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Sunday, April 23, 2006

Dapper Drake on Acer Travelmate 3002 WTCi

To install Ubuntu 5.04/5.10 on Acer Travelmate 3000 series laptop is definitely painful. I have a long article of how to patch kernel, modify DSDT, etc. to make ubuntu run on my Acer. I wonder whether it is worth the time to hack all these for most guys.

Now, Dapper Drake beta is coming, although its version now is 6.06, instead of 6.04 in the original plan, due to the 2 mths delay of final release. But I donnot need all these features causing the delay, so, I planned to use another weekend to struggle to install it on the Acer.

From its Web site, I was glad to find it provides an live installer like the on in Mepis, I then decided to test how lucky I am this time to pass the install using the live installer, and downloaded the live CD.

After 2 hours downloading, I bootup my Acer 3002 WTCi from the live CD, and at the first glance, I was so execited to find the laptop just run, without any modification, except the resolution is still 1024x768 by default. Does that mean I can save the weekend to prepare paiting my new house? Maybe, if I can install it to my harddisk.

So, I clicked the install icons on desktop, following its instruction then. You know how sad I was when the installer exited at step6 (totoally 7 steps) without any notice. I tried two more times, and failed both times. Regret I can only throw the live CD away and download the installer CD now. Due to the good experience based on live CD, I expected I do not need 2 days to install it.

I have just downloaded the text install CD from Web site, and now I am trying to install it. After reboot, the install CD also startup without any problem. The interface remains the same as previous ubuntu/kubuntu. Now the progress bar passed 50% just now. Hopefully, Dapper Drake can run smoothly on the Acer model.

Conclusion:
Based on experience so far, Dapper Drake is so good (bluetooth, wireless, and hot buttons work), except:
1. Live installer in live CD failed on Acer Travelmate 3002WTCi.
2. Resolution is 1024x768 by default, and need 915resolution's help
3. kcontrol crashed when I am doing hotkey setting.

I will try more, and record the problems, if I can find more.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks!! All this is very helpful -> around the globe (I am from Belgium and I wanted a light laptop -> I have backtrouble and (un)fortunately Acer is the only brand providing affodable light laptops... bye! keep up the good work

Anonymous said...

how did you get working the audio?

Li-Zhao 李钊 said...

my sound card just works in dapper drake.

Anonymous said...

Hi! I've installed 6.06 final, and everything seems to work out of the box except suspend to ram. Do you know how to fix this?

Li-Zhao 李钊 said...

Sorry, I have not tried

Li-Zhao 李钊 said...

to change resolution, u need to instal 815resolution or 915resolution.

to turn on WiFi led, no idea

Li-Zhao 李钊 said...

Thank you Fabio

Li-Zhao 李钊 said...

no, the laptop does not belong to me anymore.

:-D

hbt said...

I installed kubuntu on my acer travelmate 3000 and have gone nuts trying to get 1280x800 insted of default resolution... have not achieved it yet, but i will keep on trying.

Anonymous said...

a good read.