• Acer Aspire One Linux OS

    Acer Aspire One Linux OS

    Rohan Naravane, Aug 28, 2008 1226 hrs IST

    The OS in the Aspire One is highly customized and claims to make Linux user-friendly for the common man.

    Neat and Organized interface, Attractive, Decent selection of built-in applications.

    There is a lag at times, No package manager, Default player does not support DivX video format, Wi-fi connectivity.

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Last week we looked at one of the better Netbooks around - the Acer Aspire One. There are currently two versions of this model in the market - the Windows XP-based version, which we recently tested, and a lower-priced Linux-based one.

Today we'll look at the highly customized Operating System in the Aspire One, which claims to make Linux user-friendly for the common man.

We'd seen a similar OS early this year in the first Eee PC 4G. Let's see if this one's any better.

Appearance and Features

The Aspire One OS is based on Linpus Linux Lite, which runs the Xfce 4 desktop environment (i.e. GUI). The default home screen has gone through a major makeover. The home screen consists of four sections --Connect, Work, Fun and Files.

Such an arrangement gives easy access to commonly used applications. One thing I liked instantly is the Search bar above these tabs, which allows you to easily search the Internet or the desktop. Also, I might add that Acer has done a good job in making the interface look attractive.



The Connect tab consists of a Web browser (Mozilla Firefox 2.0), a multi-protocol Instant Messenger, an e-mail client. Clicking the arrow expands the tab that reveals links to commonly used Internet tools like Google Maps, Wikipedia etc. Firefox on Linux has the same functionality as its Windows-based cousin. Although I'd wished they'd upgrade it to version 3.0 (which has improved a lot).



The Instant Messaging application supports Gtalk, Yahoo, MSN and AIM accounts. To my disappointment, it simply couldn't connect to Gtalk. But Yahoo and MSN worked fine.



The Aspire One Mail client has a simple interface and supports the common protocols like POP3, SMTP etc. It also has an RSS reader built-in.



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Discussion Board
(8) Comments
Girish Singh
,Delhi, on Sep 14, 2008 09:02 PM
The linux version of this netbook is available for 20k in India, on the contrary Acer sells laptops with proper 80gb HDD and DVD ROMS for 21-22k This beats the whole purpose of acer launching this netbook in India. Another interesting observation is that in the US market this netbook is now selling for approximately 350$ which is about 14.5k here in India. Although there might be differences in duties and taxation but a 30% price increase is certainly no possible due to these alone. Such marketing poilicies by Acer make this netbook as worthless buy. It is a sheer waste of money buying it in India, Although it is a great product in itself but the pricing policy is a sham on acer's part and is actually surprising considering the fact IBM is looking at India as one of the major markets of its soon to be launched S10 netbook.
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Voodoo
,Saratov, on Sep 02, 2008 06:06 PM
Notebook is very fun... But I want install Windows XP on it. And my installation is not complite(((
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Henrik R Clause
,Brabrand, on Aug 30, 2008 02:23 PM
No package manger? There's RPM, you just have to enable the advanced mode to use that. I'll install Skype the minute I get mine.
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David Friedman
,San Jose, CA, USA, on Aug 29, 2008 09:09 PM
My boot results were very different from yours. From an XP/120GB machine 75 seconds. From a Linpus/Flash machine, 15-20 seconds. Both machines were in stores in the U.S.
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techtree
,techtree, on Aug 28, 2008 12:58 PM
Has something very important been missed in the conclusion is the million "$" question?
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Anonymous
,chicago, on Aug 28, 2008 01:58 PM
It's just a review of the OS, you can either choose to buy the version with XP and pay 2000 more for just the OS or you can get the version of the aspire with linux, same hardware, 2000 bucks less.
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flywheel
,Broendby, on Aug 29, 2008 01:01 PM
Its not really the same hardware - AFAIR the Linux version has less memory and SSD disk
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zelrik
,winnipeg, on Aug 28, 2008 09:39 PM
They copied the MS window decorator....that's ridiculus. They could have done something more inovative...
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