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Acer Aspire One - Linpus Linux Lite (Vanilla)

For those using the default Linux install on the AA110.

Enable XFCE Menu

You can enable an XFCE menu associated to right clicking on the desktop (which has videos on Youtube showing how its done - God knows why). However, I prefer a menu on the panel, like most GUI have:

Right click menu

Open a terminal by clicking “Files→My Documents” then “File→Terminal”. Type:

xfce-setting-show

Click “Desktop→Behaviour” and tick “Show desktop menu on right click”.

Add to the panel

FIXME I will expand on this as and when I have time, because its a bit of a hack.

I read through the patch and its a real hack. It disables the event handler for a right mouse click. This is a pain in the arse because the supplied mail client lacks several features - text mail (it uses HTML) and indented replies to name two. However it integrates with the mail checking app which is OK except it only works with Acer Mail and Mail Notifier needs a right click to configure it.

Acer have made some alterations to the xfce4-panel, you probably noticed that you can’t right click and add launchers. I have a workaround but haven’t worked out why yet.

Open a terminal (from a Thunar window if you haven’t enable the right click on the desktop). Now if you look in .config/xfce4/panel there is your standard xml file to layout the panel. If you alter this, on relaunching the panel it overwrites it with the default.

The odd thing is that the un-patched panel is still there, and works as normal (look in /usr/bin - there are two panels, one renamed xfce4-panel.old). Well for some reason that I haven’t fathomed, if you kill the running panel then alter the config then run xfce4-panel.old then restart it the xml config is not overwritten.

Selecting the NOOP elevator

Makes sense - seeing as it has a solid state drive, edit the grub.conf file:

sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

Append elevator=noop to the kernel line.

Compiz-fusion

Compiz is installed but not enabled. Why, I have no idea because it almost works flawlessly.

Enable to test

Open a terminal and type:

compiz-manager

Enable on boot

Open a terminal and type:

sudo vi /etc/xdg/xfce4-session/xfce4-session.rc

Edit the line that reads:

Client1_Command=xfwm4

to read:

Client1_Command=compiz-manager

Reboot.

Emerald Themes

Emerald themes are not installed by default and for some reason aren't installed using the buttons in Emerald's Themer. So:

sudo yum install emerald-themes

Now use “Settings→Emerald Theme Manager” to select themes.

Terminal Transparency

Terminal transparency is enable is Edit→Preferences→Appearance→Background choose “Transparent Background” and set the opacity with the slider control.

Problems

Nothing major, more just niggles.

Windows "jump" when maximized

First, emerald has a problem with focusing maximized windows, so open CompizConfig (Settings→CompizConfig Settings Manager) and click the General Options button. Under “Focus and Raise Behaviour” untick “Raise on click”.

Desktop Cube

The Aspire One has only one workspace, so open “Workspaces Setting” (Settings→Workspaces Setting) and increase the number of workspaces using the spinner control to four. The cube will now function using CTRL+ALT+Left or Right or move with the mouse when holding down CTRL and ALT.

The desktop application launcher

Just an editable XML file located as:

.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

Disable touchpad when typing

Open “Autostarted Applications” (Run→xfce4-autostart-editor) and add a name/description - the command should be:

/usr/bin/syndaemon -i 1 -d

Note that's a figure one.

From the Aspire One Forum

Associate Ctrl-Alt-Delete with Xkill

XFCE is preconfigured to associate Xkill with CTRL-ALT-Esc but xorg-x11-apps.i386 is not installed. Type:

sudo yum install xkill

Left click kills and right click cancels.

Install FireFox 3

I upgraded manually, rather than mess about with dependencies.

Download

Download the latest version from Mozilla.

Install

I installed in the /opt folder because I'm a bit old-fashioned.

Open a terminal and type:

cd /opt
bzip -d /home/user/Downloads/firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2
tar xvf /home/user/Downloads/firefox-3.0.3.tar

Symbolic links to current plugins

The current installed plugins are not in the right folder for this installation so type:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/* /opt/firefox/plugins''

Set default browser

Open “Preferred Applications” (Settings→Preferred Applications) and under Internet→Web Browser select “Other” and add:

/opt/firefox/firefox "%s"

Click close.

Problems

I had to reinstall MediaWrap from the FireFox addons site.

Firefox 3.0.4 still suffers from regular periodic hangs, something to do with SQLite, its so irritating that I've switched back.

Accessing Windows Shares

First, click on the My Files icon in the Files section of the desktop then create a new folder called, for instance, NetFolder.

Right-click on the empty space next to the new folder and select 'Open Terminal here' - this is another way of accessing the command line. Type:

sudo mount -t cifs //[fileshare IP address]/[fileshare name] NetFolder

Filling in the IP address and name with the those of your server or shared folder, minus the square brackets. Hit Enter, and you should be asked for the share's user name and password.