There’s a nice help page at the Ubuntu page.

Needed:

• 1+ GiB USB stick
• Ubuntu 8.04.1 install CD
• liveUSB
• a wired network connection

Missing features:

• Hibernation on the A110
• Power saving for Card readers and WLAN
• WLAN switch

Intrepid Ibex (8.10)

Works almost out-of-the-box. You just have to blacklist the ath_pci module to make the WLAN card work. Everything else seems to work fine. You might have to keep the setkeycodes mappings for the popup displays when changing volume or brightness to work. The WIFI LED doesn’t work with the ath5k module but the killswitch does.

Blank screen on bootup

If you got a blank screen after grub, remove any vga=0x314 (or similar) parameter from your kernel line. Intrepid now uses uvesafb which depends on v86d (not automatically installed!!) and seems to have some problems finding the internal VGA card upon bootup.

A small workaround has been posted at UbuntuForums:

1. install: v86d and you might want fbset

2. create: /etc/modprobe.d/uvesafb with the following content:

    options uvesafb mode_option=800x600-16 mtrr=3 scroll=ywrap
   

3. edit: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer and add:

    blacklist uvesafb
   

4. edit: /etc/modules and add:

    uvesafb
   

5. run: update-initramfs -u
6. reboot

Jaunty Jackalope (9.04)

Works 99% out-of-the-box. Add acer_wmi to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist to get the ath5k module working. Also you might need to install linux-backport-modules to make the lbm_cw_cfg80211 accept the regdom option. (If you’re in Europe, you might want to add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.d/options:

options lbm_cw_cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=EU

This sets the regulatory domain to EU which enables channels 12-14 (see Wikipedia). The non-lbm-module doesn’t like this option.

more tips

The ArchLinux Wiki contains several tips for tweaking a Linux to suit the Aspire One. Also take a look at the [[:know-how:software:linux:start]] section on this page.