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Ubuntu on Escher Netbook

posted Dec 8, 2010, 9:08 AM by Quoc-Anh Vuong   [ updated Dec 8, 2010, 9:31 AM ]
Yes, I got my wish on the Black Friday shopping frenzy: A brand new Acer Aspire One netbook. Bought at Target for less than $180! Yep, that's right. Only $180 bucks.

To top it off, I bought a 2GB module, and also a wireless mouse. Now, it's ready for me. Well, not quite. I open up the netbook the wrong way, since I usually open an old netbook that way; so ... here is the trick: to upgrade from 1GB of RAM to 2GB, you need to buy a 2GB SODIMM, open the bottom lid, which is basically pry it open (using an old credit card to avoid marring). Don't have to remove the keyboard, the cover plate, the motherboard to access to the underside as the old version of Acer netbook. Yes, I named it Escher, as in M.C. Escher, since it's a nice little computing device, and it reminds me of Escher drawings.

So, first thing first, I installed the Ubuntu 10.10 Remix; which has a nice, clean desktop interface. Since the screen is only 10" so screen's real-estate is very valuable, thus it can use the "auto hide" feature to hide the top/side menu bars when they are not needed. But, that can be for the next version I guess. Next on the list is to pull down the VLC, so that I can watch movies and recorded TV shows off the shared drive on the network. Using wireless, the 802.11G protocol would not cut it for streaming couple of HD video files, so I had to install the 802.11N wireless router. Now, I can watch movie on my netbook, hooray!

Next is installing STS/Groovy on Grails, because I would like to use this to develop. Then, the Android SDK to develop some droid app. But wait! What's with the missing top horizontal menu? Eclipse is missing the top menu! 5minute searching on the net, and here is the bug report & work-around. Isn't Ubuntu wonderful?
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