Clogging The Tubes

Here are some of my tips on making the Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) run smoothly and efficiently, and be as usable as possible on an Acer Aspire One netbook. Whilst this isn’t a definitive list, and there are no doubt 101 other things you could do, these are some things I’ve done that I’ve found to be exceptionally useful.

1. The little red light’s not blinking …

   Whilst the wireless all worked perfectly on first boot after installation, the little light on the front of the machine didn’t show any activity. Not a big thing, admittedly, but it’s little things like this that annoy me.

   Fortunately, it’s really easy to get it to work. Hit Alt-F2 to open the Run Application window, type gnome-terminal and hit enter to open a new terminal window.

   In the terminal window, type:
   sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty
   and then reboot the machine.

   Hey presto, we’re going to the laser show. The wireless on/off switch also works, although the only indication you’ll get that you’ve turned it off is instant disconnection from the wireless network.

2. You’re really sweet but I just want to go home

   I didn’t notice at first, but the Windows key on the Acer’s keyboard has metamorphosised into a Home key. Which doesn’t do anything. Wouldn’t it me nice if it actually took you home, to the Aspire’s launcher page?

   Here’s how to make it do just that. From the main launcher, click “Preferences” then select “Keyboard Shortcuts”. Scroll down until you find the “Desktop” section. The last entry there is called “Hide all normal windows and set focus to the desktop background”. Click it, and then press the “Home” key. It’ll come up as “Super L”

   That’s it – the Home key now takes you Home. Surprisingly enough.

3. Wake up boys, we’re in the dump again

   Another wifi annoyance – the wifi doesn’t (well, didn’t on mine) wake up automatically after suspending, which wasn’t ideal. Fortunately, there was a good tip on help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne to get around this. This info is lifted straight from there. And it works fine.

   From a terminal, do sudo nano /etc/pm/sleep.d/00wireless and put the following in the file:

   [sourcecode language='plain']
   #
   # Restart WiFi interface after suspension
   #
   case “$1″ in
   resume|thaw)
   /sbin/ifconfig wifi0 down
   /sbin/ifconfig wifi0 up
   ;;
   *)
   ;;
   esac
   exit $?
   [/sourcecode]

4. do ya do ya? ah-oh do ya do ya?

   Much as I love the Aspire, I’m not a huge fan of its touchpad, so the more I can do to avoid using it and keeping my hands on the really nice wee keyboard, the better. Sounds like a job for the incredible, all-powerful Gnome-Do launcher.

   If you haven’t used it before, hop over to the website and have a quick look at what it is and how it works. To quote:

   GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many items present on your desktop or the web, and perform useful actions on those items.

   Ideal. Install it by opening a terminal window, and typing sudo aptitude install gnome-do. When that’s finished, hit the home key, choose “Accessories” and run Gnome-Do from there. Click the wee arrow on the top-right of its window and choose “Preferences”.

   From the “General” tab, make sure there’s a tick in the “Start GNOME Do at login”. I also like to check the “Hide window on first launch” option, but that’s just me. I’m a tidy freak.

   From the “Keyboard” tab, select “Summon” by double-clicking it, and then press “Alt-Space” to assign this shortcut to it (as the default Super-Space won’t work if you’ve assigned the Home key like I did)

   I also install a number of plugins, mostly to make working with Google apps and twitter a bit quicker:

   • Files and Folders
   • Google Calendar
   • Google Calendar
   • Google Contacts
   • Google Docs
   • Microblogging (twitter)

   If you enable the Google Contacts plugin, it’s nice to set GMail to be the default Ubuntu mail client, rather than Evolution. See the GMail Contacts Plugin documentation for details of how to do this.

These are four quick things that you can do to make working with the machine a lot easier. I’ve a few more tips (tidying up Firefox for a small screen, synchronising stuff with a main desktop machine, etc) that I’ll post later. For now though, bonus points if you can identify the songs quoted in this post.

Tagged: aspire-one, netbook, tips, ubuntu