTraveller 101 thumbdrive.

 

I've tried Fedora, Ubuntu and onelinux on this. In the end, I went back to Linpus.

My needs are possibly specialized. I have another user in the house who not only needs something ultra simple, but also needs Japanese support. Linpus' Japanese support is excellent. (I uninstalled all the other language packs, which gave me about .3 gigs of space, and installed scim-anthy through yum.)

I added the GDM login and created a second account for myself, with fluxbox as the WM for it. Although I have to run a little script to use wireless, it's trivial.

Fluxbox was actually what made my decision. Out of the three mentioned above, onelinux did the best job, but fluxbox in onelinux was very slow. The trouble with either Fedora or Ubuntu is that I have the 8 Gig SSD and doing massive updates with either one was painful. At one point, installing Hardy and trying to update to Intrepid, it said it was going to take 6 hours, though this went down to 4 hours after about 45 minutes.

Linpus has a lot of limitations, but I don't use this machine for too much. It's mainly for traveling. I have nxserver on my main server/workstation and put the nxclient on this, so I can always reach my server and work from there.

Although I would prefer FF3, again, for the uses to which I plan to put this box, it's not worth the trouble. I bought the least expensive--this is one reason I chose the Aspire, it was less expensive than similar machines. There were a few even less expensive, including the Sylvania, but the Aspire seemed a better quality machine.

Having decided that I wouldn't spend much on this, since A) I wasn't sure how much I would actually use it and B) netbooks tend to be obsolete by the time they're unboxed, I chose this model. If it were definitely my final netbook, I would have gone with the XP version, though I would have wiped it without booting into XP. I think that the extra 512MB of RAM and the drive with better write speed would have been far superior for installing another distro.

So....not needing a lot of things that I see other people using, I find that despite the limitations, Linpus not only does an adequate job, but is actually quite fast with fluxbox.
If I were a Gnome person, I probably would have stuck with onelinux, which seemed to give the best performance of the various things I ran on this.

Had I gotten the XP version, then I'd probably run Fedora, as we use CentOS at work, and therefore, RH based distros (which of course, fits Linpus too) are the ones with which I'm most familiar.

Again--this is for my needs. Were I planning to make heavier use of the machine and use it for more complex tasks, I would have spent the extra $30 USD (at J&R in Manhattan, where I live) and gotten the 120 Gig HDD one.

Hope this is of use to someone, or at least of general interest. If I were using it just for myself, I would have at least tried Arch, since it can be such a lightweight distro, and it's actually my favorite flavor of Linux. However, to make a user friendly user for the other person here would have taken too much effort to do what Linpus basically already does.

 

Onelinux (http://onelinux.org/) claims to be a distro that has been tuned especially for the AA1. The website is rather sparse, i.e. not a lot of info yet. You can download the distro. The screenshots look cool, but when I ran the liveCD on another PC it looked differently in the default mode. I suggest to keep an eye on this site and if you do install Onelinux post your experiences

 

I was able to get CentOS 5.2 running on an Aspire One with 1.5GB of RAM and 120GB HD.

I got most of the information from the following two pages :

http://www.microlinux.fr/article.php3?id_article=47
and
http://www.vincentverhagen.nl/2008/08/1 ... itx-board/

I did the following :

hooked up an external USB DVD
booted from the CentOS 5.2 DVD with "linux nonet" (the RTL8169 driver appears to be problem for the Aspire One) and proceeded with a normal installation
rebooted after the installation from the CentOS DVD again, this time with "linux rescue nonet"
the rescue mode mounts the local HD as /mnt/sysimage
cd /mnt/sysimage/etc/modprobe.d/
edited blacklist by putting in a line "blacklist r8169"
booted to CentOS
mounted the CentOS DVD and loaded the following packages (hopefully I haven't missed any in this note)

kernel-headers-2.6.18-92.el5.i386.rpm
glibc-headers-2.5-24.i386.rpm
glibc-devel-2.5-24.i386.rpm
libgomp-4.1.2-42.el5.i386.rpm
gcc-4.1.2-42.el5.i386.rpm
kernel-devel-2.6.18-92.el5.i686.rpm

downloaded r8101-1.006.00.zip (from the Intel site) compiled and installed the RTL8101 driver and rebooted

I haven't tested everything but I do have Xwindows and a network.

 

For wireless, there's an article (DISCLOSURE--I wrote it) on wireless on the CentOS wiki.

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops/WirelessAR5007EG

 

I've heard others say this but I don't see any evidence of that, so what makes you say that?

 

Well, after I bought mine, the 6 cell theoretically became available. Dell came out with theirs (although in comparison I think the Acer is the better choice in most respects, especially when considering price.)

(Scratch that theoretically from the first sentence--apparently the 6 cell is being sold and delivered from a Canadian supplier.)