I know there have been several threads posted with regards to different models of Acers, but my experience shows that different models may have different experience with the various distros, and what works for other Acer models may not (and probably won't) work on the 9300.
The Acer 9300 laptop is a 17" laptop and comes with 1GB of ram, NVidia card and Vista pre-installed. That lasted about 2 days for me and I immediately wiped Vista and tried to install an up-to date version of Ubuntu (I think it was Gutsy) without much success. Then I did some reading and found that the most suitable distro for this laptop was Feisty, so I installed it and, voila! Everything worked and I was happy. I used it for a while but switched to other distros just to see if they would work. First I tried Simply Mepis. Installed and worked OK for a while, but then started to get hangs and freezes. Next PCLinux OS and it installed OK as well. But as soon as I did the updates, it was game over. So back to the drawing board. I tried Mandriva (couldn't even load the live CD) and then Suse10.5 and 11. Then Mint 5 (Elyssa). Same thing - couldn't get them to load or install. So I installed Freespire, and I must say it worked (everything worked!) but I soon grew tired of the "Windows feel", and went on the hunt again. This time I installed Ubuntu 8.04. The installation went without a hitch, wireless worked (yay!) and now I'm a happy camper again, complete with Compiz wobbly windows and special effects thanks to NVidia support.
Bottom line is (sorry for the lengthy post) if you are the proud owner of the Aspire 9300, my experience has been that Ubuntu 8.04 is by far the best distro for this machine. I'm writing this post just to try and save someone a lot of time trying to get a distro to run decently on this machine.

I too just dual booted (vista and ubuntu 8.04) and like you, it loaded and set up as you would expect, other than i had to download and install a new Alsa driver for internet radio sound and this is a HP Compaq laptop. I only am leaving vista on Ltop for a short while (don't know why), then plan to eliminate vista -wahoo. I have installed several other linux distros and none, other than puppy, allowed me to connect to the internet or have sounde, so my conclusion, at this point, nothing beats Ubuntu 8.04. Dick

I also have a Acer 9300 here and try to install Ubuntu 8.10b with less success.

I ran Fedora 7 for several month with little freezes during working at the notebook, so I want to check an other OS (and no Vista).

My HDD is partitionated in Fedora, Home, Swap and now additional Ubuntu. I installed a 64bit version via internet without any problems. But Ubuntu isn't starting up. I saw the Ubuntu Sign with the progress bar and the I got a black screen just with a blinking underline cursor in the upper left edge. Nothing else happend.

Who has a hint for me and my Acer 9300 for Ubuntu?

christian

Wesselch: Have you tried the 32-bit version? Personally I have not had much success with 64-bit distros. I have found the 32-bit ones install fine with fewer probs.