© copyright 11.Sep.2009 by Paul Bradley filed under Ubuntu
After making the decision to only use Ubuntu or Ubuntu derived Linux distributions on my computers, I recently installed the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my Acer Aspire One. The process takes about 40 mins and you will need a blank USB drive (a.k.a Flash drive) with at least 1Gb of free space. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to install the Ubuntu Netbook Remix onto your Acer Aspire One.
Visit the Ubuntu Netbook Remix home page and download the image file to your local machine.
Open a terminal window and insert your blank USB media, you then need to determine the device node assigned to the newly inserted USB drive, you can do this by typing the following command at the command line :
sudo dmesg | tail -20
Which will output something like :
[ 5046.396364] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 5046.397075] scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB Flash Memory
[ 5047.068761] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[ 5047.068769] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 5047.075021] sdb: sdb1
[ 5047.076459] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
Where sdb is the device node.
Then use the following command to copy the image to the USB media :
sudo dd if=ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img of=/dev/sdb
Substitute sdb with the device node reported by your dmesg report.
You can now insert your newly imaged USB drive into your Acer Aspire One, as you turn on the Acer keep pressing F12 while the machine boots up, until you get the BIOS menu which allows you to change the boot order of the machine. After selecting USB as the first boot device the Acer Aspire One will boot from the USB drive and load the live image of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Once the desktop loads there is a menu option to permanently install Ubuntu onto your Acer, follow the simple installation wizard, and after approximately 40 mins you will have a fully functional Ubuntu system on your netbook.
About the Author
Paul Bradley is a VB.NET software developer living and working in Cumbria. He provides PHP & MySQL bespoke development services via his software development company, Carlisle Software Limited.
He has over 20 years programming experience.