Today:
Dick Smith Electronics has Acer Aspire 4315-100508Ci Notebooks for sale with Ubuntu 7.10 pre-installed. And they are selling well.
Since the sales are limited to Australasia, mainly New Zealand, there has been precious little information about them online. Well, I'm fixing that.
This document collects information and expertise from across New Zealand and around the World. The New Zealand FOSS community is enthusiastically behind Acer and this product as, we feel, it represents a step in the right direction.
There have been a raft of intractible problems upgrading the dafault 7.10 install to 8.04. Thus, all 4315 owners are encouraged to backup and do a fresh install from the CD. After this, the next LTS release will be in about 18 months, so you can relax.
Thera are a set of note on the install here.
A fresh install (i.e. not an update) will clear up many of the issues below.
Work on this page is suspended - I no longer have a gutsy install to test. However, it will continue to be maintained until the next Ubuntu release, which is expected in October. Right after Software Freedom Day.
See the DSE Catalog entry for specifications.
Many people recall the old Honda CRX micro sports-car, which still enjoys a cult status around the world. You've seen them working hard as couriers, zipping lightly past the bigger cars looking sleek. The 4315 notebook is like that.
These laptops were originally made for Windows Vista, which is like using the CRX to tow a large caravan. It can do it, but you won't enjoy it. There are reports that XP is a problem install for this hardware. Hellooo gnuLinux.
With Ubuntu, the laptop flies along with fully functioning wifi internet and a snappy, non-nonsense, user interface. And it has all the gnuLinux goodies we've come to expect.
All the advantages of running free software, of course. This is a no muss no fuss way to get gnuLinux, and the DSE 30-day money-back means that it is also a no risk option. If you've never tried gnuLinux before, give this one a go. Even people who don't like it are impressed.
The 4315 out-performs other DSE offerings at twice the price.
As a replacement Windows computer it rocks. As a gnuLinux box, it disappoints. This is because it has been hobbled at the factory. Here's what's wrong. Next section, I'll fix them one at a time.
(Items with a star are claimed, by Acer, as disabled due to limitations of Linux
.)
Most of the problems are due to Acer's extensive use of hardware which requires non-free drivers, or software which is designed to work in Windows only.
While there are still some outstanding issues, almost all the problems are resolvable.
... these are the "Acer-e" and "wifi" buttons to the left of the keyboard, also the "euro" and "dollar" keys by the arrow keys on the right. The first two are claimed by Acer to be disabled due to limitations of Linux
. We'll see.
The Acer-e is supposed to launch Acer's special enhancements for Windows. gnuLinux dosn't need them. Presumably the limitation
is that gnuLinux won't run Windows executables. Since Acer have chosen to limit themselves to making software for Windows, this cannot be considered a limitation of Linux.
The button is easy to remap from System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.
The others are tricky as they do not create normal keypress events.
The wifi button normally switches the wireless card on and off. Acer note that the wireless interface goes anyway and can be manipulated from the desktop. So it is not really needed.
However, with the Acer-acpi package, it will actually do this. Acer chose not to install the Acer-acpi package. This cannot be considered a limitation
in gnuLinux.
The latest stable release of Acer_acpi can be found here. After compiling and adding the module to the kernel, add the following line to /etc/modules:
Acer_acpi wireless=1
The functionality of this code in included in the 2.6.25 kernel.
This fix involves compiling from sourcecode. This button and the others can be remapped using xmodmap (included by default) if you know the scancodes. The scancodes are:
Wifi On: e055, Wifi Off: e056, Euro: e033, Dollar: e034
In short: all the buttons are supported.
At the time of writing, this issue remains unresolved. The soundcard is an Intel with a realtek sub-controller, which may be causing the problems.
There is some indication that updating from the backports repo, and addingamixer set 'Capture' cap to /etc/rc.local may help. I am unable to test this in Gutsy, can someone check for me? Thanks.The internal modem is a Connexant chipset embedded within the soundcard. Linuxant have reported that their HSFModem driver supports this modem in this configuration. Download the installer, and install in tty mode.
The driver is tricky to install, and requires a fee if you want more that 14.4kbps. Acer chose not to install the driver, which would have spared their customers some trouble. Instead, they chose to blame gnuLinux.
Unfortunately, the backports alsa update is not compatible with the driver. Seems you get one or the other.The bios is badly configured, which makes booting a bit of a pain. It is easy to fix this by entering the setup (F2 at the Acer screen) and changing the boot order. I also disabled netboot completely, and removed the Acer screen as well.
After doing this, the login screen appears in 15 seconds and a working desktop in 10.
Remaining issues - Acer use a pre-execution environment (PKE) which seems to be having trouble with initiating a boot. You typically have to press the power stud twice to start. This is also the prime suspect with ACPI issues.
