Loveliness 
Got the Aspire One in my hands today.
What I did first was to just browse the web, and believe it or not, everything worked. Webradio and everything. Haven’t looked into it that much but it seems like flashplayer and all the usual plugins are already installed upon shipment… It’ll be interesting to investigate the versions of installed software later.
The system creates a non-root user for you with the self-explanatory name “user”. This is a normal user account with no special priv’s and it boots directly into this ID. During first-start install you are also allowed to set the root user password. This can later be used when su’ing to install applications and supporting libraries.
As you might have read erlier this unit ships with Linpus Linux which is a Fedora 8 clone optimized for UMPC’s. This means that it is also optimized for SSD harddrives (minimize wear, maximize performance) and it should perform OK at least. Hard to pinpoint if something feels like a bottleneck in the system right now, as I’m still quite new to it.
The Linpus menu interface is bright, shiny and intuitive but it is very clear that it is not for users that have above average linux skills. I have yet to change the window manager on this one as “Alt+F2″ goes a long way. As mentioned in previous posts I might also turn to the Ubuntu UMPC package once that is out and kicking.
Another thing I mentioned in an earlier post is that I bought an additional memory module (1GB) and that it looked like a pretty advanced manoeuvre… And it really really was.
Oh my god who builds hardware that you have to upgrade like this:
And finally:
I mean… I’m not worthless at hardware but give me a break… The only thing I did not have to do was to solder the god damned module to the motherboard… Ah well… It was an experience at least. Hardest part was to know what to pull and what flip if that makes sense for anyone Maybe I’ll write a more verbose guide than the ones that exist now at a later time.
Moving on, now when the memory module was installed was the A1 any faster? Very much so, actually. Boot time had drastic improvements and I had a less tormenting time browsing Aftonbladet.se (which is filled with all kinds of crappy flash adverts). I also had an easier time handling my gimp as it can be quite hungry sometimes.
And when it comes to gimp and other applications remember that the OS really is Fedora 8 and as such it is very easy to get all base applications installed. Just press “Alt+F2″ and type in “xterm” and press enter and install what you need through yum (remember to “su” first though). The first app to go was of course Fyodor’s NMAP:
# yum install nmap
Yummie… and that’s how hard it is. Another example can then be FileZilla:
# yum install filezilla
Of course you wont see filezilla in the menu so you’ll have to launch it through “Alt+F2″ -> “filezilla” -> [Enter].
Both wired and wireless networking worked fine out of the box (verified wireless on my neighbours WLAN) and the only thing I have to note here is that the user controls for the networking is a bit hard to work with. Not that the functions doesn’t exist or that it is hard to find, but it feels sluggish and the shortcut applet behaves weird sometimes (but I have quite large fingers so it might be that).
The biggest plus though goes to the keyboard that manages to, even though it’s really small, work for my large and ogrish hands. Second gold-star goes to the screen that performs excellent both on AC and off. Played some Tetris on the bus home and it worked fine even though it was quite bright outside.
Ok, that’s all for now More on this wonderful toy later…
And yeah, this is my first blogpost written on the A1!
A1 References:
- Memory upgrade
- User forum
- Hardware forum
- How to ruin a perfectly good Aspire One
