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Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on Acer Aspire One

I took the plunge and replaced the Linpus Linux OS that came with the Aser Aspire One with the lastest Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) release, and so far I'm very impressed.

I have to say the that UNR 9.04 is an excellent replacement OS.

The Ubuntu documentation provides a good starting point for installation details.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

Before I started with the installation I backed up the Linus Linux OS using partimage running from a bootable USB drive with SystemRescueCD, saving the disk partition image to a second USB drive. Once the Linpus OS was backed up I created a Ubuntu UNR bootable USB and ran the installation.

Out of the box Ubuntu 9.04 runs great on the AA1. The Ubuntu documenation lists some tweeks to get the wifi LED working. Even after applying the patch I found that the LED blinks on and off randomly, rather than staying on to indicate the wifi is on.

As I have the AA1 with the 8GB SSD I used the following tweeks to optimize Ubuntu for SSD performance

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AA1/Using

I was initially torn between using the UNR launcher or switching to the standard Ubuntu Gnome desktop. I've settled on the UNR launcher for now. I really like the way it optimizes for the the AA1 screen size putting the window title into the top launcher bar. With a small netbook screen reclaiming a few extra pixels really helps.

My only complaint with the UNR lanucher is that it doesn't work well with the enhanced desktop effects (compiz) turned on. But I can live without the wobbly window effects.

Update (June 6 2009): after a few weeks of using Ubuntu UNR 9.04 on my here are a few more tweeks that I made. I found the machine would pause from time to time due to disk activity, this used to happen with the original Linpus OS, but was more nociable with Ubuntu. After doing some reading ended up doing a complete reinstall, this time formatting the drive to ext2 (used ext4 originally), ext2 doesn't have journally so there is less write activity to the disk. AA1 has a fairly low write speed for the SSD. I also turned off the swap partition as by commenting out the entry in /etc/fstab . This did improve the performance with less noticable pauses.
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