Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready...

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

9.04 is working pretty well at the moment but there are only 9 days left and there is a limit to which we can expect things to change too radically by release day.

The problems with the SD/SDHC cards (and other formats AFAIK) have not been fully fixed and even with a modified kernel like sickboy's, the right hand card reader does not work properly (only works if card present at boot, frequent hardware errors in dmesg requiring a reboot to fix, others too numerous to mention).

Everything else that I have tested seems to work but still with odd quirks. PCM volume spontaneously resets to zero frequently resulting in no sound, visual feedback for brightness changes is usually wrong and a few other minor things but these are all tolerable.

In summary, 9.04 is looking good but I don't believe we shall have full out of the box support for the One until 9.10. I really like my One but I am jealous of the Ubuntu support the Dell Mini owners have. Using Linpus rather than Ubuntu was a considerable balls up by Acer in my view.

 

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

well lets hope some supplemental patches and fixes come out....i have mine set up dual boot...but if i see the ubuntu is 100 % better...ill dump xp in a heartbeat

 

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

honestly i'm pretty much satisfied with 9.04NR right now, one thing good is that I dont use the SD cards. And I can easily mount network drive without going into command line (as compared to Acer-custom Linpus lite. not easy for novice linux users). I tried 9.04's openoffice version and it can open most of my ppt's without distorting it much ( meaning I will not depend on ms office for my presentations)

I'm expecting Ubuntu community recommended mods for the Aspire one by the time of launch/release for the things that are still not working out-of-the-box and for performance enhancments...

 

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

Hello !

I am very pleased with UNR 9.04, but i don't like it's 3D performance. Does anyone have any hints how to improve it ?
Thank you

 

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

3D accelaration maybe a hardware limitation. you may want to try the latest netbook release using Atom n280/GN40 chipset, refer to this article:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090422 ... ws_xp.html

 

Hello everyone!

I have the 8Gb SSD version of Aspire One, with XP installed and running on the SSD.

I am trying to install Ubuntu 9.04 remix on the Expansion Storage (SDHC 4Gb), leaving XP as it is (the PC is mainly for my wife to use, so...).

So, I downloaded the image for USB stick, booted from USB and installed. It allows me to install on the SDHC card, going all the way through the process.
In the end, it returns an error when installing GRUB. I tried to install it on /dev/sda because the AA1 does not allow me to boot from the Expansion Storage (at least it is not shown in the list...)

I tried also with Ubuntu 8.10 and the result was the same...

Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

The problem as I understand it, is that GRUB is just a bootloader and does not have necessary drivers built in to mount and read the SD cards.

The minimimum that you could get away with would be to have a kernel and probably an initrd (with the SDHC drivers built in) booting off a small boot partition on the SSD that then mounts and/or chroots the final filesystems off the SDHC card.

I would imagine that you would have to setup a working system on your SSD first and then migrate the root and other partitions to the SDHC card, leaving just the boot partition on the SSD, then change the kernel load parameters in grub.conf and rebuild the initrd image.

 

Hi.

Thanks for your reply.

I understand what you mean. Meanwhile, while searching, I found a pretty-much-the-same problem than mine, except that they were using Linux on SSD and what Linux on SDHC. So the initrd is the solution for them. For me it's a bit more complicated because I have Windows on primary disc.

Today evening I will mess around (again :mrgreen: ) with some installations and test to see how it goes. The only problem is that it takes me alot of time to install XP+drivers. But "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!" :mrgreen:

 

You might be able to do most of the customisation in a VM running on another machine.

After you have migrated the non-boot partitions to the SDHC card, you will have an idea of how big your boot partition needs to be to accomodate the kernel and initrd images.

Then use gparted or similar (boot a PartedMagic live usb) to shrink your XP partition in order to make room for your boot partition.

Then copy the contents of the boot partition in the VM on the other machine to the new physical boot partition.

Then run grub against the new physical boot partition and away you go (probably :? )

 

hi,

how much space do you have left in the ssd? I suggest you install both xp and linux in the primary drive to prevent the grub error.... or.... install grub together in the SDHC then just use F12 to change boot.

 

I can't remember where I read it, but you can install 9.04NR with Wubi in windows. I'm not sure if it'll work in XP, but I know that Win7 allows apps to be installed to other media (i.e. SD cards). I'm gonna try this out and see if it'll work on my 16GB SDHC (in the left slot) now that the 9.04 is official.

