Ubuntu on Acer Aspire 4520

Installing Ubuntu on Acer Aspire 4520 is fairly simple. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 using a CD. The installation was flawless. Many people have reported problems with Ubuntu 7.10 and earlier versions on Acer 4520. But, I faced no such problems with Ubuntu 8.04. When Ubuntu 8.10 was released, I did a dist-upgrade, reinstalled the NVIDIA drivers, and everything worked fine.

Wireless

Install ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils and ndisgtk:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils ndisgtk
Blacklist the native ath_pci module to prevent it from loading:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Add this line:
blacklist ath_pci
Download Atheros Windows XP 32-bit driver (xp32-6.0.3.85.zip)
Unzip xp32-6.0.3.85.zip. You'll find ar5416.sys, net5416.cat and net5416.inf.
Run ndisgtk (System -> Administration -> Windows Wireless Drivers). Click "Install New Driver". Select net5416.inf and install it.
On successful installation, you should see all the available wireless connections in the Network Monitor (click the network icon on the top panel to run the Network Monitor).

Screen resolution and desktop effects

Ubuntu detected almost all the hardware correctly (System -> Administration -> Hardware Testing).

However, as expected, NVIDIA gave me trouble. The maximum resolution detected was 800x600. Also, desktop effects (compiz) were disabled. I downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run from the NVIDIA website, and installed it. Now, when I restarted X, the resolution was perfect. I enabled desktop effects using System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects -> Extra.

Another option is installing Envy, a script/program that does installation of nvidia/ati driver for you:

sudo apt-get installing envy-ng

Brightness

With Ubuntu 8.04, the brightness is always low when you log in. To increase the brightness, right click on Panel and select 'Add to Panel'. Then select Brightness Applet from list. You won't face this issue with Ubuntu 8.10.

Webcam

Webcam is detected without any problems. You can confirm this with dmesg:

utcursch@ut1:~$ dmesg | grep "webcam"
[ 31.770963] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Acer CrystalEye webcam (064e:a101)

You just need to install easy-to-use webcam software. I recommend Cheese and cameramonitor:

sudo apt-get install cheese cameramonitor




Installing packages from a DVD image

I didn't want to waste my bandwidth by downloading GBs of software, since I already had a DVD image (ISO file) on my USB stick, thanks to a friend. So, I extracted the DVD image to my Hard Disk, and used it as a source to install most of the software I need (emacs, indic fonts, postgreql, python, dictd, texlive etc.).

To do this, I downloaded a small webserver called abyssws, and added the ubuntu dvd directory as an alias. Then I added this line to my /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb /home/utcursch/software/OS/ubuntu-8.04-dvd-i386 hardy main restricted


Installing restricted software

Ubuntu CD and DVD don't include a few popular packages that are restricted by copyright or legal issues in some countries. To install these, install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package:

	
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras


This will pull in support for various audio formats (including MP3), Microsoft fonts,
Java runtime environment, Flash plugin etc.

NTFS

Ubuntu could not mount an NTFS USB hard disk drive (Transcend) automatically. I did that from command line:
	
utcursch@ut1:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ -o force