Saturday, September 6, 2008

Acer Aspire M1641 with Ubuntu 8.04

The installation of Ubuntu 8.04 on the Vista based M1641 proved to be a bit harder than I would like.

Problem 1: need to disable acpi (boot the kernel with acpi=off option). Ubuntu 8.04 will hang during bootup after "Starting Bluetooth Services...". Actually I knew this problem when my bother-in-law tried to boot up a Gentoo based live cd for hacking the Mybook World. Still I expected Ubuntu 8.04 to be better. Unfortunately not. And Google shows that this is a common problem. Ubuntu also complain about the PNP bios problem. I will check whether there are new BIOS from Acer.

Problem 2: need to use the Nvidia closed-source driver to get the display working with the native LCD resolution. The default install stuck at 800x600 and 640x480 at 61Hz. Google shows similar problems. Installing the closed-source Nvidia driver (normally I do not want to do this and do not need to do this) solved the problem.

After solving these two problems, I am happy with Ubuntu 8.04 again.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I have a M1641 and want to install Ubuntu, too.

Anonymous said...

I still had problem.. could U give me how to installing the VGA driver...because I Newbie on linux... tx a lot... Heru Suyarto

cheap computers said...

Unfortunately not. And Google shows that this is a common problem.

tehseenfatima said...

Hey great stuff, thank you for sharing this useful information and i will let know my friends as well.