Hello;

I have an Acer TravelMate C100 and I would like to know your opinions on what do you think is the best Linux OS for it. It's a table PC with a Pentium III processor and 128 MB of memory. It currently has Windows XP which I am planing to get rid of.

I appreciate any of your comments... by the way I am fairly new with Linux, so be patient!!!

Thanx

TC

What are you looking for?
- something that just works?
- something that is very fast?
- something is fun for tinkering with?

If you want a very fast and responsive operating system, then you want a distro that runs entirely from RAM ... NOT a distro that has to read data from a turning mechanical hard-drive. Try Slax or Puppy.

If you want slow and easy, then try Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Slackware, Fedora, Suse, etc etc etc.

Do your self a big favour and download a live CD like Knoppix and try it first. This will help you with learning linux, and will help you out with hardware detection. Discover early what works in linux and what may not. I have a IBM TP that is just a Acer. They do some very non standard things ( Acer ) in their BIOS's and some things may not work.

It is better to find that out before you try a HD install. There is enough learning going on during an insatll. Live CD's run from the CDRom drive and don't touch your HD. I suggest Knoppix because it has very good hardware detection, and lots of 'cheat codes' to get around non standard hardware issues. The fact the machine worked for a long time on windbloze only means the BIOS and any other hardware is adapted to by Billy boy.

Knoppix has very good support, has a full KDE desktop and lots of applications. It is a little slow loading the apps, since they are on the slow CDrom and are compressed. Just remember this is a learning exercise, speed you can get later, after you get some experience.

As for which one to pick, pick one like Ubuntu ( Gnome desktop ) or Kubuntu ( K desktop ) Mandriva, or Fedora Core. Each has good package management and good installers for some one new to linux.

While Knoppix, Slax, Puppy are all live distros, please remember that there is a big difference.

Knoppix is fine for testing and experimenting like camorri suggested. It has good hardware detection but it is large and reads from the cd or dvd every time you open an application. Quite painful for everyday use but ok for a quick test.

Slax and Puppy are also live distros, but they are much smaller so they can be run from RAM but still with the same functionality. Slax just requires that you boot with an extra word ... 'copy2ram'. Puppy does it all automatically.

Thank you all for your opinions! I think I am going to try Fedora. I tried suse once in the same machine, but many things didn't work very good. I just have a question. Which version of Fedora is right for me? There are a lot in their webpage and I don't know with one to choose (i386; x86; x86 64) Can you also give me any instruction on what to do after the download?

Thanks again

TC

You want the x86 CD's or DVD depending if you have a DVD drive or CDRom drive. The i386 is for older CPU's and anything with 64 in it is for the latest 64 bit processors, either Intel Dual Core or AMD 64 bit processors. Yours is P3 it is a 32 bit processor.

When you download, there are md5sum strings for each .iso file. Cut and paste them into a text document. You need them to verify your downloaded image is a good one.

See this link --> http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/LQ_ISO

for instructions on how to use the md5sums and how to burn the iso files and what software to use. It does matter you do it the correct way. Take the time to learn as you go along. Ask if you don't understand something.

I suggest that you have a read here: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/acer.html go right to the bottom of the page for the Acer C110 and how to set up the tablet features in linux -- I couldn't get (or be bothered to wait for) the Xubuntu site to open but the Ubuntu opened fine. My tablet is the C302XMi and all the Knoppix CDs and DVDs seem to run on it perfectly, although I mostly use it with XP and Firefox to surf the net.

Hope this helps

Well, I tried suse 10.0 and it installed just fine. My only problem: it can only boot with cd 1 in the slot. Once I remove the cd from it and restart it says "Grub error." anybody know how to fix this?

Thanks

TC

Grub is the boot loader program. It gets control of the hardware after the BIOS is finished. There is a configuration file called menu.lst. It is located in different locations depending on your distro.

This file is not set up correctly. It is a plain text file that can be edited. Open a bash console, and get root privledges by using 'su' and provide the password for root. Once you are root, run the command 'updatedb' and wait for it to complete. Then do a 'locate menu.lst' Locate will tell you where the file is located. Mine is in /boot/grub/.

Open the file with any text editor, copy and paste the contents here.

It would also help if you do a 'cd' command to /boot directory. Once there, do a 'ls -l' command and copy and paste those results.

Once we have that info, it shoudl be difficult to tell you what to change. I would be the default setting is trying to boot from the CD.

I am sorry it took so long... I just figured this is what you ask me for, maybe


linux:/home/Tony # cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri Mar 30 14:05:27 PDT 2007

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 vga=0x314 selinux=0 resume=/dev/hda1 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume selinux=0 nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd
linux:/home/Tony #

How is your disk partitioned? It looks like you have two primary partitions on one hard drive.

hd0,1 points to the second primary partition. Grub counts form zero. Do you still have windoze on the first partition? It is O.K. if it is there, I don't see an entry to boot windoze. If you want windoze to boot, you can add the following,

I suspect the booting issue has to do with the way your disk is partitioned. If you could run the command 'fdsik -l' as root and post the results. It shouldn't take much to straighten things out.

ok... this is what happened: You know the different options right? F2 for setup, F12 (in my tablet) for multi -booting options and F8 to boot windows in safe mode. Well, accidentally pressed F8 and then the thing began booting (without the CD). I don't know what happened! It boots and hangs in the loading screen... that happened several times until now when it boot ok without the cd. I didn't change anything so I think that F8 did something in the BIOS... I guess

Any comments?

TC

I see your comments, and I'm not sure what is working, and what may not be working.

F8, unless it is a BIOS option on your hardware, is a Windoze boot option, after the windoze MBR has run. As far as I know, it doesn't do anything with a Grub MBR. That leads me to believe the mbr was not written by your linux install.

Could you clarify a few things.

Can you now boot to linux? Can you boot to windoze?

There is an option in almost all modern BIOS's to control where the hardware looks for a boot record, and the order it looks in. The factory default is usually the first hard drive installed. You can change this to point at the CD or DVD drive first, or the floppy ( if you still have one ) or even the second hard drive. You get to this through the "Setup" hot key, and that key varies with hardware manufacturer.

From what you posted, grub was not set up to boot from windoze at all, and linux from the second primary partition. This is why I asked for you to post you to post the output

as root.

Hi, I've got Ubuntu 6.10 on my Acer C110 as a dual boot with existing XP. I'm very happy with it, especially since I got the tablet stylus working properly. Ubuntu loaded as a live CD initially, and then gives you the option to install onto the hard disk. You just follow the steps including the partioning (I used 10GB for linux).

Anyway, Ubuntu seems to work well with the hardware support. Let me know if want to know more detail on how to get the stylus working. Have a look at stefan.dnsalias.net/howto/c110.html for great tips on how set up this and extra buttons (with the acerhk module from sourceforge.net/projects/acerhk)

There is some useful software for tablet PCs too: Gournal - like Windows Journal; xvkbd - a virtual Keyboard.

Cheers,

Kez

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It's now April 2011. Does any know if the new release of Ubunutu 10.10 can be installed on a Acer c110? I don't have cd drive too. Any latest suggestion?