I've just bought an Acer Aspire One and I must say, it's the best thing since sliced bread. True that, out of the box, the Linpus Lite OS has a few rough edges, but just follow the various tips found on the web and you end up with a perfect little netbook.

But before jumping in, check out the Acer Aspire One site. You can find a link in the System Information applet, on the Help tab. There you can find a number of extras packaged for simple installation on the Linpus OS. However, don't be tempted to use the VLC installer, it has the same codec limitations as the original media player. You will also find Firefox 3.0 installer there. Much easier to use than some of the manual instructions out there and avoids some potential problems. Unfortunately, it does install a lot of language packs.

A good place to start is the Register site, particularly "Ten tweaks for a new Acer Aspire One" and "How to backup and restore your netbook". The later is a must. I probably restored to factory settings at least three times, before getting my ideal combination and sequence of installing. Read as many tips and tweak articles you can find. There is a lot of duplicate information, but you find the occasional extra insight. When you want to start, I suggest the following tweaks and sequence:

Enable the Advanced Menu

Desktop pop-up menu with access to Linux programs and commands hidden from the standard desktop, but use with care.

Change Ctrl+A behaviour

I like Ctrl+A to "select all", so now you can get to the keyboard settings, select "default" behaviour.

Tweak Linux for SSD usage

Seems like a good idea to get this performance tweak done early on.

Reduce use of swap partition

If you have the SSD model read these comments. Might make the drive last longer.

Stop hosts update

Annoyingly, on reboot the /etc/hosts file is recreated. Use mousepad to comment out this step in /etc/rc.d/rc.5

Create hosts file

Use mousepad to add any local network machines you might use. Media servers etc.

Run Live Update

Keep running this until you have all the available updates installed. Use a wired connection, there might be some large downloads. Do not use the Software Updater on the Desktop Menu. That will cause you problems.

Configure WiFi

If you configured your wireless connection earlier, you probably need to do it again after the updates.

Install other patches

Download and install any extras from the Acer site you feel appropriate. Also look for the MS Core Fonts rpm, which will make web pages look more as intended.

Make a USB Recovery Disk

At this point make a backup, as this is a good state to restore back to, if any of the following go wrong.

Install Firefox 3

I used the installer from the Acer site, then disabled all the unwanted language packs. Must find out how to remove them and save some space.

Install Networking

Want to browse those NAS drives? fuse-smb will allow the file manager to browse your home or office network. Much easier than using mount. I didn't find any Linpus specific instructions, so here are the steps I used.

Install vlc

Don't use the Acer installer, if you want to play DivX movies and so on, use the instructions from the tweaks. Don't forget to disable the extra repositories afterwards. I inadvertently picked up updates which started to cause problems.

Install Songbird

I like Songbird and it works well on the AAO playing streams from my media server.

Configure Printer

A shared network or wireless printer works well with a netbook. But then, you can always save your masterpiece to a USB Stick and print it on your main PC.

Backup

Check everything is running smoothly, then back it up by taking an image with PING.

I hope you find this list useful. Should you need any help or further detail, let me know and I'll expand the information as needed. Email address or feedback forms are available under Contact and Support.