This is a technical property of the filesystem which you won't notice until something goes wrong. The install uses an ext2 system for root when it should be ext3. This is actually easy to fix up: sudo tune2ts -j /dev/sda2
then edit /etc/fstab to change "ext2" to "ext3". The changes take effect immediately.
Curiously, the journal is enabled by default on Ubuntu. Somebody at Acer chose to deliberately turn it off.
Swap is needed for the hibernate function to work at all. There is a swap partition provided but it is not enabled. To enable it, you need to format the partition, and put the UUID that it generates into the /etc/fstab file.
$ sudo mkswap /dev/sda1
This will output a line similar to:
ID_FS_UUID=2ba4e416-fd4f-4fd3-9160-6edce5169ed6
Copy the 2ba4...9ed6 text (yours will be different), and then edit the /dev/sda1 entry in /etc/fstab
$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab
# /dev/sda1
UUID=e6160560-3163-4e49-a6d2-6dc841ab145c none swap sw 0 0
Replace the e616...145c part with the text you copied above. Save the file, and when you reboot, swap should be enabled. You can verify this by typing:
cat /proc/swaps which should output a line describing the swapfile.
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface handles, amongst other things, hibernate and suspend.
When the laptop is cold-started (or power cycled), it shuts down almost immediately after the power comes on for the first time. Pressing the power stud a second time initiates a normal boot.
When the laptop is restarted, either from the shutdown menu or from ctrl+alt+bs, the system shuts down properly, but comes up with an error message: "Operating System Not Found". A power cycle initiates a normal boot.
The laptop will suspend properly, from the shutdown menu or fn+F4, but pressing any key (to resume) the laptop reboots.
The laptop will hibernate correctly if the swap space is enabled (see above), but on recovery, the boot process stops (before anything is displayed). The laptop then shuts down. The power stud must be pressed a second time, then boot procedes normally to a login screen (i.e. not a hibernate boot).
The issues above appear to be related. At the time of writing, no clear fix was known.
Things TriedThere is some mention online that a fresh install of Ubuntu removes the reboot issue. I'll try this with Hardy.
In this case that is a good thing. The 4315 uses a video card (intel 965) which is blacklisted by the people who maintain Compiz Fusion (the 3D desktop). The idea is to stop people from blindly enabling the advanced features then wondering why things crash.
It is safe to un-blacklist this card, as long as you prepare and are aware that some things will not work properly.
echo "SKIP_CHECKS=yes" > ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager
start gstreamer properties and, in the "video" tab, select "XWindow System (no Xv)" as the default output.
Then rt-click on the wallpaper, select "change desktop background" and in the "Visual Effects" tab, choose something other than "none".
Disabling this removes your access to over 3000 programs and security updates. Fortunately this is easy to enable.
System > Administration > Software Sources
In Ubuntu Software, check all the boxes except for "source code" and "cd-rom".
In Third Party Software, click add and enter the following in the apt-line:
http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free
In Updates, check all the boxes.
That's it. Update the information. You will get errors about medibuntu. Fix those by installing the gpg key as follows:
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Ubuntu gnuLinux supports open formats completely. Closed formats are not supported at all because this would involve paying a royalty, which would have to be passed on to you, along with the terms of use (EULA), which would stop Ubuntu from being free.
You are strongly urged to try out the free ogg/vorbis (lossy) and flac (lossless) audio codecs, and the ogg/theora video format. Your existing formats can be converted using the ffmpeg2theora tool.
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg2theora
Most modern media players (iRiver, Sony, S&V) support these formats, but seldom advertise this. Which is to say that your mp3 player is likely also an ogg player. Any player which can act as a UMS device will work with gnuLinux.
Closed format support can be added using the medibuntu repository. Most users find they don't need to.
Most commercial DVDs encrypted as a form of copy-protection. Installing a player capable of decrypting the DVDs has the same restrictions mentioned for multimedia formats. Non-encrypted, open, formats are fully supported.
To play a DVD you need to install cracking tools. For a full description of this process see the Unofficial Ubuntu wiki.
This didn't work on my 4315. I was only able to play DVDs after following instructions here to install totem-xine. For totem-xine to work with Compiz, you need to edit a configuration file:
gedit ~/.gnome2/Totem/xine_config
... find the bit that says # video driver to use and make it look like this:
# video driver to use
# string, default: auto
video.driver:OpenGL
Save and exit. Reboot.
NZLUG/NZOSS is working to produce a fully functional, out-of-the-box experience, for this laptop. The resulting OEM install CD will be presented to Acer NZ for use in future releases and also made available online. For their part, Acer NZ is keen to work with the NZ FOSS Community
Simon Bridge
2008