Hi,
Here's a cookbook of tips to setup a Aspire One Cloudbook 14 with a minimal (but usable for your parents) Ubuntu.
- Setup the BIOS
- Press F2 when the Acer logo appears, and then change the EFI system to legacy.
- Reboot and then press F12 when the logo appears (to choose the installing media).
- Installation. I have selected a Lubuntu 18.04 installation but it's not a critical choice. More on this onwards.
- When prompted, specify the following options for the partitions: discard (as the Cloudbook 14 has a eMMC drive) and noatime.
- When prompted, install nothing but "OpenSSH Server" (as it won't be a standard desktop)
- After-install setup
- Update the dependencies with apt update && apt upgrade.
- In other linux machine, download and compile a recent kernel (currently 5.10.3):
- make clean menuconfig; make -j $(nproc);
- make bindeb-pkg # as we're going to scp the generated kernel to the aspire1
In the parent directory there'll be a "linux-image-5.10.3*.deb" file - In the Cloudbook, scp the remote .deb file into local (i.e. scp john@remotelinux:/tmp/linux-image-5.10.3*.deb .)
- Install it with sudo apt install ./linux-image-5.10.3*.deb and reboot.
- Now you're running with the latest trouble-free kernel.
- Additional installations:
- apt install python x11-utils x11-apps xinit xterm xinput xserver-xorg-input-synaptics openbox firefox pm-utils
- (optional) apt install lxterminal.
- Try the X system with the command xinit. Everything should be fine here: an xterm window is ready and the trackpad clicks perfectly.
If you exit the terminal window you'll be back to the console. - Prepare the graphical system to launch automatically the browser with (remember it's targeted to your parents) echo 'openbox & firefox' > $HOME/.xinitrc
Hope you like it!