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This is a template for a future guide to running Linux with the Acer Aspire One laptop. If you have the Acer Aspire One and are running Linux on it please consider editing this page or adding a comment below with your compatibility details. By contributing you will help other people running this laptop or trying to make a decision on whether to buy it or not.
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
If you would like to edit this page please first view our Editing Guidelines.
For full specifications see the Acer Aspire One specifications page.
| Name | Acer Aspire One |
| Processor | Intel Atom 1.6Ghz |
| Screen | 8.9” WSVGA Widescreen |
| RAM | 512MB or 1GB |
| HDD | 8GB Flash or 120GB HDD |
| Optical Drive | None |
| Graphics | Intel GME945 |
| Network | Ethernet, Acer InviLink 802.11bg |
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Not Tested | |
| Screen | Not Tested | |
| HDD | Not Tested | |
| Optical Drive | Not Tested | |
| Graphics | Not Tested | |
| Sound | Not Tested | |
| Ethernet | Not Tested | |
| Wireless | Not Tested | |
| USB | Not Tested | |
| Card Reader | Not Tested | |
| Camera | Not Tested |
You can enter any specific notes with running Linux on the Acer Aspire One here.
You can enter a summary of how well the Acer Aspire One works with Linux here.
Discussion
I have a ZG5 (3G/UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA) running Debian Linux. 3G is working excelent!
See http://wiki.debian.org/DebianAcerOne, http://www.pharscape.org/hso.html and http://www.pharscape.org/HSOconnect.html
My machine is the AOA 150-1777. It features a 160GB SATA HDD and comes with Microsoft Windows XP Home pre-installed. It featured a 3-cell battery. I am running the machine in a dual-boot configuration with XP and Linux. I gave over 50GB to the Linux install and set it up with ”/”, ”/home” and swap partitions.
I have been running Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 since Alpha 6. It is now on the full release version. At Alpha 6, things were kind of rocky, but that seemed to pretty well smooth out by the time the Release Candidate came out, and it runs smoothly on the public release.
At present I am running the public release version (through upgrade from Alpha 6) of Netbook Remix. Everything seems to work except the second card slot (the multi reader on the right side). Battery life seems a bit shorter than I had hoped for. I purchased an aftermarket 9-cell battery (rated 7200mAh) to help alleviate the two hour or so run times and now get about six hours or more on a charge. The WiFi LED works. Upon resume from suspend, a Nautilus Window opens showing the contents of my 8GB SDHC card. This behavior is the same as I had previously experienced running many different distributions on my earlier Asus Eee. As I don't have anything larger 8GB, I have not tried a 16GB or bigger SD. I have used cards of anywhere from 512MB and above without issue. The 8GB card I mostly use is by Transcend.
I am quite happy with Linux on this machine. For the record, I have used Linux, off and on, since 1998, and have been using it full time since 2006. In addition to the Aspire One, I currently run Ubuntu Intrepid as the sole OS on my IBM ThinkPad X40. Previous to the Aspire One, I ran numerous distributions on my old Asus Eee PC 4G Surf (701), trying both Eee-specific Linux distros, and variants of Ubuntu using the Array dot org kernel. I have an Acer Aspire 5735Z (5735-4624) that dual boots Vista and Windows 7 Beta. I've run Ubuntu Intrepid on this live, and now that Win 7 will be going into nag mode, I will probably convert it too to dual boot with Linux.
Please look at this distro that is specially designed for Acer Aspire netbooks (for all models) with preconfigured drivers etc. http://www.geteasypeasy.com/
sorry.
Just realized that that was a little vague.
Compile in PATA Intel PIIX drivers.
Do not compile in IDE Intel PIIX drivers or IDE-generic.
I put my config up at:
http://polaris.lurian.net/~zmc/aspireOne/aao.kernel-2.6.27-zmc.config
I'm still installing and tweaking so you can probably improve on that config, but it get's the ATA driver right (on WinXP model with the 120gb HDD)
Experience with AAO
I'm currently typing this on the AAO running Gentoo Linux. Everything works well, with the exception of 3D Acceleration on the 945GM chipset, and the lights on the wifi switch with the 2.6.27 ath5k driver. I've read that 3D accel is possible, and that the wifi lights work fine with the madwifi-ng driver.
Perfomance is very nice.
Important gotcha that took me a while to figure out. The intel PIIX chipset can operate in several modes, IDE compatability, SATA and PATA. It is important that the SCSI-DISK subsystem and the PATA Intel drivers are compiled into the kernel, and not the Intel PIIX ones. If both drivers load, they will fail and you can fall back to IDE-generic drivers, which run in non-dma mode and will make the system extremely slow and unresponsive under heavy disk activity. I've experienced this in my own kernels as well as using live cd's that autoprobe and load modules.
Check your dmesg and be sure you are not falling back to ide-generic drivers. This problem is easy to fix, but since compiling a kernel under ide-generic mode on the AAO can take some considerable time, it took me a while to figure out.
I highly reccomend the machine, good luck to everyone. There's a bunch of great information out there regarding this machine.
-silven
When you say everything works well, does that include the webcam and card reader?