Hi, I have recently purchased an Acer Aspire One, and have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on it. Everything seems to have worked fine, except for 3 things:
1. My Touchpad doesn't work,
2. I don't know where to check if my wifi is working
3. I don't know how to check if the webcam is working.

As i am a newbie to linux, I need some guidance on how to solve these above issues. So far, everything else is working fine. It works, and operates fantastically. My Internet download speeds are fine, my video codecs are installed. My Computer works, looks and funcions awesome. I am happy except for the abovementioned issues.

Can anyone help me as to how to overcome these problems?

Also, I am new to linux, so i am unsure as to whether linux is vulnerable to viruses... Is there any advice that you could give me with regard to virus protection?

Thank you,

Anver

Have you installed a wifi manager ? There are a few different net managers. Did you install the netbook remix or standard Ubuntu ? Ubuntu makes a version specifically for netbooks.

David

No, i haven't installed any wifi manager. please could you advise me where to download this from? I am using the standard version, because the people that i have spoken to have told me that the standard version will work on a notebook with no problems. I didn't even know there was a netbook remix. is there a way to modify my installation without formatting? or alternatively, a way of downloading some extra drivers for my machine?

Open up synaptic. (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager), then search for wifi. 5 results came up for me, 2 of which look to be exactly what you are looking for.

I haven't used the netbook remix yet, though I plan to buy the same laptop you have, as soon as I can afford it.

Do you like your netbook ?

David

P.S. this might help...

https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix

With that laptop, I would go with the netbook remix, even if I had to reinstall......

This might help more ...

http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/nbr

Ok, I went to those websites. I've downloaded the files that were availible for download? so let me get this straight... If i install the files that i've just downloaded onto my existing ubuntu 8.10, the software will be modified? no formatting required? That's what i gathered from the downloads... cos i see that the files are quite small... so i assume they're only mod files?

the aspire one is a beautiful notebook. I had a dell d820 with an Nvidia 384MB dedicated graphics card which i sold and i bought a fujitsu siemens amilo 12".. I kept that for not more than a month, and i actually sold it at a 1000 Rand Loss (about 100 USD) in order to get cash to buy the Acer Aspire one 8" . I bought a white one (it looks like an apple macbook), sleek and sexy.. very nice machine. The only 2 snags are:

1.) There is no DVD-writer on small machines like that... I had to buy an external DVD writer which costed me about 600 Rand (about 60 USD)
2.) The Intel Atom Processor isn't for a tech junkie. The only reason why i settled for an entry level CPU is because I have a wicked desktop which will kick anybody's ass (My Desktop is an AMD64 Dual Core 6000+, 4GB Ram, 1.3TB HDD, DVD-RW, Illuminated and water-cooled case), and I have an Xbox360, so my gaming is covered.

Apart from that, the Aspire one is a great machine for normal office work, and gaming... and I'm sick of the windows interface, and the boring XP installation (not to mention the shitty vista installations) ... I needed something that gave me a challenge, so hence after trying Mandriva 2006, SUSE9.3, ubuntu 7.8 (which are all ancient), i've finally installed ubuntu 8.10 which went pretty smooth... Now the trick is to make it smoother.

ok, so what is ur advice from here???

Well, to be honest, I would start over and install the netbook remix. There are quite a few default settings and software choices they would make to get the most out of your limited (but sweet) machine. You'll have most of the software installed, but you won't be using it, you'll be using the default Ubuntu software/settings, unless you manually change things. And how would you know if you changed everything ?

The standard Ubuntu is fairly heavy, they removed quite a bit of bloat with the remix I think. The standard Ubuntu is great, as long as you have a decent machine to handle it. With a nice small netbook, I'd stick with the distro designed for exactly my hardware.

I'm really just guessing though, I don't have an aspire one yet to check myself.....

Good luck....

David

hey! i want to consult you with one thing and it is really important for me and thanks very much for your time!

could you tell me where you download the ubuntu 8.10 ?? i have got one,but i can not install it! because it says 699M but it is actually 698.8M.and i have checked it, some file missing! ~

so~ if you know ,please tell me~thanks in advance.

Once again, download with bittorrent, it will do error checking and correction for you.

http://torrent.ubuntu.com/simple/int...86.iso.torrent

oh,thanks! i will try it!

once again! it is 698.8m,NOT 699M, it is not a full package! you download it from there? and you install it successfuly?

Yes.....it has a much better chance of working because bit torrent has built in error correction. You can also check by downloading the MD5, it checks to make sure the full download is there. After you burn the cd, you can also check that it's a full good burn with the "check cd" option in the menu.

David

which location did you choose? because i choose 6 different locations to download,they are all 698.8,not 699! so~i have checked!,and now,i do not know where i could i download a full good ubuntu 8.10 to install! thanks!