Acer Ferrari One Netbook

[moddie666]

Hi everyone,

since there appears to be no info at all about this Netbook's compatibility with Ubuntu, I am starting this thread.

So far I am very pleased with compatibility, after installing via USB and installing all the updates everything seems to work.

Most importantly:
Wired Network: works (of course)
Wireless: seems to work (it detects the Networks in my area, but I have none to test myself)
3D Acceleration: Works with the driver provided by Ubuntu + latest kernel (as of this date at least)

The only thing I did notice in these few hours of trying:
CPU-Frequency-scaling does not work: Why, I do not know (maybe not supported by the hardware at all?)

And the Webcam(integrated) and Mic.(headset) I did not test yet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

What I did notice comparing Win 7 and Ubuntu (9.10) is that (flash)video has very poor performance in Ubuntu compared to Win, and hardware acceleration for video(in general) appears to be unavalable. (mplayer -vo vdpau .... produces audio but no video)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Have fun playing around and please let me know of any errors on my part.

--EDIT--
I have now tried the Webcam and Mic with skype, works like a charm, except you have to use "microphone 2" in sound preferences > input.

If there's something else you wish me to test, let me know.

In Conclusion:
Two thumbs up for this one, unless you wanna watch HD video or FS Flash Video.

greetings
/moddie

[ltsampros]

Hehe! thanks about the report! I just bought this netbook! I'll give some testing results too in a few hours! (seems and feels awesome btw)

[ltsampros]

Hi everyone,
What I did notice comparing Win 7 and Ubuntu (9.10) is that (flash)video has very poor performance in Ubuntu compared to Win, and hardware acceleration for video(in general) appears to be unavalable. (mplayer -vo vdpau .... produces audio but no video)

I think that vdpau is an nvidia specific API

[shababhsiddique]

Hi everyone,

since there appears to be no info at all about this Netbook's compatibility with Ubuntu, I am starting this thread.

So far I am very pleased with compatibility, after installing via USB and installing all the updates everything seems to work.

Most importantly:
Wired Network: works (of course)
Wireless: seems to work (it detects the Networks in my area, but I have none to test myself)
3D Acceleration: Works with the driver provided by Ubuntu + latest kernel (as of this date at least)

The only thing I did notice in these few hours of trying:
CPU-Frequency-scaling does not work: Why, I do not know (maybe not supported by the hardware at all?)

And the Webcam(integrated) and Mic.(headset) I did not test yet.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

What I did notice comparing Win 7 and Ubuntu (9.10) is that (flash)video has very poor performance in Ubuntu compared to Win, and hardware acceleration for video(in general) appears to be unavalable. (mplayer -vo vdpau .... produces audio but no video)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Have fun playing around and please let me know of any errors on my part.

--EDIT--
I have now tried the Webcam and Mic with skype, works like a charm, except you have to use "microphone 2" in sound preferences > input.

If there's something else you wish me to test, let me know.

In Conclusion:
Two thumbs up for this one, unless you wanna watch HD video or FS Flash Video.

greetings
/moddie

can anyone confirm about wireless networking?

[moddie666]

Hi.

Since then i've been able to test wireless, works without a hitch.
As it seems it also has an integrated mic. that i could not get to work.

greetings
/moddie

[xellink]

I used Linux Mint 8 Helena x64 from usb and everything worked out of the box, including mic, except for multitouch which worked eventually. I created the usb in windows, note that the netbook has no optical drive but it is easily done. Refer to http://www.pendrivelinux.com/install...ve-in-windows/

I suggest resizing using windows instead of gparted or it may cause windows to fail. Remember than Ubuntu/mint can access the NTFS folders

(It is odd that oem is used instead of a generic user, just create a new user and add him to sudo. It can be tweaked when you use Visudo. Its funny when helena does it by default i suppose but should work fine in ubuntu. Or alternatively, you can choose to not install in OEM mode by pressing any key when the first reboot screen appears. http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopi...it=oem#p242368 )
Before you install your graphics driver, i recommend to update the linux headers and wireless as described below.

I noticed that the wireless does disconnect when too many pcs are online at the same time to my router. Installing a newer driver, the backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic package using the package manager fixed this. You may need to remove unnecessary headers from your grub menu by just remove the unnecessary outdated headers in the package manager.

