Using linux in an Acer Aspire One Netbook
 

Hi Folks,

I am thinking of buying an Acer Aspire One 10.1" LCD, Intel Atom netbook.

Has anyone used this netbook with linux and what distro worked with it?

Secondly, did the wifi worked?

much obliged in advance...

i used fedora live on an aao before. i cant remember if i had to install the wifi driver from broadcom but i am pretty sure it worked.

Thanks for the reply schneidz, but I really need to know about the wifi before I fork $300. :)

I use the AO721 netbook . Here are my specs:

250GB HDD
2GB DDR3 RAM
AMD Athlon II Neo Processor K125 (1.7GHz)
Broadcom (BCM43225) wireless chip
ATI Raedon graphics (380-something MB's)
Forgot my ethernet card's name, but only works with kernel >2.3.6.37

For a netbook that cost me $300, its performance is impeccable and I could not have hoped for more .
I can run ANYTHING on it . Provided I take the time to configure namely the wireless, as Broadcom is not standard, and the ATI graphics card .

But all in all, I have ran Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Debian, Pardus, among other full distros .

The only ones that worked out of the box with my wireless card were Linux Mint and openSUSE after I blacklisted "acer-wmi" .
The broadcom-wl (STA) driver is the one I have had the most success with, and is readily available on the broadcom site if not from your distro's repositories . Distros running the latest kernel often ship with it, but you will have to blacklist "ssb," "b43," and "acer-wmi" .
However, I have not at any time been able to get Fedora or Debian working with wireless . But then again I gave up pretty fast and opted for other distros such as Arch and openSUSE .

I hope I helped, good hunting . ;]

Thanks exoshwarze, the extra info on the wifi is helpful to know.

No problem . ^^

If you don't want the extra configuration time, I would recommend taking a look at Asus netbooks . There are a lot of Linux distros that are designed especially for the eee series . I cannot vouch for their performance though, as I have yet to try one .

Aside from Broadcom, most wireless chipset companies are more Linux-friendly .

On my Acer Aspire One KAV60 with 1 gig ram 160 gig hard drive, I've used the following with success and no problem connecting wireless:

Joli OS (dual boot with XP) has worked excellently. My wife's slightly newer D255E-13639 Aspire One also runs well on Joli OS.

Ubuntu 10.04 live persistent usb hangs on the "try" or "install" window, but if you close and end the window it will finish booting up and work.

Mint 11 works with live persistent usb but runs slow.

Mint 9 runs flawlessly from live persistent usb.

Puppy Linux runs great from live persistent usb.

Pinguy Mini runs well from live boot usb.

Fuduntu runs great from live boot usb.

All of the above had no trouble recognizing wireless and connecting on my Aspire One.
KBD47

Thanks for the list KBD47.

Glad that Mint 11 is there on the list. Not a big fan of the other distros though.

I have also recently installed Mint 11 on an Aspire One D255E and it is running great. That model is about 1 year newer than the KAV60, but still with just 1 gig ram. I like that Mint 11 has the newer software repository, but Mint 9 may be a bit faster on an older Aspire.
Best Wishes.

I got my AAO, I think an AOA 150, it even have the 3G connection, in '09 and installed Mandriva on it, not sure if wifi worked out the box but it wasn't hard to configure it to work. I've even upgraded mdv from '09 version thru 2010.2, current version with no issues.

with ubuntu 10.04 it was able to detect the wifi adapter and it installed the Broadcom STA driver. "ssb" and "b43" have already been blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf and i added "blacklist acer-wmi" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. when i open the 'hardware drivers' app it says the Broadcom STA driver is installed but not in use. wifi LED is not on. seems like the card is not activated but using Fn+F3 doesn't toggle it. ifconfig only lists lo and eth0 but lspci shows the wifi card is there. any ideas?

^ you should start a new thread.

maybe this will help:
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php