Aspire One: Custom Desktop script

13 08 2008
WARNING: This script is deprecated and will not be updated. New kernels (>2.6.27) support all the devices of the AOne, so consider installing a standard distribution (ZenWalk, Ubuntu, Debian...).

After some days tweaking the Desktop of my new shiny Aspire One ;-), I've decided to write a script to automate the process if I ever need to restore the system with Acer's Recovery CD. I think this can be also useful for those who are tired of the boring Linpus desktop and want a fully customizable Xfce 4 environment. My script performs the following operations:

  • Replace Linpus modified Xfce4 packages with the standard ones.
  • Replace kpowersave with acpid+xfce-battery-monitor.
  • Install self-compiled kernel modules for USB Modem (including many mobile phones), PPP compression and Bluetooth.
  • Install mplayer (fully featured), vlc (default player for Thunar), claws-mail, pidgin (IM) and bluetooth utils.
  • Remove buggy gtkrc-2.0 (makes the xfce standard panel insanely big).
  • Add the /usr/bin/rem_driver.sh script to remove the WiFi driver before suspend (without this the Atheros card sometimes hangs and I need to reboot).
  • Download and install Firefox 3.0.1 (consumes less memory and has more features, what else do you want? ;-) and enable mplayer and flash-player plugins.


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