[conspire] Sat, 1/10 Installfest/RSVP

[Edmund J. Biow]

> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 21:11:40 -0800
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To: Gloria Bromberg <muymuy1109 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: jim <jim at well.com>
> Subject: Re: Sat, 1/10 Installfest/RSVP
> 
> Quoting Gloria Bromberg (muymuy1109 at yahoo.com):
> 
>> Hi Rick, 
>>
>> I'm planning on coming tomorrow afternoon, with Jim (of SF-LUG:
>> jim at well.com).? I have an Acer Aspire One netbook, which has no
>> DVD/CD drive. I bought it used, with Ubuntu already installed, but
>> it's messed up and Jim suggested a fresh re-install. ? I'm bringing
>> Ubuntu 8.04 on DVD, as well as printouts on installation obtained from
>> Cabal links.? Anything else I need to bring to make this happen??
>> Jim's driving; we're due to arrive around 3:45 - 4pm.
> 
> Hi, Gloria.  I have external CD/DVD drives on USB (and Firewire).
> If your Acer is capable of booting from USB, then you're covered.
> Otherwise, we might need to be creative.
> 
> You might wish to consider using my Ubuntu 8.10 media, instead of your
> 8.04 ones.

I hope your Aspire One install went well, today, Gloria.

I am generally recommending 8.04.1 in preference to 8.10 because it is a
LTS Long Term Support release, which should theoretically get security
updates on the desktop for 3 years instead of 18 months for a typical
Ubuntu release.  Plus, you can theoretically upgrade from one LTS
release to another, while with the regular releases you have to install
each intervening release, as well (so to upgrade from 8.10 to 10.04 you
are supposed to sequentially install 9.04 & 9.10 first).

I don't think Intrepid brings much to the table over Hardy, in any case,
though FINALLY adding tabs to Nautilus is welcome and long over-due IMO.
 On the minus side, 8.10 does not support KDE 3.5.x, and in my
estimation 4.1.x is still very buggy, slow, incomplete, still pretty
much beta-grade software. So for my money, Hardy is actually quite a bit
more usable than Intrepid.

That said, here are a couple of other options you might want to consider
the next time Ubuntu no longer has zarro boogs.

Linpus finally put a disc image of this recovery DVD on its FTP server
so you can download the operating system that the system shipped with.
  http://www.liliputing.com/tag/linpus-linux-lite

Linpus is a customized version of Fedora 8 using a very simplified XFCE
desktop that probably wouldn't satisfy too many long-term Linux users,
but it is possible to enable "advanced mode" and modify the desktop to
be closer to a stock XFCE build.  That also allows to add lots of other
software.  I still retain the original Linpus Lite on my Aspire One
because it works very nicely with the hardware, boots in about 10
seconds, and seems to squeeze longer battery life out of the miserly 3
cell than the other distribution I've tried.  The down side is that
Fedora 8 is very dated, and lots of software is unavailable without
undue mucking around. It is an RPM based distro; I had far more
dependency problems with Linpus than I've had with the last couple of
years of Debian/Ubuntu/Sidux use.  Plus, the default security model is
seriously non-existent.  You can get to a root shell by just typing
"sudo -s -H" in to a shell without even entering a password.

My other Aspire One OS is Sidux; I installed the i386 XFCE version of
2008-03 Ourea on a 4 GB USB stick. It was very easy to set up with the
Sidux installer, which has a handy option to allow installing on to a
USB stick. Sidux allows me access to all the programs I'm used to using,
but seems to get about 25% less battery life than Linpus and is not
quiet as customized for the 1024x600 screen, plus it takes a lot longer
to boot up.

Another option I would consider is Linu4One, an Italian distro tailored
for the Aspire One based on Netook Remix of Ubuntu 8.04.1.  They just
released an English image.
http://www.linux4one.it/
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/01/a-closer-look-at-linux4one-fo-the-acer-aspire-one-video.html#more-4278

Linu4One has the 2.6.27 kernel pinned (normal Hardy 8.04 is at 2.6.24-22
at this point), apparently works nicely with the hardware, and comes
with Flash, OpenOffice 3.0, VLC and all the codecs, so I'm guessing
there might be some legal issues for those of you dare to flout the
DMCA, though of course, you could uninstall that problematic stuff with
Synaptic and probably only serve a couple of years in Guantanamo, now
that "change you can believe in"©® is at hand.

Ed