Gentoo on Aspire One 110l

When I bought this laptop, it was shipped with windows, which I'm not very fund of.
My first task was thus to install linux on it, and as it's my favourite, I installed Gentoo Linux.

So after making a bootable gentoo usb key, I started the LONG process of installing gentoo.

I saw the link was allready included in another post, unfortunately the gentoo-wiki crashed a short time ago, so they are rebuilding it and the old link is not valid anymore, here is the new one: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Acer_Aspire_One_A110L

Before you begin, I insist on the fact that I wouldn't recommend Gentoo Linux to a Linux beginner, as everything has to be compiled from source.
As everything has to be compiled, gentoo is not a good choice neither to install on an SD drive, as these tend to die quickly in cases of intensive write accesses, and compilation does a lot of write accesses... Compilation also requires quite a lot of disk space for temp files, making the "small" capacity of the SD even more inadequate... so keep gentoo for hard drive instalations!

So far the latest install cd (2008.0) does not support neither the realtec controller nor the atheros wireless chipset... so that first part of the install was quite time consuming if not painfull.

After that I optimised my kernel (since gentoo-sources 2.6.27-gentoo-r7), everything works amazing. Except the SD card readers :lol:, also I didn't manage to do packet injection with the wifi adaptor (yet) :lol:

The system boots in 50 seconds (full boot) and takes up a bit less than 80 Mb of ram after login. Note that I run KDE 3.5.9 (which takes a considerable amount of ram). Once booted, the system is fast and responds quickly (ex; allowing me to run open-office, firefox (with 10 tabs open), thunderbird, skype (with camera...), ... while still linstening to music or watching a movie; all this together happening fluently)

[attachment=0:arhjvl0f]bootchart.png[/attachment:arhjvl0f]

I will also attach my kernel configuration file, in case it could help for the hardware support
(note: at the time of doing this post, the used kernel (2.6.28 (works faboulous)) was still masked in the Gentoo portage, to unmask it, add "sys-kernel/gentoo-sources -* ~*" (without the "") to your /etc/portage/package.keywords file)
The forum doesn't let me attach my text file, so just go to http://pastebin.com/f1b130269

Don't hesitate if you have questions or need more details about how to config!!!

Have fun
++

jupiter

 

Thanks a bundle for the config ^_^
my netbook should ship in 2 weeks and can't wait to get gentoo on it,
I noticed that the release candidate 1.1.4 of SystemRescueCd comes with the 2.6.27.r10 kernel,
so am gonna try to do a net install then

 

Gentoo is very sweet on this netbook. I'm running gentoo with the 2.6.28 kernel, which everything works. I'm using the development xorg drivers to use the full acceleration. 3D graphics are surprisingly quick. The only problem was having to emerge -e world to fix hangups that appeared to be related with interrupts shutting down after about a day. I don't have the 110, but the 150 with the hard drive and 62MB/sec makes compiling VERY fast.

 

im looking at this - i want to have a go at using the Aspire as a network server for a small LAN ( quiet, small, silent, cheap to run) +/- an external HD if needed. We ( ie SWMBO are also looking at low-voltage power supply for bits of the house ) to replace my existing gentoo server .


Ive mad e a bootable liveCD according to http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml ( except syslinux is now in /usr/share , not /usr/lib) but when booting , the Aspire says "no operating system found" and then ignores it. FWIW My ASUS 901 seems to ignore completely the USB stick.

Ive also made a minimal-install USB following http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/CompuLab_fit-PC, which works . but a lot of stuff doesnt seem to be detected ( eg wireless) so i dont really want to devote several days of my life to setting this up.

Any suggestions on the best way to sort this out ?

 

as far as i know,
the problem with those guides atm is that the shipped kernel doesn't supplies the drivers for the wireless nic atm
that's why i'm going to use the rc 1.1.4 systemrescuecd from my former post since that kernel comes with the drivers
and put

Code:

sys-kernel/gentoo-sources -* ~*

into my /etc/portage/package.keywords
before emerging the kernel
that should do the trick i think

 

Is suspend working now?

Did you do a stage 1 install? How long did it take to build everything?

Thanks for any info! I used to love gentoo on my old P3 Dell; took a week to build, but ran like a scalded ape. No distro I've ever used was that fast, even slackware back in the old days.

 

This is because this card reader can't be auto-detected unless there is a card inserted before booting. The solution is to supply some options and load the pciehp module. Drop this file

[attachment=0:1z1kvz1n]cardreader.gz[/attachment:1z1kvz1n]

into your /etc/modprobe.d and load the module.

 

I'm doing suspend through "s2ram -f"

Compiling everything with "emerge -e world" takes a day or two. I used to do stage 1 installs, but emerge -e world after I get everything set up seems to encounter fewer problems. This is the fastest gentoo laptop I've had yet.

 

Put

Code:

S2RAM_OPTS="-f"

in a file (I just call it config) in /etc/pm/config.d. You can now suspend to RAM with whatever program you choose to use or the "sleep" hot key.