This page is about installing and configuring Fedora on the Acer Aspire One netbook. Please contribute if you can.
What doesn't yet work
F12
- Touchpad tapping doesn't work (scrolling is OK)
F11
- All models:
- Touchpad vertical scrolling does not work out-of-the-box with new synaptics
- Sensors not detected by lm_sensors 'sensors-detect' or by the 'acpi' util.
- For the original AAO model A110:
- Everything else works
- Other models, including the more recent AAO A150:
- Cheese Webcam Booth detected camera, then didn't for a while and now it's back, but the picture is washed out and there's no controls to adjust it.
- Speakers do not auto-mute when using headphones until editing /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf.
F10
- Everything working after waking from suspend
- Suspend, Hibernate in general on F10
- Dual Head Monitors, F10 goes into a loop trying to set resolution.
- intel KMS for pretty, flicker-free plymouth bootup. vga=0×315 workaround required in grub.conf
Installation
You can install Fedora by using an external USB CD/DVD reader, a USB dongle, or via PXE netboot.
Live CD/USB
- No special installation workarounds required since F10.
- Partition filesystems cannot be changed: "/boot" must be ext3 and "/" must be ext4.
Installation DVD
- Regular install, except via external USB CD/DVD drive, or using a specially setup 4GB+ usbkey.
Miscellaneous setup
SD Card Reader
Since F10 the card readers are automatically detected out of the box, but if it's not working for you, you can try:
echo "modprobe pciehp" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local echo "modprobe sdhci" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local echo "setpci -d 197b:2381 AE=47" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local echo "blacklist jmb38x_ms" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-msreader
Both card readers will work. The "special" one on the left for adding storage is seen just another plain card reader. Use LVM if you want to extend the internal SSD. Note that with the reader on the right won't work with Memory Sticks. No one uses them so it's not a big problem. Don't try to suspend while using the card reader on the left: with ext2/ext3 partitions the memory could be completely formatted!
Wireless Activity LED
LEDs are functioning again as of the 2.6.30+ kernel updates (but not 2.6.29 as released).
note: madwifi is no longer needed, and is no longer packaged by rpmfusion in any case.
Touchpad
In Rawhide: scrolling works again.
In F11:
Add this to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton2" type="string">3</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton3" type="string">2</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll"
type="string">1</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.LeftEdge" type="string">1700</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.RightEdge"
type="string">5300</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.TopEdge" type="string">1700</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.BottomEdge"
type="string">4200</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>
Save the file, then reboot your system.
If, after some system update, your touchpad stops scrolling:
su rm /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi
Reboot your system, then create the file once again.
Speakers auto-mute when using headphones
In F11.
Create (or edit) /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf with the text editor of your preference (not necessarily gedit).
su - gedit /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
It just need this line written on it.
options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire
Save it. Then reboot your system.
Built-in Camera
Works out of the box. Use the cheese app which is installed by default to test. Other v4l2 webcam-using apps include: vlc, ekiga, ucview, camE, xawtv, zoneminder, and motion.
Notes on performance
If you have the 8 GB SSD/512MB RAM version, the flash performance may not be so good. Linux tries to swap often, and the SSD write speed is too slow (~ 4MB to 7.8MB/sec) to do much swapping. Use a lighter desktop like XFCE or add more RAM (which is not easy; you have to fully disassemble the Aspire One losing the warranty).
If you have upgraded the RAM (1.5GB max) or you don't have a heavy load, it may help to disable swap, as well as to move /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/log, and /var/cache/yum off of the flash and onto tmpfs ramdisk. It may also help to use a journal-less ext2 VS ext3, and to include the "noatime,nodiratime" mount options in /etc/fstab to limit unnecessary writes.
Example /etc/fstab entries:
/dev/sda2 / ext2 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 1 tmp /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 vartmp /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 varcacheyum /var/cache/yum tmpfs defaults 0 0
Note: if installing F10 from liveusb, your root '/' fs will always be ext3, no matter your selection; if installing F11, it will be ext4. TODO: link to optional post-install conversion of ext4/3 to journal-free ext2. The benefits of ext2 is debatable, as the tiny performance increase is more than offset by long fsck's after unclean shutdowns.
If you really want to increase performance, use a fast SDHC memory card in the left reader, and use it for /home, /var and /usr.
Misc:
- On SSD it is also tremendously helpful to disable your browsers' disk cache, or to relocate it to tmpfs.
- Disabling selinux can buy you a small (~7%) amount of performance, if security isn't a concern. It also decreases boot time by a few seconds.
- Disabling unnecessary services can almost cut the bootup time in half (18 seconds is doable in F11, as reported by bootchartd). Depending on your requirements for a netbook, it is safe to disable at least: sendmail, atd, nfs*, rpc*, portreserve, live*, avahi-daemon, cups, gpm, ip6tables, bluetooth, lvm2-monitor, mdmonitor, and pcscd
- Remove all tty* files from /etc/event.d except tty1.
- Disable most autostarted applications from Session and Startup preferences under the Applicaton Autostart tab.
- Disable Tracker indexer from both Search and Indexing and from Application Autostart.
- Use XFCE desktop.
Some tricks
Add this to /etc/sysctl.conf:
# Economize the SSD # Strongly discourage swapping (default 60) vm.swappiness = 1 # Don't shrink the inode cache aggressively (default 100) vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50 # (default 499) vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 1500 # (default 10) vm.dirty_ratio = 20 # (default 5) vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10 # (default 0) vm.laptop_mode = 5
Add this to /etc/rc.d/rc.local
# As in the rc.last.ctrl of Linpus echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate_max > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings echo 10 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save #Decrease power usage of USB while idle [ -w /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/level ] && echo auto > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/level [ -w /sys/bus/usb/devices/5-5/power/level ] && echo auto > /sys/bus/usb/devices/5-5/power/level
Edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and add elevator=noop to the kernel-line
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686 ro root=/dev/sda2 rhgb quiet elevator=noop
xorg.conf
A sample xorg.conf that provides a larger virtual screen - also configures my 19" VGA screen when connected...adjust the Screen and Display sections for whatever display you have connected to your VGA port
NOTE: this seems to require xserver 1.6 and xrandr 1.3 which are Fedora 11 and this may not work in earlier versions of Fedora.
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 0 "Screen1" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "catalogue:/etc/X11/fontpath.d"
FontPath "built-ins"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "dri"
Load "dri2"
Load "record"
Load "glx"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105+inet"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LVDS1"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1024x768"
Option "Panning" "1280x1024"
Modeline "1024×600" 48.96 1024 1064 1168 1312 600 601 604 622 -HSync +VSync
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "VGA1"
Modeline "1280x1024" 108.00 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +HSync +VSync
ModelName "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
EndSection
Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "ColorKey" # <i>
#Option "CacheLines" # <i>
#Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "DRI" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoDDC" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShowCache" # [<bool>]
#Option "XvMCSurfaces" # <i>
#Option "PageFlip" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "intel"
VendorName "Intel Corporation"
BoardName "Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "LVDS1"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "1024x600"
Depth 24
Virtual 1280 1024
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "VGA1"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1280x1024"
Depth 24
Virtual 1280 1024
EndSubSection
EndSection