Installing Kubuntu 12.04 LTS on Acer Aspire One D270

I finally bought a new netbook, an Acer Aspire One D270.

• 10.1" display
• Dual 1,6 GHz Intel Atom N2600 processor
• GMA 3600 graphics chip integrated on processor
• 320 GB hard drive
• 1 GB RAM, extendable to 2 GB

It appears that the D270 model has many variants. I accidentally purchased a model with a 3-cell battery, as there was another model with the same designation in another shop, but with a 6-cell battery. I read the specs from the other shop, and bought the machine from the shop with the inferior machine. Oh well, can't take it back anymore. On a positive side, it's a bit lighter and smaller with the 3-cell battery. There were a few other alternatives, but this was the cheapest and I thought they were so cheap that I could buy a new one later. There's never enough netbooks lying aroung.

The nasty trade-offs with the D270 are:

• A glossy screen (oh I hate them)
• No Bluetooth
• No built-in 3g
• The small battery in this model

But it was cheap, so.

The machine came with Windows 7 Starter. It's actually the first Windows I've ever paid for myself, which is kind of shameful. Unfortunately, it's no longer possible to find a netbook/laptop without Windows (Update: Looks like they sell D270 with Linux in Germany). My EeePC 910 was quite great, with almost same performance as this one, but unfortunately they don't sell those any longer. Too bad I managed to soak it in pear juice.

It should be noted that there are no vendor-provided drivers for the GMA 3600 graphics controller in Kubuntu. (Update: Looks like Intel has published a Linux driver last month! But it's only for 32-bit Fedora...)

Some of the configuration given in this article are specific to the Aspire, but perhaps most are quite generic, especially the KDE configuration.

About KDE

I'm a long-standing KDE user and wouldn't really use anything else. The problem is that KDE has been getting worse over the years, not better. I guess it's because KDE imitates Windows a lot, and Windows has gone worse. The problems started with the redesigned KDE 4, which had all sorts of bells and whistles that still don't work some 5 years after the first version. The window manager crashes occasionally, and there are other issues, some of which I will mention later.

One of the most annoying issues is deteriorating keyboard support, some of which issues I mention later. While I initially switched to KDE because of its excellent keyboard support, it has been getting worse. Shortcuts disappear, and no one seems to care about it. I imagine there is nowadays a newer generation of developers who went to school learning to always use mouse for everything. Despite using the keyboard for writing a lot, they nevertheless seem to stick to mouse a lot. Not good.

Mounting the Cow

In any case, Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu, was my choise. Downloading the ISO image was just a minute. The trouble started with writing the image on USB memory. The instructions give a "normal way" to use "usb-creator-kde" application. The problems started while using it, as it crashed the first time I used it. Trying again, I managed to write the image to the USB drive (or actually an SD card with an adapter). However, trying to boot from it consistently failed and the system dropped to shell prompt. I first feared that it might be a display driver issue, but going through the errors gave me a hint that the USB image might have some issues. It couldn't even mount the system in read-write mode, which caused everything to fail.

The problem was that it couldn't mount a cow. More technically, I got "Can not mount /dev/loop1 on /cow". It has something to do with an overlay filesystem where there is a read-only filesystem on the bottom and a ramdisk read-write filesystem on top of it that takes any modifications. Anyhow, I didn't get the cow error consistently, so it took a bit time to figure out. Well, the installation instructions actually mentioned the issue and adviced to use UNetBootin, another application to create bootable USB disks.

The problems didn't exactly end with UNetBootin, I have no idea why. I managed to boot once, but subsequent attempts didn't work, the boot just got stuck. At this point, I gave up and went to sleep. On the next day, I went to a supermarket and bought a real USB drive instead of the SD+adapter, and tried that. Worked, excellent.

The installer allowed to repartition the 320 GB drive nicely so that it preserved the Windows 7 installation. Not sure what I could use it for, perhaps for some games or something. Not that the machine is fast enough for games. Even basic use with Windows 7 Starter is horribly slow. But I did pay for it! Installing Firefox instead of the IE made browsing much faster though.

Installing Kubuntu was a breeze initially, nothing much to say about that.

The Biggest Task: Basic Configuration

While KDE is great, it unfortunately is not great out of the box. In fact, it appears rather broken in many ways.

Using Regular Desktop

Kubuntu seems to start the "Plasma Netbook" workspace by default. It might be nice for your grandmom or your kids, but for you it isn't. To use a regular desktop, select in the Control Panel "Workspace Appearance and Behavior / Workspace Behavior / Workspace" and select "Desktop" in the Workspace Type. Click Apply and you're much happier.

Tree View in Control Panel

The KDE Control Panel originally had a tree view. In some 3.x version, it was changed to a more "iconic" view, for worse I think. It is still possible to get the tree view simply by clicking Configure in the Control Panel and selecting the Classic Tree View.

With trees or icons, the KDE Control panel is really a huge forest and it can sometimes take ages to find what you want. Sometimes the search functionality helps, sometimes you have to resort to Google to find the settings you want, sometimes it's somewhere else.

