Linux Redux

[Animalor]

Here's the situation - I got an Acer Aspire One the week after x-mas. It's an 8GB SSD model. It was pre-loaded with Windows XP however the performance sucked pretty badly. This was because the SSD's that Acer decided to put in these thing have great read speeds but horrendous write speeds.

I am planning on hacking the thing eventually to add a 1.8" HDD and install windows 7 on it, however in the meantime, I wanna run Linux for a while and learn it.

I downloaded the default Linux build that usually comes with the AAO(Aspire One). It's Linpus Linux Lite distro customized for Acer. The big issue I have with this distro is that's is completely locked down and adding or upgrading applications that aren't distributed by Acer is a complete bitch.

My other issue with it is that security is inexistant. It logs on automatically to a default user called User, there's no option for password protection other than the root password, and yuo can run sudo commands without having to even specify a password at all.

So I'm looking to switch distros.

I'm currently looking at Fedora 10 XFCE(I've been reading on aspireoneuser.com's board that this is a great distro for the little notebooks) or a flavor of Ubuntu and was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions.

Thanks all.

[Fash]

I'm going to get the newest nightly build of Ubuntu and check out the new EXT4 filesystem... boot times are supposed to be incredible.

[Aardor]

I'm going to get the newest nightly build of Ubuntu and check out the new EXT4 filesystem... boot times are supposed to be incredible.

I'm not sure you want to do that, you won't be able to use your ATT install disk to set up your internet, and you won't be able to install Microsoft Word (http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184).

On topic:

I am a big fan of Ubuntu and recommend going with that, personally (I have disliked Fedora since switching to Debian 2004ish). How are you liking the machine otherwise?

[Animalor]

I'm in love with teh hardware but the slow writes on the SSD are a bit of a pain.

It's unfortunate that Acer has decided on such a shitty security approach with their distro cause the thing boots up from off to OS in under 20 seconds.

I've been reading up on tips for the SSD drives since there is a finite amounts of writes to the hardware and they recommend installing a distro and then turning off journaling, swap partition and logging. What I've read also recommends using ext2 as a file system.

What I want for the hardware is fast booting, small footprint, packages easily installable, reasonably secure (I'm not looging for full drive encryption but a username and password and the ability to create multiple user accounts would be nice.

One of the cool features of Linpus Lite (This is Thunar doing this is my guess) is that it will extend your home folder to and SD card you insert into the SDHC card reader at the left of the machine. I'd love for whatever I get to be able to leverage this ability.

I'm looking at was looking at Ubuntu Netboox Remix but it looks like they're working on making custom versions for OEM's instead of making another distro for netbooks.

I'm looking at Fedora 10 XFCE as it's getting a lot of praise at aspireoneuser since a lot of the stuff works out of the box apparently.