new linux version on crashed acer aspire one
 

hi everyone. first post

my acer aspire one (aoa-110 with linpus lite) gave up on me yesterday. i turned it on and got a black screen with a white/black X shaped cursor. I can move the cursor and adjust brightness and stuff like that. apparently the only way to fix it is to use the recovery disk and start from scratch

since all i read about linpus lite is that its crap, and since the recovry cd is in my loft at my mums house, and since that apparently has a tendancy to fry hard drives anyway, i figured if i can i might aswell put another linux version on there

should it be ok for me to make a bootable USB with a new linux version on it and load it up, or will i need to use my system restore and go back to linpus first?

also whats the difference ubuntu and fedora? pros/cons? i ask about them because they`re the two i read about most. ive never used linux other than this linpus light

lastly i`m after some help making a bootable USB in windows (will a 4gb SD card plugged into a little usb sdcard reader do?). is it fairly easy because I need to use my girlfriends laptop and everything is in japanese

thanks anyone

i would take a look at Mint Linux .It is very "new Linux user" friendly and is based on Ubuntu

Fedora is ??? good but with -- not quite problems but just what fedora is .

fedora is a research and development distro .
Also it is a VERY VERY fast development disto . Things can change VERY much from one version to the next.
and that next version is EVERY 6 months .
with support for any one version lasting ONLY 13 months .

so with fedora one needs to basicly reinstall EVERY 6 months .

ok ubuntu it is then. i went for the normal ubuntu netbook version . mainly because the mint was downloading at 7kbps i didnt wanna wait 3 days for it to finish.

i got the usb disk ready and waiting. before i dive into it i`d like to know if installing over my crashed linpus is going to be a problem or will it just format my disk and get on with it? Thanks

out of interest. when you say based on ubuntu does that mean it essentially "is" ubuntu eg if i was following instructions to install something could i follow the ubuntu instructions exactly? thanks

One thing about Ubuntu and Mint on the ZG5s (A110 and A150) - it needs (needed?) a bit of tweaking to recognize an SD card inserted after booting. See this post. Fedora kernels don't need this - they have the pciehp module compiled into the kernel by default. However, this should not be the criterion by which you decide on one vs. the other.

Installing over your crashed Linpus shouldn't be a problem. However, you might want to boot off the live USB stick and save any valuable data in your Linpus /home directory before installing Ubuntu.

my vote would be to go here and download the fedora live-usb creator:
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

i think it is the easiest live-usb creator. (i am using an acer revo nettop and the sd-card boots the same as usb; it was kinda' frustrating understanding the bios' boot order.)
updating versions of fedora is as easy as yum install preupgrade.

I got my netbook running again on Ubuntu netbook version, but I'm not that impressed to be honest.It's not that fast. If I try to run vlc playing music and firefox it freezes and the music jumps. And the icon bar at the side is annoying, I'd rather just have stuff on the desktop, I feel like all its doing is taking up screen space is there a way to get rid of it? But I do lke that everything just works, files open and play and its easy to add software. Ive started downloading the Mint Linux DVD to try. If thats not what I'm after I'll give Fedora a try

What I liked about the Linpus version was how simple it was. No moving icon bar, nothing fading in or out. And the grouped icons were good. What I didn't like was how difficult it was to change or install anything even through the package manager.