Install F9 for Acer Aspire One

[KKJensen]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking at buying an Acer Aspire One and am curious if anyone has any idea about the hardward support. i know the asus eee has a eeedora branch which is well optimised but I'm after a 'aspire one' version and just wanted to find what was already out there. If the stock linux that comes on it is a deriviative of f8...wouldn't this mean that the hardware is 'likely' supported by f9?

Just dipping my toe in the water before buying into a big headache.

Take care, I'll post more here as I find out more.

P.S. I've tried searching but "acer" "aspire" and "one" aren't showing many helpful results in any combination.

[scottro]

It's apparently being sold with Linux, which is usually a good sign.
There doesn't seem to be much, if any, information on the hardware available yet.

[KKJensen]

For a cheaper price it seems to be a nice upgrade from the eee line...better screen, bigger keyboard, more storage...pretty nice package for a lower price ($350CAD).

[scottro]

I don't even see it being sold here in the US yet.
Have you seen this review?
http://blog.laptopmag.com/acer-aspir...-in-depth-look

It looks as if wifi is an issue right now.

The review, of course, doesn't tell us what kind of WiFi card it is, which always annoys me. It makes it almost impossible to determine before hand if it will be easy or difficult to get working.

Once it's readily available all over, I think we'll be hearing a lot more about its compatibility with other distros.

Linpus is Fedora based, apparently, so that's a good sign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linpus_Linux

[KKJensen]

Here it is at tigerdirect.com $20 less gets you a 120GB hdd instead of a 8GB ssd.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...416&CatId=2814

Yes, I've read linpus is a trimmed down F8. I googled "Fedora Asus Aspire One" and came across this guy which doesn't make it sound that simple...an error right off the bat: http://www.linux-archive.org/fedora-...spire-one.html So it'll take someone with one to check all the hardware first...

[scottro]

Thank you for the links.
I remember the original plan for the EEE PC was that it was going to be priced at $200. That seemed quite reasonable. However, when it actually came out, (the 2 GB hard drive version) it was going between $300-$350. (All USD). Several others, as well as myself, decided that made it not really worth it.

There's also the Sylvannian Netbook G, another ultra small, probably a bit cheaper. It uses a regular 30 gig hard drive and has a gig of RAM. However, as it's sold at a few stores in NYC, I took a look at it and found it very slow. The touch pad is also extremely small. It runs an Ubuntu variant, the GOS.

I'm reluctant to buy any of these at this point unless I can play with them first.

Hopefully, someone will buy one for us soon, and will give us the results.

[KKJensen]

I looked at the acer website's "notebook matrix" and it shows that the memory IS upgradable to 1.5G so there must be a 512 stick soldered in and a slot for a 1GB stick...that in the 120GB hdd model and an extra battery (or at least swapping for the higher capacity one )would be a pretty good kit...

http://www.acer.ca/public/wr-resourc...oks_matrix.pdf

If I can find out a little more info about the hardware (wifi, in particular) I'm interested in giving it a shot or maybe put it on the 'serious' christmas list...

I too noticed the eee price 'jump' from early estimates. For $350 this acer seems like a really good deal compared to the $600(ish) for the equivalent PC900.

[ryback]

I am typing this on my Acer Aspire One with the preinstalled Linpus Linux OS.

The wifi-card is an Atheros AR5006EG PCI-express and the wired lan card is a Realtek RTL8102E.

I have upgraded to 1.5GB of RAM. The 512mb is soldered on. Upgrading the ram isn't as easy as on other laptops as you need to disassemble the whole thing. Remove keyboard and motherboard as the ram-slot is not reachable by a lid/bay as on most other laptops.

[scottro]

ryback, firstly thank you very much for the input. Is the card really a 5006 or did you get that information from lspci? The reason I ask is that, especially on some 32 bit systems, the 5007 is shown as a 5006 even when the drivers work.
Do you know which driver they are using, whether it's an ndiswrapper, ath5k or Madwifi?

Again, thank you for the information.

[ryback]

I am a total linux noob (hopefully this aspire will change that). I got the wifi-info from the linpus system information menu. If there is some command I can enter in terminal or a file I can check out for you to make verify the information let me know. I would be happy to do anything short of opening this baby up to help you out.

[ryback]

This is what LSPCI gave me: Ethernet controller: Atheros AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

I wouldn't be surprised the "system information menu" is getting the information with lcpci. Again let me know if there is some way I can confirm. I could of course open it up, but not right now as I am at work and I don't think I have the tools with me.

[scottro]

Firstly, many thanks for your generous offer--actually, if you opened it, I wouldn't be sure to tell you what to look for.

Would you try running lspci -nn and look for a series of numbers like
168c:001c
near it. Also, look on the bottom and see if there's a sticker marked AR5BXB63

If you get the 168c:001c (as opposed to something else) and/or it has the sticker, there's a good chance that it's the 5007. Another way to tell would be with various live CD's, but of course, it doesn't have a CD ROM. (Most distros will support the 5006 out of the box, but at present, only a few support the 5007.

I'm also curious which driver they use. That could be checked by running
whereis ndiswrapper

If you get an answer, that means it's probably using the ndiswrapper Windows driver.

I realize this is an imposition to satisfy my idle curiosity, and again, thank you for your willingness to help us find out what it has.

[ryback]

03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter [168c:001c] (rev 01)

[user@localhost ~]$ whereis ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper:

The sticker says "AR5BXB63"

[scottro]

Ok, I'm 98 percent certain it's the AR5007EG then. Which has become fairly trivial in Fedora, as it's been around awhile. The livna-testing MadWifi drivers work with it, and in 2.6.27 kernels (so far, only available in Rawhide) the builtin ath5k module works.

Last two questions.

uname -r

and

lsmod |grep ath

Oops, and like the Cardinal in Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch, I can't count.

And
rpm -q madwifi

(As it is Fedora based, I'm assuming the rpm -q would give an answer. )

I forgot that you said you're a newcomer, the result that you got from ndiswrapper means that it's not installed, which is a Good Thing(TM) as the drivers don't work as well.

Once again, many thanks, and I'm sure that there will be a lot of people who wind up viewing this thread as the Aspire 1 becomes more popular, so I think you really are helping (at least at a future date) , a lot of people.

[ryback]

[user@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.23.9lw

[user@localhost ~]$ rpm -q madwifi
package madwifi is not installed

Originally Posted by scottro

Once again, many thanks, and I'm sure that there will be a lot of people who wind up viewing this thread as the Aspire 1 becomes more popular, so I think you really are helping (at least at a future date) , a lot of people.

That's what I was thinking too.

PS: Love the (well, any) Monthy Python reference.