I'm taking my 2nd AAO back to the store tomorrow and won't be asking for any further exchanges as it's now cash refund time. The hardware itself may be fine, but I wouldn't know because the Linux software it ships with wouldn't let me find out.

I have a hunch that Acer hopped into bed with the wrong people in their tie-up with the Linpus distribution. It's great when manufacturers back Linux, but when they pick a bunch of losers to configure the OS, then quite frankly it's worse than useless.

This is my second AAO in a week and just like the last one, this one can't be restored to its factory settings because the restore procedure just doesn't work. First time around, the DVD froze; second time around, the new DVD succeeded in writing a USB stick (*eventually*) but this stick itself was unable to re-intall the system!

I find it quite bizarre that we have to use a restore disk to create a USB stick to re-intall the OS, anyway. Why not just supply a disk that simply re-installs the OS in ONE operation - and ensure it DOES indeed do so before shipping it??

Team Linpus: you are a shabby bunch of wasters who deserve to be named and shamed. Bill Gates is about the only person who will be delighted with your efforts. Acer: talk to someone else before you give Linux a troublesome reputation it doesn't deserve.

Sorry to hear you had such poor luck with the AAO.. many of us have not had such difficulties with it.

I'm surprised you can't reinstall from the DVD using an external DVD ROM Drive, I connected one to my AAO and was able to boot from the external Drive using varuious Live utility CD's and Linux install CD's. I guess we can't all hope to have the same experiences

I know SOME people haven't had a problem with the Linpus DVD, but it seems the majority have, from what I have read on various web sites. It's a great shame, as the machine itself is terrific and only let down by the operating system which is bound to give Linux in general an undeservedly bad name as those who have been burned aren't likely to differentiate.

The machine I am returning today was itself previously returned by its first owner, as was the one I had bought originally (evidence of user data found on it) so others aren't happy with the AAO+Linpus combo, either. Of course it doesn't matter one wit for those like yourself with the wherewithal to install another distro, but for me with my as yet limited experience it would prove way too much trouble, I'm afraid. This is something that Acer really should have got right first time!

Where are you getting those from that they have already been used and returned ? is it a locval retail store ? or an internet vendor ?

I mean the second unit you got could have been defective to begin with which is why it might have been returned the first time.. I'm just curious who has the policy to resell returned equipment without at least restoring it to factory condition (Other than Best Buy that is..) You could have been doomed to fail before you even got started

I'm getting these from a local hypermarket. They generally DO work fine out of the box, but the problems arise when one attempts a system restore; it's simply not possible as the DVD supplied faulty. Acer haven't put up a repaired image of it, either. The second unit was returned simply because the battery was missing. Other than that it was fine.

Farslayer, those details you kindly provide about installing Debian Lenny on the AAO seem to imply that one needs to do part of the process using net-install which requires an eth0 landline. I only have a usb mobile phone modem here so I was wondering if there's a way of doing this without a fixed landline, ie: NO net-install. Can you say definitively?

THanks.

I couldn't say for certain. I'm so used to having broadband I would go into withdrawals without it..

The Ubuntu directions specifically state that you can use a external CDROM drive so i don't really see a reason you couldn't.

When the Debian directions were originally done you had to have a 2.6.26 kernel during install and that kernel was NOT on the standard lenny netinstall disk at that time, so you had to grab a specific iso image, etc per the directions to put on the flash drive.. of course that was so the wired network would work at install time, so you could do a netinstall... Now that lenny has been released I would bet it would install directly from the CD without a problem..

Sorry for the delay in responding and thanks for the info.

Well I changed my mind and just exchanged the last AAO for another one (the third, which is blue; the others were white). The restore disk with this one actually seems to work, as does wireless! The truth is I simply couldn't find anything else as good as the AAO to change to. It's getting harder to find these netbooks which have adhered to the simple and cheap concept. I simply do NOT want a huge HDD for net access on the move, so 8GB is plenty!

Just wondering, which method do you use to do back-ups on yours?

If I were to want to do a backup, I would probably just use a USB Flash drive or USB Disk and write a simple script that uses rsync to backup my data to the USB Drive. I wouldn't worry about backing up the OS because that could easily be re-installed.

To make the re-install simpler the first part of the script could create a list of all installed packages since I run Debian that would be as simple as dpkg --get-selections > installed_packages.txt then that file would be backed up with the rest of the data.. Debian has a way to insert that ist back into the packaging system so it could easily re-install or un-install programs in that list. I would imagine Linpus Lite (fedora) should have some similar mechanism in their package manager.

The second part of the rync backup script would backup my /home directory, and maybe /etc/ so I would have all the configuration files

I wasn't able to find an Acer One with Linux installed. I ended up with a blue one with 160 gig HD and WinXP. I installed Ubuntu on the hard drive as a dual boot.

The first Ubuntu install went badly. The partition manager has been changed and it took almost the entire hard drive for Ubuntu. Then It would not boot properly. I then installed Ubuntu 8.10 in half of the Linux partition and that worked well.

I then uninstalled Ubuntu and with the Partition manager on the Ubuntu disk, I stretched the WinXP partition to be 80 Gigs. Then I used a USB thumb drive that I created with my desk top to install Ubuntu 8.10 in the remaining hard drive space.

All is well with the Acer One.

Installing Ubuntu from a USB thumb drive is excellent, better that from a CD.

I'd second trying Ubuntu on your Aspire One... 8.10 also works great for me. Only difference is, I completely nuked XP on mine (with the exception of the restore partition).

It works perfectly, only thing that didn't, was wireless, and there's plenty of tutorials around for getting the wireless going in about 2min. Only other thing I've not tested, is the mic, so I'm not sure if it works or not. But the webcam works fine with cheese, if you're into 3D stuff, it works fine w/ the Intel Graphics.

All in all, I couldn't be happier.

IGF