Ubuntu 8.10 on the Acer Aspire One AOA110

 Work in progress!

Acer Aspire One

The Acer Aspire One is a netbook, produced by Acer in July 2008. It is based on the Intel Atom platform, and is designed as a lightweight system, used mainly for connectivity applications (email, instant messengers), basic web browsing and very light applications. It comes with either 512 or 1024Mb RAM, 0.3 or 1.3 megapixel integrated webcam, and a choice of SSD (8Gb or 16Gb) or HDD (120Gb or 160Gb) drives. It is based on the typical Atom hardware; the Intel Atom N270 processor, Intel 945GSE Express chipset and Intel 82801GBM (ICH7M) I/O controller.

The system comes with either Windows XP or Linux. Windows XP is SP3, and the Linux version comes with Linpus Linux Lite. Naturally my choice was to use Linux, however even if Linpus did boot exceptionally fat, it was just too limited for what I wanted.

Choice of OS

 I had a lot of choice, natively, the system comes with either Windows XP or Linux (Linpus). I tried Windows XP on an SSD system, and it was horrendously slow. I'm not banging on Windows here, I'm not trying to discredit it, I'm just saying that the first boot took a long, long time. I gave in after 10 minutes, being fed up of watching different software installations. That put me of really trying it, and I'l admit that I never tried a fully installed system. The Windows XP philosophy tries to turn a netbook into a notebook, but as far as processing speed goes, the Acer Aspire One just doesn't but it. At the same time, it was never designed to do that. Linpus, on the other hand, has a different philosophy. Linpus boots FAST, and in less than 15 seconds, the user is into a desktop system. Booting into a desktop system still doesn't mean that the system is ready to be used; it takes a while for my network application to come up, for example. Linpus is also based on Fedora 8, and a lot has changed since. I needed complete control over what I install and use, so Linpus just wasn't an option.

There are many, many Linux distributions to choose from. I wanted something light and fast, so Damn Small Linux was my first choice. DSL is based on the 2.4 kernel series, and it didn't have the drivers I needed. I gave in quickly. Gentoo might well have been a good idea, but the idea of compiling an entire system on an Atom platform didn't really appeal to me. I don't know RedHat/Fedora that well, and I couldn't find any version of SuSE quickly enough. My trusty lappy has been running Ubuntu for a year, and my desktop system for over 4 years, to I tried Ubuntu 8.10. 8.04 could have been an option, and 9.04 is still in beta at the time of writing. Ubuntu 8.10 was decided.

Hardware and Installation

 The Aspire One is lightweight, and does not have a CD drive. The hard drive isn't accessible either. Fortunately, the system has 3 USB ports, and also an Ethernet connector. Two choices, boot up using a USB key, or boot via the network. Ive used network installations before, and I tested it later on the Aspire One, but for a first installation, a USB key was the best choice. The Ubuntu installation CD can be downloaded from Ubuntu's website, and can then be transferred to a USB key using different tools. I simplified this; I used  UNetbootin, a nifty little application available from Sourceforge. It can make a bootable key from an ISO image, or directly download alarge selectionof distributions. Preload Ubuntu to a USB key, stick it in the Aspire One, turn it on, hit F12 to select the boot media, and away you go. The wireless card is not detected by the installer, but the network card is. The Live CD also contains everything you need to install without connecting to Internet.

Wha's inside?

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

lsusb output:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 090c:1000 Feiya Technology Corp. Memory Bar
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0c45:62c0 Microdia Pavilion Webcam
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0af0:7211 Option
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

There's nothing too nasty here, but the Atheros wifi card did worry me a little. Note, this is a 3G model that is not available everywhere (yet), and the 3G modem is an Option USB device.

SSD considerations

This particular model is equipped with an SSD drive, a Samsung P-SSD 1800. Some people consider SSDs to be the answer to all of humanity's problems, they aren't. SSDs will not solve world famine, SSDs will not make global peace, and SSDs are not the blazingly fast devices that some say they are. The first SSDs sold with Aspire systems were Intel's Z-P230, and while read speeds are very fast, write speeds were catastrophic. The Intel drive was clocked at 5Mb/s write speed, the Samsung at 13Mb/s. That might sound great, especially since these systems aren't designed to move huge quantities of data, but SSDs also have a second weakness. SSDs are not well known for random sector transfers, and can "freeze" systems for a few seconds here and there. My strategy was to change the hard drive settings in order to minimize drive writes. On a typical HDD system, this wouldn't be a consideration; if you are installing on an HDD system, you might want to ignore my optimizations, since they come at a cost.

Drive partitioning

Considering SSD transfer rates and notorious I/O waits, I decided to limit drive access. For my test system, I created one single partition; 16Gb on /, using ext2 only, no ext3. I didn't create a swap partition, mainly to reduce disk usage, and also because I'm only using light applications on a system with 1Gb of RAM, I presume that I'll never really need swap.

Installation

No surprises here; just install a typical Ubuntu system. I tried Ubuntu, and Xubuntu. I didn't try Kubuntu, I can only presume that KDE would have been too heavy for the system. The system will install, slowly, and once it's over, you can remove the key and boot into a fresh Ubuntu system. Welcome to Ubuntu on your newly installed Netbook! The very first thing to do, plug in an Ethernet cable and update the system.

First impressions, first freezes

So, what do you think? The first boot is surprising. The splashscreen can take a long time, and along pause can be noted at the beginning of the boot sequence. GDM boots up quick enough, but the Desktop is another matter. Smal freezes can be noted at the very first boot, even without opening any programs.

Mount /tmp to RAM

Add the following to /etc/fstab:

none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

Watch out, /tmp is now in RAM.Don't send huge files to /tmp like I used to. It doesn't like it. Believe me.

Delete logs

A typical Linux system will constantly write longs into /var/logs. This can, eventually, cause system freezes when data is written. Since the netbook will never be used as a server or development platform, who will need logs? You can mount /var/log as a tmpfs filesystem too if you want. Just follow the instructions above.