Thread: Issues with the Acer Aspire One 10" in Ubuntu

I know there are already some threads about the Acer One (8.9") but I am having some different issues with my 10". I'm trying to get some help in resolving these issues so maybe there could be a wiki for the 10" someday.

I can't get the custom Sickboy kernel to run on this. I thought the hardware was pretty much the same but it's not working for me.

Sound does not work in 8.10, even after compiling the ALSA drivers myself. Sound does work in 9.04.

Battery life is not as good in Ubuntu as it is in XP. I get maybe around 5 hours in Ubuntu. I haven't used XP for a full charge but other people are reporting 8 hours. This is with the 5800mAh battery.

The temperature doesn't seem to be reporting correctly. Likewise, the fan never turns off. The temp reports 27C all the time. I've been working with the developer of acerhdf to try and resolve this.

Suspend and hibernate work when manually selected, but I can't get it to suspend when the lid is closed. All it does is turn the screen off.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

So far testing with 9.04 has been pretty good. The only thing I'm having trouble with is the touchpad vertical scrolling. I need to make sure I'm using the same settings as I am for 8.10, but it just seems like I have to press really hard and that the scrolling section of the touchpad is too thin. There might be a way to change that, but I noticed the xorg.conf file is empty in 9.04.

I tried compiling the 1.0.18rc3 drivers for 8.10 (which do work fine in 9.04 as far as the speakers go, haven't tested mic or headphones) but I still can't get sound to work. I've made sure all the volumes were turned up. I may have to do some more testing on this.

At this point I'd be ready to switch to 9.04, but the vertical scrolling thing bugs me too much. I use this laptop mostly for internet browsing so I need good scrolling.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Have you got wired ethernet working with either 8.10 or 9.0x?

Originally Posted by awy

Have you got wired ethernet working with either 8.10 or 9.0x?

Yes, wired ethernet works for me out of the box with both 8.10 and 9.04.

So 8.10 with the -7 kernel is working with wired ethernet for me now.

I have installed the madwifi-hal drivers and ath0 and wifi0 come into existence and I see no error messages in the logs but, somewhat stupidly, I cannot work out what to do to actually get a wireless connection to come up.

As for audio, as you reported, this is not working. I have not yet investigated further.

The fan for me is not running at a constant speed, although I am unsure as to whether it actually turns off. How do you check the temperature?

I had a crash trying to resume from suspend mode. The crash was related to USB and I had removed a wireless-mouse USB dongle while suspended, so I guess it could be that.

For information, I am running with the Xubuntu distribution. I looked at adding in the netbook-remix pieces, hoping for an Atom-optimized build of the kernel and some other pieces (Firefox, Thunderbird) but I don't know if they should be available in that distribution: they don't seem to be and I'm not all that interested in the other additional features.

So for now, my priorities are:

1. Get wireless actually up and running
2. Get audio (and video -> Skype) working
3. Atom-optimized builds of key pieces (I have read a report that the Intel complier can yield 35% faster results than gcc at the moment)
4. Make sure power-saving and the like are operating correctly (suspend on close lid)

Once you have the madwifi-hal drivers installed, you should just have to click on the network manager icon in the top right to select an available wireless network. That's all I had to do.

After using this some more, the fan speed might be changing some. It's hard to tell because it's so quiet all the time. I never really pay attention to it.

As for Skype, it'll complain about your sound not being set up until that can be fixed on this laptop. In Jaunty, with working sound output, I can complete the test call but the onboard mic doesn't record. But it does recognize the device being there and doesn't complain. I checked my volume settings and still nothing. I don't have an external mic to test with.

I'd also really like suspend with lid closed. I've gotten s2ram working when given the command to suspend, but can't get this command triggered, even after altering the suspend and hibernate files (I can't remember their exact names).

You might want to give Jaunty a try if you've got an available partition for testing. So far it's better than Intrepid for this laptop. Only thing I still can't figure out is the issue with vertical scrolling, but I haven't taken the time to look into it yet, either.

I tried 9.04 alpha 6. Wireless and audio (speakers) worked out of the box, although the mic did not seem to work and the speakers did not continue to work after suspend. The problem with the trackpad is still there. Otherwise pretty nice.

Have you opened a bug for the trackpad issue?

I wonder what is different about the audio in the Jaunty build. I (also) tried building alsa (1.0.19) and, although the mixer controls looked more sensible, I still got no sound.

My acer aspire one AOD150 - i.e. the 10.1 inch version has just arrived. Mine is the one with 3g built in (sim-slot just behind the battery).

Does anybody know which distro supports this computer the best´? from the advice above jaunty seams to be the way fwd. But does it support 3g also?

Does anyone have any experiene with kuki, easy peasy or chrunch bang #! ?

Have just played around with live-cd (USB really). Cruchbang #! i super fast an I think this will be my choice. For some reason I can use the FN keys to control volume in ubuntu 8.10, but not in crunchbang. Otherwise the issues were as expected. No sound through speakers (headphone just fine though) and no 3g.

The 3g is my only real concern. Does anyone have some ideas? I have no experience with dmesg etc.

BTW: For some reason in crucnhbang #! the webcam worked via skype - but not cheese... Strange? (didn't test this in ubuntu 8.10)

I've had some luck getting sound to work after suspend in Jaunty by following some instructions on the community docs originally intended for Intrepid:

Maybe sound stops working after suspending and then resuming if this happens to you, add the following to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/options

Code:

# enable sound after suspend on Aspire One LP#249961
options snd-hda-intel model=acer

Now in Jaunty this file didn't exist. I created it and added those lines to it, suspended and woke the laptop, and sound worked.

Anecdotal at best, obviously, but it's worth a shot.

Right now suspend-on-lid-close is my highest priority so if anyone finds anything out on that front, please post here.