What should I do in my situation?

I've posted several times in this Forum trying to fix an issue with my AAO. I keep trying different solutions and as these solutions don't work, I keep posting here asking for help. I'll start from the top. I'm at a lost on what to do with my computer right now. I have an AAO with an SSD card running OneLinux, a no-longer supported version of Ubuntu that had all the drivers and such for the AAO.

1) A few days/weeks ago the wireless stopped working. It doesn't show up in the top-right corner when I right-click the Network icon. There's no option to "Enable Wireless", nothing.

2) I wasn't sure what was causing the problem as I don't have Wireless @ my apartment I didn't notice it right away. Now I am at my mother's house where the whole house runs on a wireless network and my computer's wireless is not working. I started reading online and I saw that the Ubuntu documentation for the AAO, found here, says that the Wireless stops working after a Kernel update. A few days before leaving for my Mom's house I ran all the updates on the computer because I wanted it not to give me problems when I got here. I believe it was then that a kernel update was made and the wifi stopped working.

3) The Ubuntu Docs give a fix for the kernel update/wifi issue, but since I got a version of Ubuntu that was "Aspire One" ready I never had to do any of the instructions given on the site. I had to do -something- to get the wifi ready but I don't remember and it wasn't exactly what is described there.

4) I tried to get some of my friends to help me fix this, but no one knows. I tried to get some help here to no avail. I don't know enough about Linux to fix this issue.

5) Then my other point: finally frustrated with Linux, I'd like to put Windows XP on my laptop. I found some "slimmed down" versions of XP on a private torrent tracker. One of them looks especially promising, but I have no idea how to get it into the damned machine. I have an external CD drive that won't boot, and methods to put XP onto a USB drive aren't working (all of them require the use of PeToUsb, which won't read my USB drive for god-knows-what reason). Frustration, frustration, frustration.

6) I used Unetbootin to put Puppy Linux into a pen drive to see if THAT was going to help, but not only is Puppy Linux ugly, it won't detect my wireless either. Jeebus.

7) My recovery CD is @ my apartment, in another country no less. I'm downloading an ISO of the recovery DVD from a torrent site, but I need a blank DVD to make that work and I don't even know if that's going to help. Alternative solutions that require me not buying additional crap would be great.

So knowing all this, what would you do in my situation? No snarky comments please. A netbook without wifi is the most useless thing ever. There's only so many times I can play Sudoku...

 

With regular Ubuntu the different kernel updates get added to the Grub boot menu, allowing one to boot to an earlier version if so desired. Can't you do that with OneLinux?

Cheers.

 

I can. I tried. The "Enable Wireless" option is available when I right-click the Network icon, but it doesn't show any Wireless networks to connect to. I think I tried re-downloading the Atheros drivers, maybe I screwed something up? I don't know...

 

I also used Onelinux and found it very promising and easy to get working. However since it was the work of just one person and it was a specialized kernel then it didn't have the backing it needed to continue. This is why I tried Ubuntu and other distros.

I have run into that same problem with most of the distros I have tried except Mandriva 2009 Gnome. When it updates nothing gets broken as yet and I have been using Mandriva for about 3 months and have on an average had 3 updates per week (sometimes 3 per day) and not once has anything broken especially the wireless. Before going back to XP why not give Mandriva 2009 Gnome a try I doubt you be disappointed.

 

Thanks, that's a great tip. I'm downloading an ISO of Mandriva right now. Going to try to create a USB bootable drive with Unetbootin. How did you install it anyways? What method did you use? Thanks!

 

I found installing Mandriva from USB impossible to do... I ended up with external CD-ROM. In my case unetbooting was not good enough - to many error messages from installer...

 

Hmm, well, I've used Unetbootin before on this comp (Windows) and it works fine. The linux version is a bit trickier from what I hear. So I'm gonna give it a whirl at least. It's still downloading (slow connection). What I do notice is that I remember looking at Mandriva before but I desisted because my computer has 512MB of RAM, not 1GB. Will it run slow?

 

Can't speak for the AA1 with 512MB, but my old Averatec had a (single-threaded) 1.67 GHz Athlon 2200+ with 512MB RAM and it ran GNOME just fine

 

I don't think it will run slow but I personally have not tried it on 512Mb. The home site says the requirements are "RAM: 512MB minimum, 1GB recommended.".

I installed via an external CD drive. There are 2 files you will need to modify to get the speakers and SD card readers to work. Just follow these instructions and that should do it.

When you do your install make sure you remember what you root password is.
To edit those files you will need to use your text editor as root. To do this open a terminal which you will find in the menu at the top of the screen under Applications/Tools/Terminal.

Then type in the terminal screen

and press enter. The screen will show the word Password: At this point you type in your root password. Nothing will happen on the screen until you press enter then the screen will show [root@localhost username]#

Then type in

This will open your text editor as root. Now just use the file menu to browse to the file listed in the instructions above. Make the changes by adding the lines and save. Then browse to the next file and do the same. NOTE: do not close the terminal until you are finished as this will also close the gedit text editor. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Another bit of advice is to get the backup system from Rbil at his blog.....
http://aaobackup.blogspot.com/2008/10/purchase-just-software-2000-cad.html it works great and can be a real saver when you mess something up and need to restore your system.

 

Tried the Mandriva installation. The USB boots fine, but the installation never begins. It hangs up on the welcome screen and later takes me to a black screen where it says it can't continue cause a file is missing. Don't know where it went wrong. :?

 

I don't remember for sure but I think that is what happen to me and so I went with an external cd install.

 

I'm Assuming you used the acer-puppy-410-27.iso; if not:

ftp://puppy[email protected]/ ... 410-27.iso

with regards to your "comments" on Puppy Linux..

It's dead easy to change the looks of puppy ... right-click on the desktop and read the menu

The wifi is even easier to install right-click on the desktop ..Setup...Network wizard