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Linux on an Acer Aspire One netbook possible?

So I must have been living under a rock for the past 17 years because today is the first day I have really heard of Linux. I hit "random article" on wikipedia and was intrigued haha.

I have an Acer Aspire One netbook, Model KAV60. I was wondering if it is possible to run Linux on my netbook.

I know next to nothing about installing linux either. I just know it sounds pretty cool, and I want to give it a shot.

i would run a live-usb for a few days (such as fedora-live) and if you like it dual boot it along with the pre-installed windows os.

Is this possible to do on an external hard drive as well? I only have a 4gb thumb drive haha And how would you do this?

i only have experience with fedora live usb. its pretty straight-forward:
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

I have an acer aspire one a150l and have installed backtrack3 (based on slackware 12.0) and gentoo. So, yes, you can install linux on it and it works pretty fine (althow, backtrack needed a bit hacking, but this was a long time ago).
4GB thumb drive should be enough for most live distros. You can burn an iso on a usb drive with unetbootin. Give some distros a try and then you decide.

My Acer Aspire One Netbook (dual booter)

Code:

$ inxi -Fxz

System:    Host: biker-laptop Kernel: 3.0.0-23-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.4.3) 

          Desktop: Gnome 2.30.2 Distro: Ubuntu 10.04 lucid

Machine:  System: Acer (portable) product: AOA150 version: 1

          Mobo: Acer model: N/A Bios: Acer version: v0.3305 date: 05/09/2008

CPU:      Single core Intel Atom CPU N270 (-HT-) cache: 512 KB flags: (sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3192.04 

          Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz

Graphics:  Card: Intel Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 

          X.Org: 1.7.6 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1024x600@60.0hz 

          GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 945GME GEM 20091221 2009Q4 x86/MMX/SSE2 GLX Version: 1.4 Mesa 7.7.1 Direct Rendering: Yes

Audio:    Card: Intel N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: HDA Intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0

          Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: 1.0.24

Network:  Card-1: Atheros AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath5k bus-ID: 03:00.0

          IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>

          Card-2: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller 

          driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 3000 bus-ID: 02:00.0

          IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>

Drives:    HDD Total Size: 160.0GB (4.3% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD1600BEVT size: 160.0GB 

Partition: ID: / size: 7.1G used: 3.1G (46%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 25G used: 3.4G (15%) fs: ext4 

          ID: swap-1 size: 2.11GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 

RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present

Sensors:  System Temperatures: cpu: 55.0C mobo: N/A 

          Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 

Info:      Processes: 158 Uptime: 1:47 Memory: 468.7/989.7MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: N/A Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.13

Katee,
if you want to try GNU/Linux and have no cd drive then a pendrive is an answer. Puppy linux will go on a fairly small pendrive- 1GB. Alternatively, if you have an external cd drive you could probably boot a live cd from that device and try 'linux'.

Fred.

I've got an AOA150 (one of the earliest Acer netbooks) and it runs Linux just fine (Fedora, Ubuntu, Crunchbang, Puppy, Mint, and several others over the years, currently running Fedora 17 LXDE spin). You can install the Fedora LXDE spin or Lubuntu, or any other relatively space-efficient distro on the 4GB thumb drive and just use it like you would a normal hard drive (been there, done that, too). One thing my AOA150 won't do is boot from an SD card in one of the card slots - don't know if that's changed in the newer models.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fred Caro (Post 4737989)

why is an external cd drive more favorable than usb ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kateee (Post 4737838)

I have an Acer Aspire One netbook, Model 532h-2344....Installed linux distro slackware 13.37 ..April of 2011..very stable operating system. However if i were you I would give Mint Linux or Ubuntu linux a shot as they are design for newbies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RockDoctor (Post 4737995)

I've got an AOA150 (one of the earliest Acer netbooks) and it runs Linux just fine (Fedora, Ubuntu, Crunchbang, Puppy, Mint, and several others over the years, currently running Fedora 17 LXDE spin). You can install the Fedora LXDE spin or Lubuntu, or any other relatively space-efficient distro on the 4GB thumb drive and just use it like you would a normal hard drive (been there, doene that, too). One thing my AOA150 won't do is boot from an SD card in one of the card slots - don't know if that's changed in the newer models.

Same model; 8GB SSD harddisk and 512MB Ram.
I used to run Ubuntu Netbook Remix versions on it, switched to lubuntu when Ubuntu got a bit too bloated (in my opinion) for a while and I'm now using crunchbang. cardreader does not work with crunchbang (not figured out why).

Wim: Back in the day, Ubuntu, Crunchbang, and several other distros needed pciehp.pciehp_force=1 in the kernel line in grub.cfg - without it they'd only recognize an SD if it was in the slot (either slot) at boot time. However, that wasn't a problem with Fedora. Reading an xD card in the right slot is a different problem - it requires a kernel module that was never accepted by the kernel devs (although Linpus used it), and didn't work with kernel versions newer than 2.6.18.

Using sd cards; will give it a try.

Kateee, for your computer I suggest you look at Knoppix. This doesn't have to be installed on a hard drive: you can run it off a 4GB DVD or USB stick (which will actually have the equivalent of 9GB of uncompressed software: everything imaginable).
http://www.knoppix.com/
http://knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix702-en.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...p/product/2198