Software Spot

I've previously covered some to the modifications required to improve Meego on the Acer Aspire One. Having just reinstalled Meego 1.1 (note, the the no easy upgrade form 1.0, the recommended approach is a fresh install), here is a summary of the Meego AA1 tweeks. Enable right hand side SDHC Card Reader Add the following line to /etc/rc.local /sbin/modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 > /dev/null 2>&1 Increase battery life Add the lines suggested in the "Increase Battery Life" section at  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AA1/Using   to the end of  /etc/rc.local Fix suspend issue when SDHC cards are mounted At the following line to beginning of /usr/sbin/pm-suspend umount /dev/mmcblk*p* Changes bfrfs settings for SSD usage Modify  /etc/fstab  to change  realatime  to  noatime  and add the btrfs option  ssd_spread /dev/sda2 / btrfs defaults,noatime,nodatasum,ssd_spread 1 1 Reduce SSD disk IO use tmpfs To reduce the...

[03-Nov-2010] Updated for Meego 1.1,  yum isn't included with Meego 1.1, changed procedure to use zypper instead. I managed to install Dropbox on my Acer Aspire One AOA110 running MeeGo Netbook Edition. These are the steps that worked for me. 1. Download the Dropbox source code bundle from http://dropbox.com ,   nautilus-dropbox.0.6.4.tar.bz2 2. Extract the source files $ cd Downloads $ tar -xjvf nautilus-dropbox.0.6.4.tar.bz2 $ cd nautilus-dropbox.0.6.4 3. Install the pre-requisit dependencies $ sudo zypper install gcc make $ sudo zypper install  nautilus-devel  docutils 4. Compile the Dropbox source (see the README files for details) $ ./configure $ make $ sudo make install 5. Run the Dropbox installation $ dropbox start -i follow the prompts to complete the install 6. Set Dropbox to autostart $ dropbox autostart y

I've had using  Moblin as my netbook OS since sometime last year, and I've been keenly waiting for it's reincarnation as MeeGo . When Ubuntu 10.4 came out last month I decided to ditch my old Moblin 2.1 on my Acer Aspire One AOA 110 netboook and give the latest Ubuntu UNR distribution a try. I think Ubuntu is a great desktop Linux distribution, but for me UNR still doesn't really stand out as a solid netbook OS compared to Moblin, so with MeeGo 1.0 released this week I was eager to give it a try. The MeeGo distribution is offered in two variants, one with Google Chrome as the default browser, and another with the Chromiun browser (the open source variant of Chrome).  Installation was easy, and the boot time (like Moblin before it) is amazingly fast. The MeeGo UI is ideal for a small netbook sized display and the revised layout of the home screen is very nice, with a calendar overview, unread email count, favorite apps launcher, and combined visual feed of twitter p...

Added another gadget to my collection, I recently got my first dedicated ebook reader - the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS-600. With a whole slew of new ebook readers hitting the market (with new announcements at CES) and the growing popularity of the Amazon Kindle (now available in Canada) why did I pick the Sony device? Well a number of reasons, firstly it's the only one I've been able to get my hands on and try before making a purchase, I find the device is good size, solid, with good build quality, although may be a little on the heavy size. I was tempted by the smaller Sony Pocket Reader but found the screen a little too small and I found the touch screen on the PRS-600 more intuitive. The Amazon kindle looks like a nice device, but I was put off but the keyboard and the and lack of support for the epub ebook format which seems to be solidifying at the "standard" format outside of the Amazon eco-system. Amazon currently use a propriety ebook format ...