Minimal Ubuntu 18.04 on Aspire One Cloudbook

 Hi,

Here's a cookbook of tips to setup a Aspire One Cloudbook 14 with a minimal (but usable for your parents) Ubuntu.

1. Setup the BIOS
1. Press F2 when the Acer logo appears, and then change the EFI system to legacy.
2. Reboot and then press F12 when the logo appears (to choose the installing media).
2. Installation. I have selected a Lubuntu 18.04 installation but it's not a critical choice. More on this onwards.
1. When prompted, specify the following options for the partitions: discard (as the Cloudbook 14 has a eMMC drive) and noatime.
2. When prompted, install nothing but "OpenSSH Server" (as it won't be a standard desktop)
3. After-install setup
1. Update the dependencies with apt update && apt upgrade.
2. In other linux machine, download and compile a recent kernel (currently 5.10.3):
1. make clean menuconfig; make -j $(nproc);
   
2. 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
3. In the Cloudbook, scp the remote .deb file into local (i.e. scp john@remotelinux:/tmp/linux-image-5.10.3*.deb .)
4. Install it with sudo apt install ./linux-image-5.10.3*.deb and reboot.
5. Now you're running with the latest trouble-free kernel.
6. Additional installations:
1. apt install python x11-utils x11-apps xinit xterm xinput xserver-xorg-input-synaptics openbox firefox pm-utils
2. (optional) apt install lxterminal.
7. 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.
8. 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!