New Toy

Last week, I couldn't resist and bought myself an Acer Aspire One (AOA 150Ab) netbook. It has 1G RAM, 120G HDD, unfortunately needs a fan, and is the model without 3G modem. It comes with Linpus Linux pre-installed. Looks quite nice, but is obviously ultimately the wrong OS ... Besides, it's locked down quite a bit, there's not even an easy way to start a terminal :-) I still have kept it, in a dual-boot configuration, to play around or show to people.

Installing Lenny went very well, and to make things more fun I'm running quite a few things from experimental: KDE 4.2, xorg 7.4 (1:7.4~5 right now) and Oo.org 3. And, to get DRI2, also the 2.6.28 kernel from the newer-than-sid repository of the kernel team (2.6.28-2~snapshot.12850, but I hear 2.6.28 has now been uploaded.) While the whole thing is fun to use and didn't make any real problems, there are a few remaining issues (yes, this is a Dear Lazyweb posting, feel free to comment. I'll try to add updates to this article as this progresses):

• Power events (power button, battery level critical) are handled by two sets of scripts. Not sure if the blame lies with acpid, acpi-support or KDE for this one. Symptom: when setting up, in KDE, that the power button should bring up the logout dialog, this results in: the power button does indeed show the logout dialog, but then immediately the system is shut down. Adding an “exit 0” in /etc/acpi/powerbtn-acpi-support.sh before the final shutdown command in that file fixes this, though. Similarly, the battery critical event brings up a warning that the system will soon be forcibly suspended and then immediately suspends to RAM. (I'll have to investigate if there's already a bug about this in the bts.)
• The X server has quite a few issues. It sometimes blanks the display without any reason. Causing any of the fancy full screen effects (like “present windows”) to happen sometimes fixes this, sometimes a quick suspend to RAM and wakeup cycle fixes it. Sometimes it does not and I need to reboot (and I have yet to set up a hotkey for log out without questions.) Also, the screen stays black after a switch back from a text console, and after logout. Oh, well, I guess I'll just wait a few Intel driver and perhaps kernel releases (not sure: do I already have kernel modesetting, btw?)
• KDE sometimes complains that X compositing is too slow and disables it. I immediately re-enable it, because while some of the effects do indeed demonstrate the limits of the graphics hardware, I've become used to things like “present windows” and, especially on the small screen, the screen magnifier. UPDATE: Since I wrote the article, kernel, KDE and various X components have been updated repeatedly, and stability is much improved. Switching between X and text console works now, too.
• Also a feature of the new X server is HAL powered handling of input devices, which left me without my desired keyboard layout in X. After some hunting around at places like #447666 I found a very simple x11-input.fdi file somewhere I can't remember and installed that:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <deviceinfo version="0.2">
    <device>
      <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keys">
        <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">ch</merge>
        <merge key="input.xkb.variant" type="string">de</merge>
      </match>
    </device>
  </deviceinfo>
  

  I now realize that just installing hal-info from squeeze or sid might (UPDATE: does) also fix the issue.
• Also related to the new input hotplugging: how do I pass options to the synaptic driver? Probably another XML file for HAL, haven't hunted for this yet. As it is, the touchpad works but tapping won't click, and there's no scrolling on the edges of the pad. Update: Mark points me to the correct HAL invocation, thanks.. Now I only need to find the right values for all the options...(at least tapping doesn't work yet when I use the same values as the Linpus installation uses.)
• The various “ Fn” key keyboard functions situation is very inconsistent. Some of the keys just work (Num-lock, the completely useless Scroll-lock, Home, End, volume up, down; Even brings up a graphical notification, blank screen). Mute/unmute is caught by userspace but doesn't work correctly: it just displays the current volume instead of muting/unmuting audio (it also shows “HalPower::slotButtonPressed: Unknown button type” in .xsession-errors. Same message but no effect whatsoever for the Zz sleep button.) The deactivate touchpad key works but gets “unknown key pressed/released” kernel messages, as does the (off-keyboard) WiFi power switch. “Switch video output” only shows the “unknown key pressed/released” messages but doesn't do anything. Finally, some work but are also mapped to keycodes where they shouldn't be (dim screen is also mapped to “^@”, it appears, while increase screen brightness is mapped to “±”.)
• WLAN only works with the “options acer_wmi wireless=1” option, and without the LED, as described on the Debian Acer Aspire One wiki page. This is with the ath5k driver, haven't tried the MadWifi one yet.
• Powertop claims that the camera is always on, unloading all related modules () seems to solve this (at least, powertop doesn't complain anymore, and power is down by 0.5W.) Powertop also claims that USB autosuspend is off, but it's just set to 2 instead of 1 which if I read this correctly is the timeout to use for USB devices.
• KDE4 doesn't have a network manager applet frontend in Debian. I guess this is an upstream problem. (Although I note that the OpenSUSE people already have an applet ;-) Update: Sune tells me it's in NEW already, thanks.
• While network-manager (lenny version) does work properly and switches between wired and wireless as needed, it strangely keeps sending out DHCP requests on eth0 even though no cable is attached (and mii-tool correctly reports no link.)

Ok, this has become rather a long list. But at least, as you can see, it's mostly minor issues, and hopefully a few where it's just missing configuration. One other issue is battery life: I see that there should be a large battery available for this thing. If it doesn't cost me as much as the whole netbook again, I'll seriously have to think about this... The 3-cell battery does last about 2.5h (and has, right now, uncovered a little bug where the battery monitoring applet tells me “No AC adaptor plugged in, battery capacity: 50%, charging”. Whee! I have a perpetuum mobile! I'm gonna be RICH!)