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Acer Aspire One Netbook

Stats:

  • 2GB RAM
  • 250GB 7200RPM HD
  • Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Remix

I picked one of these up from woot not too long ago. The model number is KAV10, which according to Acer's support site is actually a D150. Before even powering on the machine, I swapped out the HD for a 7200RPM WD 160GB. I also upgraded the RAM to 2GB.

I have purposed the machine as a GP network access device for when I'm at the office or otherwise out of the house, and also as a dedicated Android Developer workstation. I originally wanted to stick with OpenBSD as the operating system, however OpenBSD 4.6 only had Eclipse 3.2 in the ports tree at the time, so I ended up loading FreeBSD 8.0 on it instead. I ended up having to build eclipse from ports, which took 18+ hours because most of the dependencies ended up being built from source as well. This is one of my gripes with FreeBSD, that they don't build up-to-date ports into packages. Perhaps something I'd need to do myself if I ended up using FreeBSD more widely, but I digress.

At some point I will expand this page with more information on the system, how the hardware does under OpenBSD and FreeBSD, and some of my learning experiences.

Update 2010-11-16:

I forget when, but at least three months back I switched to Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Remix to remove the pile-up of dependency projects to begin coding Android apps. Ultimately I found that the performance of the emulator on the system was too poor to be usable for development, and the Android project was indefinitely postponed. I have been using the system as a general purpose notebook on the road, and to perform some graphics work for contract work that I've been doing. This has since been moved to another workstation.

Update 2010-04-27:

I decided to switch back to OpenBSD because the FreeBSD Android ports were all broken or otherwise causing problems. I also learned enough about the process that I'm fairly confident that I could singlehandedly port the Android SDK to OpenBSD. My current step is to get Eclipse and the other dependencies for the SDK installed. Right this minute I have the JDK compiling as the first step towards getting the Eclipse dependencies resolved. I'll try to keep the site updated as I make progress.

OpenBSD Wishlist:

  • Working ath(4) driver
  • ale(4) driver properly detects MII as 10/100 instead of 10/100/1000
  • Bluetooth scripts/configuration without having to install ports
  • Updated eclipse port (3.4.x would be OK, 3.5.x is ideal)
  • Updated boost port (apparently it's there in 4.7)
  • Mumble port (I'll do this myself if I have to.)
  • Complete porting HOWTO that doesn't reference several other documents
  • X11 GUI Ports manager (I'll do this myself.)
  • X11 GUI Bluetooth manager (I'll do this myself.)
  • X11 GUI Wireless Card manager (I'll do this myself.)
  • Better service management scripts (I'll do this myself.)

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