Someone will laugh and make fun greatly of me because of that but the truth is that in a moment of panic caused by the thought of one week without a computer I bought an Acer Aspire One the SSD version. Even if it has a very small screen it’s quite sharp and I loved this gadget right away. It comes with Linpus linux installed.

Getting the prompt

Just press Alt + F2 and then xterm. It will open a standard xterm window

Setting a root password

In xterm do

sudo bashpasswd

Configuring yum

Linpus is a fedora derivative distribution (actualy fedora 8 in my case). Yum did not worked right away because the mirrors finding system was down so I had to check in /etc/yum.repos.d for the enabled = 1 (actualy the fedora and updated repositories where enabled). Then I replaced the commented baseurl line with a close repository:

#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386/baseurl=http://fedora.mirrors.lug.ro/fedora/linux/updates/8/i386/

of course only vim was installed at that time and I had to do this as root

Installing packages

After this configuration the installation was simple:

yum install ssh

for instance.

The only trouble I had was with pidgin:

yum install pidginSetting up Install ProcessParsing package install argumentsResolving Dependencies--> Running transaction check---> Package pidgin.i386 0:2.4.3-1.fc8 set to be updated--> Processing Dependency: libpurple = 2.4.3-1.fc8 for package: pidgin--> Finished Dependency ResolutionError: Missing Dependency: libpurple = 2.4.3-1.fc8 is needed by package pidgin

I also installed various applications including skype for which I had to download the rpm from the skype site. It installed without any problem.

Conclusion

I am quite happy for now. In just a few minutes I was able to install the extra applications I needed and the OS behaved flawlessly to detect the wireless network and the SD card I’ve tested. Even the flash plugin was installed. So now I can go in vacation happy with my new toy in the backpack (just under 1 kg)

Comments:

roger -

How did you install skype? Which version did you download? I can’t get it to work…

Len -

hello roger, I did nothing special, just went to skype.com and selected the fedora rpm then installed it as usual. I run it with alt+f2 skype.

eric -

You should check out this blog for a bunch of great info on configuring the software in the Aspire One. He has info on enabling the default XFCE right-click menu, as well as changing the icons on the standard software, or enabling a standard XFCE desktop. There is also other info like setting up configurations, enabling yum, etc.

http://jorge.ulver.no/2008/08/06/acer-aspire-one-tips-and-tricks/

The easiest recommendation is to enable the “programs” menu on right click.. Simply run ‘xfce-setting-show’ and you can hit the checkbox to enable right-click. Then all your programs are visible from there, just like “real” Linux.

Len -

Thank you eric, I think I have seen this blog before and it’s interesting. For me “real” linux means having a xterm available so once I had a shortcut for that I did not bothered much with icons and menus :) It’s an old habbit but I still run programs from command line.

M. -

Hello Len, I am a Linux newbie (and now a owner of an Aspire One with Linpus installed). I fond this post looking for a way to connect to the Aspire One from another machine via ssh. The problem is that on the netbook a lot of network ports are locked, and I can’t find a way to open port 22! Can you help me? thank you! M.

len -

@M probably your ssh service is not started. Start a terminal, get root (sudo bash) and start your ssh: (/etc/init.d/sshd start)

M. -

Thank you for the answer len! I tried to start ssh, bu it is not there. In fact, if I try “yum install ssh”, it says there is no package to install. Should I install openssh-server instead? ..sorry, I am new to linux, and I never approached things in this way..

len -

Yes indeed, there are 3 packages openssh, openssh-server and openssh-client. You will need them all. I think you can do the same think using the add/remove software application which you can access within the right-menu -> system …

M. -

Thank you Len! It works! Now I can access it remotely. (only one thing: the third package is openssh-clients with the final ’s') At first when trying to start I had an error because there was no ‘subsys’ dir in ‘/var/lock/’, but I simply created it and then I could start ssh with ‘sudo /etc/init.d/sshd start’. And what about making this service automatically start at boot? How can I do? I tried ‘sudo chkconfig –level 2345 sshd on’, but this doesn’t work… what am I missing?

len -

The chkconfig is ok and you probably can see your service if you do a chkconfig –list sshd. I’ve tested and noticed the same problem yet did not had the time investigate too much, it might be a script problem …

M. -

I googled a bit more, and I found a better way for starting and stopping sshd, and it seems to work! I adapted a script found on http://pengjiayou.com/blog/networkmanager-secret-weapon-for-the-linux-road-warrior Maybe you can tell me if this is not a good way for doing this: i created a .sh file in “/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/”. The scripts in this folder are executed when a network connection is estabilished or stopped. In the .sh file I put this code: ###################################### export LC_ALL=C if [ “$2” = “down” ]; then sudo service sshd stop fi if [ “$2” = “up” ]; then sudo service sshd start fi ###################################### I don’t know exactly if the first line is necessary, but I understand the rest of the code. This is even better than having it start at boot I think! ^_^

len -

Thank you for this info.