Setting up Linux on the Acer Aspire One

A few months ago I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook. I run the online wedding seating planner, Toptableplanner, and needed something ultra-portable to handle email and support issues when not at my desk. I'd been thinking about buying one for a while and on a random trip to Comet there were some on offer. So I did the unthinkable and actually purchased a gadget from a physical shop! I decided to go for the ZG5 model with 1GB RAM, Windows XP and a 16GB SSD drive. At first I was quite pleased with it but then it started to get annoying. Windows XP was just not setup to run off a solid state disk. Most of the time it would be alright but then as soon as the OS needed to write anything to disk the whole machine would grind to a halt. A few days ago I decided to do something about it - splat the whole machine and install Linux.

Installing Linux
Actually getting the operating system on was fairly easy. I bought a cheap DVD drive off eBay and connected it to the Aspire One using an IDE-USB lead. I booted from DVD using an Aspire One Linux Recovery disk and followed the prompts. The whole process was completed in about 25 minutes.

Configuration
Now I needed to get all the applications and connectivity I require setup. This includes Skype, network shares, 3G modem and Bluetooth. I'm not exactly a Linux novice but I did need some help. There's a lot of information already out there, particularly on the Aspire One User forum, but some of it didn't work or I needed to use snippets from different sites. I've tried here to summarise the process and bring together much of the information in one place.

1. Run Live Update
The first thing I did was to run the Live Update. This is found in the Settings menu on the desktop.

2. Enable the Advanced Menu
This is really useful for launching applications that don't have icons in the main four desktop groups. I used Tony Smith's "Ten Tweaks" guide to do this.
- Bring up a terminal.
- Type in xfce-setting-show.
- Click on the Desktop icon and then the Behaviour tab.
- Tick the 'Show Desktop on Right Click' option.

3. Setup an E160 3G USB Modem
Initially I thought this was going to be really tricky but in the end was actually quite simple.
- Firstly download and install huawei081126.sh from the Acer Support site.
- Once it's installed, reboot and you'll find a new Mobile Partner application in the Connect menu.
- Plug in the dongle and run the application.
- You'll need to setup a profile first from the Tools->Options menu.
- My dongle is an O2 one. I tried using the settings from http://www.filesaveas.com/gprs.html but these didn't work. Rob Tucker fortunately posted the correct settings on his blog.
APN: m-bb.o2.co.uk
Access Number: *99#
Username: o2bb
Password: password

4. Setup Bluetooth
I also wanted to be able to connect my N95 the Aspire One using Bluetooth for occasional internet access. This was actually quite tricky and at one point I resorted to wiping the machine using the recovery disk again and things had got a bit messy! Eventually I found this process to work well. This thread provided most of the answers in one way or another.
- Follow the simpler instructions in bjc's post here.
- Then use these instructions to setup rfcomm and test using wvdial.

I couldn't get gnome-ppp to work so am still having to connect using wvdial from a terminal.

5. Install a few more applications
Finally I just need to install a few more applications.
- Firefox 3 from the Acer Support site.
- I didn't install Skype from here as it didn't seem to work properly. Instead I downloaded the Fedora7 version from the main skype.com site.
- Thanks to the iDoctor forum I was able to get SSH working too.


Conclusions
It's been a made day or so getting the Aspire One all setup and working to my liking but it has definitely been worth it. The machine is so much more responsive than it was with Windows XP and is therefore all the more usable. Now when I'm using it I'm no longer looking at the little 'SSD active' light waiting for it to go out so I can actually do something!