Acer Aspire One 522 - Smiles and Frowns

[Rowan_]

[ Update - May 7, 2012: 12.04 LTS is working very well after a few days of install. I did not install the proprietary graphics drivers and Unity works with only a slight delay. I also noticed when viewing video the screen dims slightly after about 20 seconds.
There is no issue with wireless connections.
Battery reporting seems slightly inaccurate, but I haven't changed the power settings as of yet. Perhaps im mistaken.]




Seeing as the Acer Aspire One 522 is quite new to the marketplace I thought I'd note my experiences with it.

Ubuntu's Netbook interface,Unity, does not work.

Ubuntu Desktop, and Unity-2D do work; but not flawlessly.

I have noted the netbook's incompatibilities at http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthre...543009&page=12 posts #118 & 119.

If anyone has any suggestions for the lack of wireless capability then I would deeply appreciate it. Having a netbook is pointless without wireless online connectivity.
The interesting part is that I must use Fn + F3 at startup otherwise i experience random freeze/crashes. If i plug in an Ethernet connection no crash occurs regardless of manually cycling off the wireless.

Other than the permanent watermark from the ATI Catalyst drivers and the wireless issues, the OS works marvelously quick and problem free. [Edit: Not so marvelous; random freezing/crashes became constant freezing]
I found it usefull to install the recently available Unity 2D. After initial boot - and then reboot - it works quite well, and looks nice.

However, no wireless means back to MS Windows for me.... sigh.

[jerrylamos]

Acer Aspire one D255E running Unity 3D on Natty Narwhal O.K., as functional as an Alpha 1 usually is.

I tried Ubuntu 10.10 netbook but didn't see the point, since regular Ubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 11.04 Natty working fine.

Now Natty 11.04 is in Alpha and not stable i.e. may crash however it does function on my D255E as good as or better than any of my test pc's.

Jerry

[Rowan_]

Okay, well thanks for the reply. However; it doesn't seem relevant. Your acer is a different model with a different CPU and GPU.
The 522 has an AMD C-50 ‘Ontario’ APU, which is a 1GHz dual core processor and Radeon HD 6250 chip GPU.
As you see this differs greatly from your intel setup.

Thanks for help though. If you have any insight into the wireless issue that would be great.

[srstrt]

Hey there,

I'm having the same problem... The driver is there but when I try to activate it the activation process crashes... would love to have an answer...

Peace.

[andrewthong]

Try installing the latest Catalyst manually- no watermark there.

I had wifi working properly initially, but it didn't show up on 3rd-4th reinstall for some reason- had to go back to Windows to get it enabled again.

This is for Desktop 10.10

[x86Daddy]

What's everyone's successful method of booting Ubuntu on the 522?

I've built thumbdrive installers with the recommended Pendrivelinux creator and UNetbootin, and I've tried 10.10 and an 11.04 nightly, with no luck. I get a frozen mouse cursor on the Ubuntu load graphic at best, or it just freezes at the Syslinux loading line immediately, depending on which USB imager I used.

[Rowan_]

What's everyone's successful method of booting Ubuntu on the 522?

I've built thumbdrive installers with the recommended Pendrivelinux creator and UNetbootin, and I've tried 10.10 and an 11.04 nightly, with no luck. I get a frozen mouse cursor on the Ubuntu load graphic at best, or it just freezes at the Syslinux loading line immediately, depending on which USB imager I used.

Try booting with the livecd (usb) and use disk manager to Format the partitions. For some reason ubuntu looks for a previous install and then f@(k$ up and freezes. In particular i found that the swap partition is what was causing the problem.
Worked for me several times with different computers.
Good luck.

[Rowan_]

There is a freezing issue that really makes Ubuntu useless on the 522. It seems to be related to the wireless trying to connect. I'm back on windows.... blah.
Please provide feedback if anyone has a successful install with wireless working.
Cheers!

[dsummy]

Hey, i just purchased an acer ao522 also and am having the same issue with the watermark. I installed windows 7 x64 for the time being and have been searching for a fix to the ubuntu driver issue. It seems amd has not yet released drivers to support the 6250 on linux yet. but i did find these drivers..don't know how to install them though
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=OTA3Nw

I also seem to be having an over heating issue..today while on the train I had the netbook in my bag, not turned off, just sleeping and when I woke it up and closed some applications and went to turn on a movie..it got EXTREMELY hot in the bottom left corner of the screen and under the power button, Also, in the middle of the screen right by the letter 'a' in acer there a little circle the size of a screw that looks to have melted the plastic of the screen going to talk to acer tomorrow.

[Rowan_]

Hey, i just purchased an acer ao522 also and am having the same issue with the watermark. I installed windows 7 x64 for the time being and have been searching for a fix to the ubuntu driver issue. It seems amd has not yet released drivers to support the 6250 on linux yet. but i did find these drivers..don't know how to install them though
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=OTA3Nw

I also seem to be having an over heating issue..today while on the train I had the netbook in my bag, not turned off, just sleeping and when I woke it up and closed some applications and went to turn on a movie..it got EXTREMELY hot in the bottom left corner of the screen and under the power button, Also, in the middle of the screen right by the letter 'a' in acer there a little circle the size of a screw that looks to have melted the plastic of the screen going to talk to acer tomorrow.

Yikes.