Ubuntu 10.10 on Aspire One A150L

Greetings. I've been the owner of an Aspire One A150L for nearly two years, and recently I've decided to change the (somewhat sucky) Linpus Linux (despite being tuned, updating and installing apps was a headache, and if you didn't turn it off OK, spent nearly 5 minutes attempting to reboot scanning the hard disk and rebooting several times; I only liked the just 20 seconds needed to boot) for the last Ubuntu distro (10.10, "Maverick Meerkat"))
I installed the Beta version just to test it; it was flawlessly and -interesting- the RC and the definitive version hanged up when attempting to install from USB (of course), despite using both Ubuntu's disk creator and Unebootin, so I had to update everything using the update manager-. Here're my personal impressions:

*Boot time: not so fast (roughly 30 seconds), but at least you have a login screen.

*Interface: in my opinion, the new Unity interface *sucks*; it gave me lots of trouble in Beta that I'd like to think those problems have been corrected. (I'd notice I've been using versions 9.04 and 10.04 in other netbook and that I'm used to the netbook remix interface; it has been said there will be the option (installing packets) of having a 10.10 with the Netbook Remix look); the Desktop interface, with its taskbar above the screen, etc. works flawlessly -unlike in 9.04 and 10.04 where it was unusable as the taskbar was out of screen-.

*Hardware: nearly everything detected out of the box. Microphone (that I believed was damaged, since with Linpus did not work) worked after a few tweaks with the terminal. Both card readers are not detected and need terminal commands to make them to work; however, they read just SD cards -XD cards do not work with them, an issue that comes from much time ago-. However, the computer detects card readers and using them is possible to read XD cards; I don't know about other types of cards since I don't use them.

It's your choice, but I recommend it; also, now stuff as MP3 support, etc. can be installed during installation (unlike previous releases)

 

I am undecided about 10.10. I installed it, but sofar am not overly impressed. I preferred the previous UNE layout, package manager is currently whining about a few errors, performance is still not great and I have some problem finding my external USB sticks and harddrives in the filemanager.

Then again, it is quite complete and up to date. Media just works. Office just works. Which was not the case without tweaking in MeeGo, which I had installed before.
That however was MUCH, and I mean MUCH, faster ...

 

How have you guys optimised your AAO for Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10 (I am using the old 8GB SSD version and wanna make it as fast as possible, still with only 512Mb tho)

Thanks in advance

 

I agree with you; Ubuntu Software Center sometimes gives trouble if you try to install a downloaded package (ie: Opera) with it; use instead Gdebi, that's much more reliable, and sometimes Firefox crashes without warning and appears its crash report dialog (however, since I upgraded from Beta to RC and from there to the final release, both may be things that do not appear in a clean installation)

As I said, I loved -and love as my other netbook still has and will have 10.04 (at least until Natty Narwhal is released)- Netbook Remix (Linpus should have been as it) and it was much better than Unity, that I find cumbersome and even sometimes making strange things (refusing to open Nautilus, etc), at least in Beta, but since the desktop version works flawlessly on the small screen of the AAO I'll stay with it.

Surely everything will be fixed with future updates.


Two more things I forgot to add:

*Microphone works after some tweaking with commands, but it has lots of noise, easily noticeable when you play recordings. It may be related to Pulse Audio and not a fault of the micro itself -time to check Internet for that issue-.

*By default, the fan is permanently on. Apart of noise -that does not molest me-, it results on a continual drain of the battery. There're ways that also involve the use of commands to make the computer much quieter, just starting the fan when it's needed.

 

Another big vote for Lubuntu 10.10.

I have been running Lubuntu 10.10 for about a month on a AAO ZG5 (Canadian version of the A110L) with the SSD and the RAM doubled.

Boot times are nice. 25 secs with Linpus. 60 secs with Ubuntu NBR 9.04. 40 secs with Lubuntu 10.10. And that is until the first web page is up and booting from a slow SD card.
All the HW seems to work.
Dropbox, TrueCrypt, vpnc, and Wesnoth work fine.
Skype worked with no twiddling. Under Lubuntu 10.10 the built in mic works. Under 9.04 it was hard to get it to work and it was too weak. I had to use an external mic under 9.04. (The speaker is still marginal.)
I think my battery performance is worse but I have made no effort to improve it.
Conky works better with Lubuntu.
One tiny weirdness, Chrome (the default browser) fails to connect at some hotspots that do re-directs so I had to install Firefox.
You can boot from the SD card without having to do the modprobe and regenerating the initial ram fs steps required by 9.04. This also simplifies backup, reduces wear on the SSD, and gives you more room. Here are my notes.

• Get the Lubuntu CD image and follow the instructions on the Ubuntu site to create a live USB key.
  Put a SD card in the LH slot. I used a slow, cheap 32G one.
  Boot into Lubuntu and do a normal install except choose advanced partitioning.
  Watch out that you are affecting the right device. The partitioner seems to like listing the SD card first. I used ext4 for all the partitions. I do not think the choice is critical.
  Make a 300M partition on the SSD and CHOOSE the mount point /boot
  Make the rest of the SSD another partition and TYPE IN a mount point of /media/SSDLeftOver (Or whatever)
  Make all of the SD card a partition and CHOOSE the mount point /
  On the advanced options button make sure the Grub 2 boot loader will be installed on the SSD, not on the SD card or on one of the partitions of the SSD.
  Ignore the warning about no swap. I am running Conky and it shows I have never gone above 20% RAM. Why waste 1G? The only down side is you cannot suspend. With a boot time of 40 secs I could care less. If you really want a swap you could create it on the SSD but that sort of goes against the reduce SSD use effort. If your SSD fails you are SOL. If your SD card fails you buy a new one and put it in. With this "/ on SD card" setup you are not using the SSD drive at all except for a few seconds during boot.

Lubuntu should boot and everything should work. You will probably get 3 errors that flash up on the screen during boot about no such device and no such mode. You can ignore them. I have looked into it and it is just a bit of sloppy coding in the boot script. When they search for boot devices they try about 4 different ways, some of which are not correct and cause the errors but the correct device is found in the end. If you want to fix them just enable no-graphic-boot option in the Grub 2 options file.
In a terminal type:

Code:

sudo leafpad /etc/default/grub

giving your password if asked
In the resulting leafpad window remove the # from the line #GRUB_TERMINAL=console
Save and exit leafpad
In the terminal type:

Code:

sudo update-grub

If you are not comfortable with the terminal check the repositories for a Grub 2 GUI front end.

Done.

 

John283.. thanks for this detailed rundown. I was having difficulties with getting my AOA110 booting from the SSD, but using this approach everything seems to work. I am actually using Linux Mint rather than Lubuntu but this still works.

 

How do I access the /SSDLeftOver folder? I may be doing something basically dumb but I cannot create folders or save files to the free space on the SSD

 

Recently installed Lubuntu 11.04 on my zg5.
I am impressed. Boot time is fast. The desktop is simple and pleasing to the eye.
Microphone noise and volume has always been a problem but not with 11.04. Simply need to tune with alsamixer and its good. Skype test calls were very clear.
Could not get cryptkeeper to work on 10.10 but it works fine in 11.04.
Have not had much time to test otherwise but impressed so far.

 

I used the approach detailed above by john283 but installed Linux Mint. It works great so I suggest you try the same approach for Ubuntu. I was going to try it but I am happy running Mint at the moment. I would be interested to hear how you get on.