I have just returned from a trip which took me to Debrovnik, then to my
final destination in Athens to stay with family, via Sarajevo, Belgrade and
Thessaloniki. Planes, buses and trains. I took my Acer Aspire One, 110-Ab and
installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix to disk using the image transferred to a 1GiB
USB memory stick the day before I left and used it out of the box. I usually
use Fedora based operating systems for personal computing but need to stay
familiar with modern Debian based distributions for development purposes so
took this opportunity to test drive UNR. Im familiar with the Debian
environment.
My computing needs were minimal. I used Firefox, OOo Writer, F-Spot Photo
Manager, Gimp, File Browser, Skype, the command line to make a few
adjustments and a few games of Lango. I used numerous wireless facilities. My
Camera is a Fujifilm F10 6.3 Mega Pixel and the direct USB connection worked
without additional software and appeared as an external memory device simply
accessible using the file browser.
Interface - there is no doubt the Ubuntu colour scheme has improved. The
browns are more toned and the orange a better match for the browns. Coffee
and chocolate with a little orange zest and smooth multi-coloured icons seem
to work well together. Two years ago, I installed then removed Ubuntu after a
few days due to the colour combination which I simply didnt like. No
problems this time. The desktop layout is intuitive and clear and made good
use of the AA1 screen. I was happy to swap between applications using the
task bar like icons located in the top left hand side of the screen.
Applications are easy to find. A niggle, it took me a few minutes to realise
the grey scroll bar on the right existed.
Performance - Application start time was acceptable if a little on the
hesitant side. Boot time is fine. The default sound server presented problems
when I attempted to use Skype, much used on this trip, I was a little
irritated that it took me two hours to make Skype work and had a poor Wifi
link at the time. I was on holiday so did not want to spend a long time
fixing this. As switching from PulseAudio sound server to ALSA in Sound
Preferences did not fix Skype I simply broke PulseAudio by removing some of
its key packages and re-installed Skype. Video in Skype no longer worked but
I didnt care as I was not planning to use video. Video still worked with
Cheese Webcam Booth. Once Skype was working as long as the network connection
was solid there were no more problems. I used some of my trip time, whilst
based in Thessaloniki, to write a first draft of a short eBook about small
development collaboration, which I plan to make available for sale soon. I
wrote just over 10K words using the AA1 and OOo Writer in a couple of days.
The screen size is an obvious drawback but UNR font rendering is clear and
enabled me to craft the words comfortably. The AA1 screen is also
exceptionally clear, one of the features I really like about these particular
netbooks.
Network - Wireless worked well most of the time. One in three or four WLAN
connections required a reboot and or a network restart. This may be a driver
problem or due to the fact I used a number of WLAN clouds during the two week
trip and the connection became, unscientifically clogged. Ubunutu supply an
alternative proprietary driver, the use of this did not improve the
connection, in fact WLAN stopped working completely when I enabled it, so I
continued with the default. Wired LAN worked perfectly.
Power management - suspend worked, hibernate failed. The AA1 system fan was a
little noisy at times, I know there are some scripts available to quieten the
fan. I rather hoped this had been handled automatically. But the weather was
really warm at times and I undertook most of my computing whilst drinking
coffee in a cafe, so the extra noise was unnoticeable. AA1 froze only once
during the whole trip, probably due to overheating. I always achieved the
specified two hours battery life.
Applications - Good selection for such a small installation image. I needed
to additionally install Skype, Gimp and Java. These required a significant
number of additional package dependencies, I used apt-get install from the
command line and satisfied these after an hour. Aptitude would have been fine
too. Finding the right Java package took a little extra effort, I eventually
used apt-get to install Java from the pre-defined multiverse package
repository rather than the version downloaded directly from Sun.
Adobe-flashplugin worked out of the box? I dont have a history entry
relating to the installation of adobe-flashplugin, it must have either been
trivial to install or it was working out of the box. I needed Java Firefox
plugin for the FaceBook photograph upload tool every few days for the
duration of the trip. Automatic updates work well, as I often had a poor WiFi
connection I disabled them for the duration of the trip as the pop-up
messages became annoying each time I reconnected, two steps were required and
this took about quarter of an hour to achieve, finding my way around the
Administration and Preferences settings. As for the command line, I dont
often use sudo on a daily basis to execute commands as root, but as I was
using the command line sparingly it did not matter.
Final Thoughts - Evidently additional effort has been spent improving the
colour scheme. I am sure this is and will pay dividends. Not essential
depending on your skills and resources, but I would suggest tuning UNR for
performance before embarking on a trip and perhaps taking additional time to
ensure all the applications you need will work properly before travelling.
The platform felt solid and served its purpose well. An elegant, lightweight
solution for a reasonable initial investment of my time.
Damian
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