Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on an Acer Aspire One

Update:  I now run the latest version of Debian on my Acer Aspire.  The hardware is fully supported in Debian with only minor tweaks.  This article has been kept for historical reference.

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Since my recent update to Ubuntu 9.10 didn’t go so well, I needed to downgrade again to Ubuntu 9.04. The fastest way to 9.04 was to perform a fresh re-install. The following describes the steps taken.

The Acer Aspire One doesn’t include a DVD drive. If you happen to have an external USB DVD drive then you are in luck. I don’t have an external DVD drive so I use a USB flash drive instead.  Note: The following steps will erase all existing files in your flash disk.

1. Download the Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix image ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img.  Choose a mirror local to you for the best download performance.
2. Follow the instructions for writing the .img file to your flash drive.  Given that my netbook was out of commision, I used the win32-image-writer utility in Vista to write the .img file to my USB flash disk.

You should now have a bootable Ubuntu installation flash disk.  To install Ubuntu on your Acer Aspire netbook:

1. Ensure that the netbook is powered off and insert the USB flash drive.
2. Power up the netbook.  At the initial bios boot screen press the F12 key to bring up the boot menu.
3. Use the down arrow key and press Enter to select your USB HDD flash drive to boot from.
4. Wait for the live Ubuntu image to fully boot.
5. To install Ubuntu select the Install Ubuntu-Nebook-Remix icon from the Favourites menu.
6. Step through the installation screens and choose applicable options. In my case they were:
   1. Welcome – Select English – Forward
   2. Where are you? – Choose applicable time zone – Forward
   3. Keyboard Layout – USA – Forward
   4. Prepare disk space – Specify partitions manually (advanced)
      • Delete existing partitions
      • New partition table
      • Select /dev/sda
      • Add…
      • Create a new partition:
        • Type for the new partition:  Primary
        • New partition size: 8068
        • Location for new partition: Beginning
        • Use as: Ext2 file system
        • Mount point: /
        • OK
      • Select /dev/sda1 and ensure that Format is selected.
      • Note 1:  I selected ext2 since my Acer drive is an solid state disk (SSD) and ext2 is a non-journaled file system meaning fewer writes to the disk.  Ext3 is a more robust journaled file system and is a better choice for hard disk type applications or for applications were saved data is critical.
      • Note 2:  Since my machine runs off a SSD I do not specify a swap partition.  I don’t want the kernel paging memory out to a swap file on disk and adding additional wear.  In addition the SSD in Aspire is quite slow where writes are concerned so a swap file isn’t a good idea.
      • Proceed to the next section.
      • Ignore the warning “You have not selected any partitions for use as a swap space.”  Select continue.
   5. Who are you?  Specify machine name, user account, and password.  Select Log in automatically if you don’t want to log in every time your machine boots.
   6. Ready to install.  Review the settings and then select install.
   7. Ubuntu will now install itself on your system.  When done shutdown, remove the USB flash drive and power up.  The netbook is now bootable.

For additional tweaks I reviewed the suggestions provided in the AspireOne Ubuntu community forum.  The Acer Aspire One ZG5 hardware is detected well in 9.04 and works pretty well out of the box.

Because of the SSD, I make an additional file system change to reduce the number of writes made when a file is accessed.

• sudo gedit /etc/fstab
• locate the UUID= line for the root file system and replace the keyword reltime with noatime to stop the last accessed time from being updated each time a file is accessed.