Acer Aspire One

Preparation for Install

Hardware

• Acer Aspire One
• A fairly new USB flash drive with at least 128 MB capacity.
• Good Internet connection via Ethernet. Different setups are supported - DHCP (typical setup for networks and cable modems), NAT or local LAN+proxy (in the latter case you will need to drop out to the manual installation and specify IP-address of the mirror - see [1] for mirror list; when asked for path you will need to enter it as the mirror has it, which might be /pub/opensuse/distribution/11.1/repo/oss or /mirrors/download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/repo/oss or some other similar variant)

Media

You will need the openSUSE 11.1 NetInstall ISO Image, or select it from the openSUSE Download options.

openSUSE 11.1 Live CD editions running off of USB will not work with the Aspire One at this time, unfortunately.

Procedure

Follow these instructions or these more detailed ones (but you can omit the step "Copy files to the USB drive") to prepare your USB flash drive using NetInstall image (ie, substitute the name of the above iso image file in the examples).

Boot your Aspire One from your USB flash drive (press F12 after turning it on to select booting source - USB Flash Drive. You might have to go into setup to enable "F12 Boot Menu"; at least some machines ship with this disabled.)

Perform all install steps:

• You should choose ext3 (the default option) or ext2 for your "/" partition(root).

Info on Swap Partitions - If you ordered an Aspire One with an solid-state drive (SSD), (the 8GB or 16 GB versions), do not create a swap partition. If it is created automatically, customize the partition setup and remove it. Using Swap will result in far too much writing to the solid-state drive, limiting its lifespan. If your Aspire One features a traditional hard drive, you should be OK with the Swap turned on.

• Choose your favorite Desktop Environment, either Gnome, KDE, or XFCE.

Post-install setup and troubleshooting

Video

You may experiance screen resolution problems, resulting in a streched or odd looking screen. If so, open a text editor (such as gEdit, Kwrite, Kate, or nano) with Administrator (root) permissions and open the /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager file. Look for this line:

 DISPLAYMANAGER_RANDR_MODE_VGA="auto" 

...and change it to this...

DISPLAYMANAGER_RANDR_MODE_VGA="" 

Save and restart.

Sound

The sound system may not work correctly at first. Using the same method at before with the video (see above), open /etc/modprobe.d/sound and add this line:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire

A model of acer also works.

Neither comes back after a suspend.

Suspend

Suspend to RAM works fine, but you have to be patient when waking it back up. It can take over a minute (71 seconds for a D150) to wake up. To make this work properly, using the same method to edit a file (see above), open /etc/pm/config.d/modules and add the following line:

S2RAM_OPTS="-f"

Sound does not seem to come back after suspend.

Saving Power

Keep your software up to date! That's the best thing to do, but try using less resource intensive applications as well.

openSUSE has built-in tools to conserve energy, and they may work fine for you. However if you'd like to get extra energy savings, try this:

create /etc/acpi/events/lid and fill it with
 event=button[ /]lid.*[13579bdf]$
 action=/etc/acpi/lidsuspend.sh

then /etc/acpi/lidsuspend.sh:

 #!/bin/sh
 grep -q open /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state || echo mem > /sys/power/state

You can use Intel's powertop for more power savings hints. Run it as root. If you don't have it installed, go into YaST's Software Management program and search for powertop.

Conserving your disk

As we said earlier, users of the solid-state drives, although they have a nice solid computer with no moving parts, also have some drawbacks. The first and most visable drawback is that you don't have as much storage. But another issue is that the write cycles (also called disk IO) is limited. Unlike a traditional platter-based drive, you can only write to a SSD a certain amount of times. However with these tips you can insure that with openSUSE that won't be a problem for a long time.

First, follow these steps to reduce disk IO. These, although written for another netbook, the Asus EEE PC, are pretty much standard for any netbook.

The second tip: stop the desktop search indexer (called Beagle). Due to the nature of indexing files, it produces a large number of read and writes to the drive, even when you're not doing anything. If you have a hard drive Aspire One, you should be able to keep it enabled safely.

Reduce The Fan's Noise

The fan sometimes can be really noisy. A workaround for this:

• Install the following software: (1-click install).

• Run (as root, or with sudo):

$ chkconfig --add acerfan

• Type (as root):

$ /etc/init.d/acerfan start

That's it!

Wireless

Your wireless adapter should work out-of-the-box with openSUSE 11.1. You need to be sure that the package "broadcom-wl" is installed (at least for the D150 flavor). For earlier versions, extra drivers may be necessary.

Wireless LEDs

• the wireless leds need an entry in /proc
• with wireless on/off works, but there is no notification in Gui

"To get your wireless led to blink for you based on traffic, put these lines at the end of /etc/sysctl.conf."

dev.wifi0.ledpin=3
dev.wifi0.softled=1

Then either reboot or do sysctl -p

The led on the front will now do the association blink, as well as blink based on wireless traffic.

Webcam

This is supported by the installed kernel. If you want to make sure you are using the latest version of the module, subscribe to the 'Community Repository' named 'openSUSE BuildService - Drivers for webcams'. The next time the YaST package manager is run, the correct driver will automatically be installed.

Whether using the default or updated module, create the following file as root:

/etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo

and put this in it:

options uvcvideo quirks=1

Card readers

The Aspire One has two card reader slots. An SD-only slot on the left and a multi-format slot on the right. They both work if the correct module is loaded with the right options. Create the following file as root:

/etc/modprobe.d/pciehp

and put this in it:

options pciehp pciehp_force=1

Next, load the module:

modprobe pciehp

Now, to ensure it is loaded automatically on boot, edit this file:

/etc/sysconfig/kernel

Change this line:

MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT=""

to:

MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT="pciehp"

Troubleshooting

• GDM resizes my screen, so Gnome will be broken (instead of having a 1024x600 screen, I end with a 1024x768 resolution). Workaround: Disable gdm. Run:

$ sudo nano /etc/inittab

and change this line:

id:5:initdefault:

to this line:

id:3:initdefault:

then run (as root):

$ init 3 

then run (as user):

$ startx 

Then you will see that the resolution is just fine.

Further information

You may want to take a look into http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Laptops/Acer, too. There you will find information regarding the card reader and other probably interesting aspects of this netbook.

Also feel free to contact our support areas for help setting up your Acer Aspire One. Visit the Support page for more information.

Passed QA check: Fsundermeyer 13:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

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