 

My experiences so far:

My Hardware:
Aspire One 8GB SSD 110L, upgraded to 1.5BG memory.

I installed the 9.04 UNR Final release and then switched to the Classic View because it would be easier to configure everything from there.

- As soon as I rebooted after switching I experience the desktop-switcher bug, logged on to a blank wallpaper screen, finally resolved it by Ctrl-Atl-F1, logon as root and recreate my user accounts.

Working out the box for me:
Wifi - No need to blacklist the acer_wmi module, it seems to work fine, haven't tried madwifi yet. Lan works no problem
ext4 - works beautifully! 8GB SSD is formatted as ext4 and the performance is the best of any filesystem I have tried. Only tweaks I have done
- I don't have a swap partition (might not work if you only have 512Mb RAM)
- use the noatime setting in fstab for the SSD
- move the temp and log files to ramdisk (including Firefox cache).
I have <20 second boot times (GRUB Menu -> Logon screen) and there are no of those annoying delays when data is being written to disk.
Webcam - Started up Cheese and I can see myself
Trackpad - Works fine, I installed the Synaptics tools and had to add the SHMConfig setting to xorg.conf to get it to work
SD cards - worked , except for the Suspend issue below. I have an SD card installed in the left reader all the time since I've mounted my /home directory there. Right card reader is hot pluggable.
Battery - Battery indicator seems to work fine
3D graphics (Compiz) - Works fine, the drivers seem to be included in the install since they weren't downloaded, just activated after install.

Needed a bit of work to get working:
Sound - Didn't have any sound after installing, finally tracked it down to the alsa-utils service not set to start on boot, Administration > Services , alsa-utils was off. Once that was started everything works by setting to Alsa sound system under Sound settings, including the front microphone.
Fan control - downloaded, compiled and installed the acerhdf kernel module, fan works fine now.

Not working:
The left SD card still gets corrupted when you Suspend, needs to be formatted to recover, losing all data. For now I have installed a package called Ubuntu Tweak, http://ubuntu-tweak.com/, which lets you disable Suspend to avoid any costly mistakes.
desktop-switcher issue: seems you can still end up with a blank screen after logon if you switch from UNR to Classic view.
Wifi lights - no lights, although wifi still works.

 

Hi everybody - my first post - though I have been a lurkin' awhile!

Just download Jaunty and used Imagewriter to transfer to a usb stick so I can have a play on my AA1. I use Intrepid on my desktop and like the clean screen; dont like the Jaunty default screen so far. The wireless worked immediately on AA1 but not sure about the SD card yet.

If I want to replace Linpus by Jaunty i presume I have to uninstal Linpus first? Can anybody refer me to advice about this?

 

No need to uninstall Linpus, when you install Ubuntu it will format the disk, so you will lose anything that was there.

Best to first backup any files you downloaded to the disk.

 

Or you can resize Linpus partition to make some room for ubuntu and then have both of them available via dual boot.
But once you have used ubuntu you'll want to get rid of Linpus

Grtz,

 

Thanks guys about uninstalling Linpus - any advice about the size of the partition particularly as I want to add Thunderbird, Compiz etc and I only have the 8G SSHD plus the 8G SD (if it works!)

 

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

I've been stucked on that situation too... and of course because the panel is not running, I can't force bring up the menu with pressing ALT+F1 or bring up run command with ALT+F2.
I've lost my panel when I personalize the appearance and change visual effect from none to normal.
My solution is :
1. Create a new launcher, type "gnome-panel" and click OK, so, if you wanna see the panel, just double click that launcher icon. Or
2. Create a new launcher (again?) and type "desktop-switcher" than click OK to create a desktop switch. Switch to Netbook or Classic Desktop, the panel is usually appear (or it's just my luck?).
Of course that's not a technically logic solution, but it works for me some times.

Now I wanna try the Jaunty UNR final release, hopefully the bugs have been fixed.

Sorry for my english

 

Re: Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is ready for test...

Known issue see viewtopic.php?f=28&t=13688

Grtz,

 

Hi deeneem,

wifi led works...you just need to go to Synaptic package manager.... search for linux-backports-module-jaunty ..then install this package (this also automatically installs three more packages... after that reboot... and then enjoy the blinking orange wifi led...

mz

 

I am using normal 9.04 will I gain anything by switching to the netbook remix.Everything works fine except the sound,on cd play fine on all other no sound.
fminmexico.