Over This

Writing about the same thing again - installing an OS

I just can’t make up my mind … since I can’t seem to get OS X installed on my Acer Aspire One, I’ve gone back and forth with linux operating systems. First I got Ubuntu 8.10 on there, then I added the “netbook remix”, and things were fine and dandy. Then, I tried to get creative by adding a low power kernel to the mix, but that killed my wifi. Not satisfied with the slower load times, I figured I’d go back to Linpus and try some customizations out. Well, that was a bust too because of my new Dell 1390 wifi card. Grr…

So, now I’m back to the remix. This time, I’m installing straight from the remix image and not with 8.1 and the remix on top of that. I read that this would be simpler, so I’m giving it a shot. I also read that with the remix and a low power kernel, the load time was about 20 seconds. Yeah, that’s what I want! I also want everything else to work too … that means wifi, suspend and hibernate.

The only good thing about this process is that the regular installs of Ubuntu and Linpus always work. Why the heck is OS X so much of a problem for me? I’ve got a 8G Lexar CF card in the mail now. It was free after rebate and $5 shipping, so I thought I’d try it. I also want to try a 1.8″ HD, but of course, I don’t want to pay a lot for it considering it may not work. Option 1: buy a broken 30GB ipod and yank the HD, Option 2: eBay …

Note 1: I didn’t pay attention to what I read earlier, but it doesn’t really bother me … Ubuntu Remix is built on top of Ubuntu 8.04 and not the newest 8.10. There are a lot of menu options that I don’t see in the preferences and system menus, but I don’t know if that’s release related …

Note 2: The proprietary driver was listed as “wl”. That didn’t do anything for me, so I removed it and rebooted. The next time around, it found the familiar “bc43″ driver. It was interesting that the install takes you through the use of “bc43-fwcutter”. That’s the same thing I was unsuccessful in doing with Linpus. I guess it just works better in Ubuntu. The process worked, and I had wireless again!

Note 3: I installed the lpia (low power intel architecture??) kernel (http://draecas.googlepages.com/linux-image-2.6.28aaobroadcom_1_i386.deb) successfully with this:
sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture linux-image-2.6.28aaobroadcom_1_i386.deb
One thing that I did notice is that when rebooting, I don’t see the grub screen where I can choose the kernel. I suppose I have to muck around with something to get that grub load screen. No big deal though; I hope to not have various kernels this time. Oh, yeah, the wifi works perfectly too, either be/c this kernel specifically included it, or be/c I got the drivers earlier …

Note 4: I wanted to test the sound, so I tried Pandora. Adobe Flash wasn’t installed, so I had to install that. The plugin wouldn’t install properly because of my “lpia” kernel. Thankfully, I read a bit, and did pretty much the same business with the .deb file I downloaded from the Adobe site:
sudo dpkg –force-architecture -i whatever_the_name_of_the_flash_installer_was.deb
I can report that plugging in headphones worked just fine and also worked after suspend. nice.