Installing Ubuntu on Acer Aspire One

Installing Linux on the Acer Aspire one is a hit and miss proposition as you don’t know how much work you will to do to make it work smoothly and without a hitch.

Until now I had fedora 10 installed without any problems and while I had not tested everything on it the wifi was working out of the box which was fantastic and saved me a lot of trouble of going through the internet and mucking about the system until it worked. The only problem I had was that the font size was on the large side and even though I made adjustments to the font size to make it smaller it kept bugging me. Also note that the fedora software repositories are vast and installing things is a breeze and usually involves just finding the RPM -> download and let the package manager install it.

I gave Ubuntu another try last night and despite my earlier grief I managed to get the wifi working, and now its still working almost 24 hours later although I haven’t updated the system in fear of the wifi failing again.

Installing Fedora or Ubuntu.

Part A
Getting the OS on a USB:

1. Download the OS from the Ubuntu website
2. Download Unetbootin
3. Plug in a formatted USB which is 1GB or more
4. Open Unebootin and look for Disk Image and select it and where the ‘…’ are press and go to where you downloaded Ubuntu and select it. *
5. By default it chooses the USB, so all you need to do now is press ok and wait while it creates a bootable USB.
6. After it is done reboot and press F12 when you see the ACER startup screen.
7. Choose the USB option.
8. Select default and wait for the Ubuntu Live CD to load.

* Alternatively you can skip step 1 and use Unebootin to download the Ubuntu distribution you want to use.

Part 2 coming tommorow.

Programming Challenge: Battle Ships

I have been studying programming for about a year now and want to challenge myself to see how much I know and still need to learn so I decided to make a small game based on battle ships.

Its going to be a fairly simple console based version to which I am hoping to add features and functionality as I learn more and more.

Specifications:

• Written in C language to be ported later to C++ or C# and made a console program
• Should display the screen using X
• The ships will be displayed using DDDD for destroyer, and be allowed to place vertical or horizontally
• Basic battleships rules apply
• It will have single player initially and hopefully multiplayer on both the same machine and over a network
• Cross platform compatibility on Linux and Windows
• Specs maybe changed or updated at a later date

Software Used:

• I am planning on using all open source software as much as I can
• Development IDE: Code::Blocks
• Compiler: GNU C/C++

And that would be it hopefully everything will work out well :).

Shh…”netbooks” coprighted

A strange story I read on OSNews about the word netbook which seems to have been copyrighted by a small company years before the actual mini-laptops came out.

Today a small company Psion is battling out in court against the giants to get their copyright back. Its a very strange scene almost as bad as Paris Hilton */shiver/* copyrighting or trying to copyright the word “Thats Hot!”
Read more up about it here.

Netbook + Linux = ?

Netbooks have come a long way from the tiny EeePC that first debuted almost two and a half years ago on the 16th of October 2007, from that day the world was taken by storm by these sub-sized laptops and their potential.

Especially the GNU/Linux community who have tried to port the Linux kernel from microwaves to the PS3 and everything in between. Seriously they have tried to port the kernel into some really strange things just try googleing it the answer may surprise you. In fact its fairly fascinating how far into the market the Linux kernel has penetrated, such as digital watches or microwaves.

After successful ports of the Linux kernel to Desktops and Laptops the community turned its attentions onto these new netbooks, a device with unlimited potential, being the first netbook on the market the EeePC got tremendous exposure by enthusiasts who immediately started to port their distro of choice onto the little machine.

Linux Distributions for EeePC

	Keyboard / Console	Mouse	X11 Graphics	Audio	Ethernet	Wireless 802.11b/g	Wireless 802.11n	SDHC Cardreader	UVC Webcam
FreeBSD	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes		Yes	No
OpenBSD	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes			Yes	No
NetBSD	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	with patch	Yes	Yes
Arch Linux	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Debian	Yes	Yes, as PS/2 or ImPS/2[87]; no fine tuning of Elantech touchpads without a kernel patch	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows XP	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
openSUSE	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mac OS X	Yes	Yes	Yes	out only	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

Source: Wikipedia

Along we come to fall 2008 a year later and countless other companies have seen the profits to be made by making netbooks, and jumping in as part of the craze I got myself a Acer Aspire One (AAO).

The specs are:
Processor: Intel Atom 270 1.6Ghz
HardDrive: 120GB
Ram:       512Mb
OS:       Windows XP Home

Now being a windows user I have never paid much attention to the Linux distributions, but I was curious to try and run one but refused to do so on my desktop so AAO was going to be my test machine. After spending countless hours on google trying to figure out how to dual boot on the AAO as it does not come with a CD/DVD drive I need to borrow an external DVD drive.

I installed Ubuntu 8.10 and spent a couple of days trying to get the wifi drivers to work I found it too much work and gave up as the settings refused to work despite the excellent guide posted on the Ubuntu website and switched to Fedora 10 with which the wifi worked out of the box.

Installing Fedora as with the Ubuntu setup was a fairly simple process the only thing I needed to be cautious about was not to overwrite my Windows XP or do a full system format. After that the install pretty much took its own course without have to keep pressing OK or choosing options like in a Windows setup.

Being a novice GNU/Linux user I was fairly suprised by how easy I found it to get around and do my tasks, also the boot time is significantly faster on Fedora than Windows XP but the battery life is about half an hour shorter. The only complain I have about Fedora and other GNU/Linux Distros are how complicating installing software is, you need to download the RPM or Source Code and the either compile the sorce and install or install the program directly, I found the process too cumbersome and annoying especially if I need to install dependencies.

But apart from that its a seemless transition from windows to linux and I found a few resources online with which to learn linux on check them out its a great beginners resource even more experienced users will find it helpful.

The Shuttleworth Foundation: Learn Linux
This is by the visionary behind Ubuntu its a perfect beginner guide and has sections on System and Network Administration as well as a section on Shell Scripting.

It also has an interactive training environment (forum) so you can connect with others studying as well. I haven’t tried it yet as I found google a faster help.