Restricted drivers can easily be installed after loading gnome in low graphics mode which should automatically prompt you. You will need to install the restricted drivers again under hardware drivers settings should you update your wireless drivers with the backports drivers. Graphics work fine, but have problems with cairo dock. ATI dislike Cairo i suppose. 2d acceleration works and glxgears work. Gnome-Do works fine as an alternative. Shouldn't need to touch the command line at all.

Tested the mic. It is necessary to increase the volume of the mic under volume settings before getting reasonable input. There are two mics. It tells the output so you know it when one is actually working.

Multitouch works with emulation. Doesn't work otherwise. synclient -m 100 doesn't detect 2 fingers. I had to do some tweaking in the commandline and some restarts before the touchpad worked. Mouse jumps around when two fingers are on the touchpad, but this can be fixed. I tweaked using gpointing-device-settings package and set it to chiral scrolling as well as enabled the mouse in xorg and allowed it direct memory and enabled SHMconfig. Restarting the netbook caused the mouse to not jump. This was before emulation. Finally, with emulation set, width of 5-6 and pressure of 0-30(10 works for me), two finger can be used easily by activating it under preferences->mouse. Sensitivity of the touchpad should be increased to increase performance, but that is up to you. Remember to disable everything under gpointing-device-settings Doesn't work out of the box like windows though. =( However, it works better than windows. Windows have problems in horizontal scrolling, which is quite a pain. Windows also has problems with two finger scrolling if the fingers are not parallel to each other.

The results from mint should be almost exactly the same as Ubuntu. Good luck and have fun.

[moddie666]

Hi.

So as promised more 10.04 info.
Firstly I am by no means an Ubuntu pro but I'd like to think I know my way around.

So, after first upgrading about a month ago my netbook didn't work (hangs at the login, before i can log in) using an older kernel it behaved normally.
A few Upgrades/Updates later some weeks ago the same problem presented itself again, only this time no Kernel would work. So, no graphical Interface. Everything else seemed to work fine.
Then, being frustrated, I started playing around: gdm obviously did not work, xdm (could not find out how to tell it what to use) hung right after the login, kdm however yielded some results using the Gnome Failsafe Session (only combo that works for me) which works at least partially. I cannot update from the GUI however because whenever I click "check" or "install updates"(what does it do exactly?) in "sudo update-manager" the system freezes. This is especially annoying because "sudo apt-get update/upgrade" and checking for updates with synaptic does not cause a hangup.

By the way, booting from CD/USB yields the same result (hangs before the GUI starts with "try ubuntu without installing") even though the normal installer will work fine to the finish, with graphical niceties and all.

So anyone willing to "play" or help try it now, anyone else stay with 9.10 for now.
Stay tuned because I will update this as my netbook system becomes more or (hopefully) less broken.

still loving ubuntu
/moddie

[jgfoot]

I had some trouble installing 10.04 on my brand new Ferrari One, until I realized that this thing has an AMD64 processor. Now, it is running without a problem. So, two lessons learned: (1) the i386 installer will not stop you from being an idiot and installing the wrong distro on your AMD64 computer, and (2) an AMD64 is now cheap enough that you can expect to encounter it in a $600 notebook.

The computer itself? Very good value. The Ferrari branding is a little much. The BIOS displays a full screen photo of some race car on boot. Then, if you let it boot into Windows, you are treated to the sound of a Ferrari engine, and a function key that will take you to the Ferrari web site. Yeah, that will get a lot of use...

[KrisDouglas]

Hello, no point starting a new thread while this one is so young. I have been having problems, big ones, getting Ubuntu 10.04 to boot on my AF1. I saw above you used a 64 bit installer and it worked. I'm going to try that, but I'm getting a really annoying freeze when I boot Ubuntu, it just hangs, can't do anything to the computer, not even drop to a command line TTY.

Any info on getting x32 to work would be cool, but I may try 64bit for the hell of it.

Thanks, Kris.

[moddie666]

Hi.

Mine works again, after installing the fglrx drivers.
Even 3D accelleration.

@KrisDouglas
You might also try the alternate install CD which doesn't have "nice" graphics:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/down...rors#alternate

If ubuntu is already installed you can also select recovery mode before boot. There you do get a command line.

greetings
/moddie