Traditional Start Menu

At some point in recent history, KDE wanted to mimick the Vista start menu, which is just as awful in KDE as it is in Windows. To replace it with a traditional start menu, right-click the panel and select Panel Options / Add Widgets. Drag and drop the Application Launcer Menu to the panel. To reposition it in the panel, click the Panel Tool Box at the right end of the panel, select the button, and move it to left. To remove the default launcher, right-click it and select Remove this Application Launcher.

While you're viewing the Panel Tool Box, also select More Settings / Auto Hide. This gives you plenty of more space in the already too small screen.

Desktops and Keyboard Navigation

One of the most important features in KDE is built-in desktop navigation. It has multiple desktops in which you can group windows. These were actually disabled after installation for some reason. To configure them in Control Panel, select Workspace Appearance and Behavior / Workspace Behavior / Virtual Desktops. Often the default is four desktops, I like to use eight. After using same configuration for 15 years, navigation has come pretty easy.

Very importantly, you can navigate between the desktops quickly from keyboard, just like you can navigate between windows with Alt+Tab and Alt+Shift+Tab. The keyboard navigation was actually the reason why I switched to it some 15 years ago from fvwm2 (don't even ask what that is).

The problem is that the proper desktop navigation keys are no longer enabled by default. In fact, because of a bug introduced in Kubuntu 11, they can't be configured from any of the settings at all! The only way to set them is to edit
.kde/share/config/kglobalshortcutsrc and set the following:

Walk Through Desktop List=Meta+Tab,none,Walk Through Desktop List 
Walk Through Desktop List (Reverse)=Meta+Ctrl+Tab,none,Walk Through Desktop List (Reverse)

("Meta" means the "Win" key.) Strangely, the issue was fixed in last October (2011), but the fix was apparently not included in Kubuntu 12.04.

Because of another bug, it's no longer possible to use Win+Shift+Tab in KDE. The keyboard combination simply doesn't work. It was quite annoying to lose that shortcut, as I used it for al-most 15 years, until it was broken in KDE 4.

To get the settings in use, you need to restart KDE by logging out and in again.

Basic Window Management

Unbelievably, KDE windows do not have a "Minimize" button by default! The only way to minimize them is to click the window menu (at the top-left corner) and select Minimize. To enable a Minimize button, you have to customize window buttons. In the Control Panel, select Workspace Appearance and Behavior / Workspace Appearance / Window Decorations, then Configure Buttons. In the dialog, you can drag&drop buttons, such as the Minimize, to the window title bar.

To be able to minimize windows from the keyboard, the shortcut is defined entirely elsewhere in the Control Panel. Select Common Appearance and Behavior / Shortcuts and Gestures / Global Keyboard Shortcuts, and then select KWin in the KDE Component. So, I have to know that this simple shortcut is part of this "KWin" thing, reall obvious. There, set the Minimize Window button to Win+- (Meta+-). While you're at it, you could also set the "Maximize Window" to Win++ or something.

Forcing Windows to Particular Desktops

Normally, when an application opens up a child window, for example a warning, it appears in the current desktop. This is not normally desirable, as it messes up the grouping of windows in desktops. For example, if you have Skype pop up chat windows automatically, you soon have them in every desktop. It becomes a problem.

You can force the windows of a particular application to always open in a fixed desktop. In Control Panel, select Workspace Appearance and Behavior / Window Behavior / Window Rules. The configuration is somewhat complex so I won't go into much details.

You can actually do really many things with the functionality, it's almost like
programming. You can control the desktop, size, positioning, and countless other parameters of windows.

And of course, KDE allows saving the "session", so that after you shutdown the computer and start up and log in again, it restores the session with all the windows. The behaviour can be configured in Control Panel in System Administration / Startup and Shutdown / Session Management. You can choose to save the session automatically when logging out, or just manually, or not at all. Restoring does not restore the applications to the same state though. For some applications, it can save some state parameters, such as the current folder and such, and even which document you were editing. How much state information is restored depends on the application.

Optimizing Performance

It isn't really meaningful to have flashy graphics effects when using a slow netbook. While the basic 2D hardware acceleration seems to work quite well with the GMA 3600 graphics adapter, some effects can be really hard on the poor GPU. In the Workspace Appearance and Behavior / Desktop Effects, disable Enable desktop effects at startup and "Various animations".

You could set the "noatime" option in /etc/fstab. Normally, Linux keeps record of the latest access time for each file and directory. You can see the access times for example with "ls -lu". That recordkeeping requires writing to disk, which takes a bit time, and with flash disks would also consume the prescious rewrite cycles. Just edit the file (with sudo) and add the "noatime" option in the options column, separated with a comma. The setting is used after the next boot.

I am sure there are tons of other optimizations you could do, so the above are just the starters.

Update: The D270 came with just 1 GB of memory, which seemed to fill up pretty fast with KDE 4 and especially when running Java stuff. I got a 2 GB comb and now it works much faster.

Remaining Issues

The remaining problems are:

• External display (VGA or HDMI) does not work and I have found no mentions how it should work. Apparently it is possible to get it work if they sell the D270 preinstalled with Linux.
• The keys for changing display brightness do not work. The issue is known with the Aspire One and should be solvable.
• Kwin has crashed once or twice during a day. This issue is really annoying on my home desktop computer as it can occur several times in an hour. I hope it isn't as bad.