Netbook Experience

I’ve been very happy running Mint Linux Fluxbox on my Acer Aspire One but after a recommendation  from Charlie Callow on a comment on this site, I’ve been looking at Jolicloud Linux on my AA1.

Jolicloud linux is based on Ubuntu but has been optimised for Netbook use, with optimised disk and memory access, and compatability appears to be great, without any additional work all the correct drivers for the Acer Aspire One appear to be installed and working correctly.

Jolicloud has it’s own App Market called the App Directory (shown below) which provides a nice and friendly method of installing new applications. Jolicloud appears to be heavily focused on Cloud Computing, and even has it’s own integrated Social network,  but traditional locally installed apps eg OpenOffice, can be installed from the App Directory 

Although on first impressions Jolicloud appears to be slightly slower then Mint Linux Fluxbox, operation is quick and certainly the web browsing I’ve tried has been speedy.   

Its still early days for my experience with Jolicloud but watch this space, and I’ll report back here on my findings.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

If your Acer Aspire One is no longer working properly, then you might want to re-install Linux and reset the AA1 to it’s factory default settings.

To do this you will need to create  recovery disk on a USB data stick.

To create a recover disk for the Acer Aspire One:

You will need a computer with a cd drive, the recovery cd that came with your AA1 and a usb  data stick (at least 2 gb).

1) Turn on the computer and enter the bios setup of the computer.

2) Change the boot sequence of your computer to boot from the cd drive first.

3) Save the Bios settings.

4) Place the cd into the drive and put the usb stick into the computers usb port and reboot the computer.

5) When the menu appears quickly choose the option to create a recovery usb drive drive.

6) After a short while a menu screen will appear – click on go ahead.

7) Select your usb data stick, and click on ok.

8 ) After a while the process will complete and you will now have a recovery usb data stick for the Acer Aspire One.

Now you can install Linpus Linux onto your Acer Aspire One.

9) Plug the usb data stick into Acer Aspire One .

10) Turn the AA1 on, and press F12 to enter the boot selection screen.

11) Select your  usb data stick from the list of drives to boot from.

12) Follow on screen instructions to install Linpus on to the internal disk drive, and the installation will now begin. When the install has completed your Acer Aspire One will have been restored to factory settings.

The Acer Guy has produced a fantastic video showing the entire process.  The video can be seen below.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

As standard when you boot into Mint Linux running Fluxbox you need to enter a user name and password every time the computer starts.

There is a software utility included with Mint Linux to automatically log in a user account of your choice.

To automatically log on to Mint Linux running Fluxbox:

1) Right click on the Mint Linux Fluxbox Desktop to open the applications menu.

2) Go to the system section and select preferences

3) Launch the SLim Autologin Application

4) Enter you admin password

5) Enter the name of the user account that you want to automatically login when the computer starts.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Techplay-Experience.com have recently written an article on a web based golf game called WGT, and given the lack of good golf games (see this article on how to run Links golf on the Acer Aspire One) and with WGT being free to play I thought I would give it a go on my humble Acer Aspire One.

One the AA1 running Mint Linux Fluxbox and on the Opera Internet Browser the game runs reasonably well, occasionally after you hit a shot there is a short pause whilst the game works out where the ball will land, but this won’t spoil your enjoyment of the game to much.

The game graphics are fantastic with computer generated players super imposed over real photographs of the courses.

If you are looking for a good golf game for your Acer Aspire One then check out this article over at Techplay Experience.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Google Chrome is a popular web browser based on the open source Chromium browser.

It’s possible to install Chromium on the Acer Aspire One on several OS’s

To install Chromium on the Acer Aspire One running Linpus read this post

To install Chromium on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux follow this procedure:

1) Open a Terminal Window and type: sudo apt-get install gedit

Input your admin password if required, this will install the gedit text editor

2) In the Terminal Window type sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list    and again enter your admin password if required, this will open redit.

3) Enter the following 2 lines at the bottom of the document

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Save the file.

4) In the terminal window copy and paste the following line: sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

5) In the terminal window type sudo apt-get update

6) In the terminal window type sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Chromium will now install, and should be available in the Internet program section.

or you can run the application by typing chromium-browser in a terminal window.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I mentioned how well the fluxbox version of Mint Linux runs on the Acer Aspire One, and I strongly recommend that users of the Acer Aspire One switch to this OS if they are struggling or are frustrated with the default Linpus Operating system.

Here’s the procedure for installing Mint Linux with the Fluxbox desktop on the Acer Aspire One.

On a Windows PC with a USB .

1) Download the ISO file for Mint Linux Fluxbox by clicking here.

2) Download  Linux Live USB Creator by clicking here and then run the application.

3) Select your USB Pen Drive in Step 1

4) Click on the ISO option is Step 2 and point the application to the ISO file you downloaded. You may get a warning that the program doesn’t recognise the distribution, and it’s going to use the settings for Mint 8 Helena – this is fine

5) Set the Persistence to 0MB

6) Tick the box that allows the application to format your USB Drive – you will loose everything on your Drive.

7) Click on the Lightning icon to start the installation

When the install has completed:

1) Reboot your AA1 with the USB stick will plugged in.

2) Press F12 when the Acer Flash screen appears to choose the boot device

3) Select your  USB Drive.

4) A Mint Linux boot menu will appear – select install and Mint Linux Fluxbox will now install on your Acer Aspire One.

One of the first things you will notice is that there is no Start or Menu button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. To access your applications click the right mouse button on the desktop

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this previous post I described how to install Mobile Internet on the Acer Aspire One running Linpus

This article explains how to install a Mobile Internet 3g Dongle on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux Fluxbox,

The process is simple and is tested on the 3g dongle released by 3UK.

To install the dongle on Fluxbox:

1. Right click on the network icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Screen
2. Click on Edit Connections
3. Click on  Mobile Broadband
4. Click on Add
5. This will launch a Wizard
6. Click on Forward
7. Choose your country and click on Forward
8. Choose your provider and click on Forward
9. Choose the right plan and click on Forward
10. Click on apply

Restart your Acer Aspire One with your dongle in the USB port, and after you have logged on, left click on the network icon,  and your broadband connection will be available in the list of available connections.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

For those of you who have installed Skype on the Acer Aspire one running the Fluxbox version of Mint Linux you may be experiencing some difficulties with the audio quality through the Internal mic.

To resolve this issue:

1) Open the Mint Menu and load Terminal

2) Type cd / and press return

3) Type cd etc and press return

4) type sudo rm asound.conf and press return

5) Enter your admin password if prompted

6) Reboot your computer

Your audio quality in Skype will now be greatly improved.

If you are having problems with Skype when running Mint Linux 8 Helena – check out this post

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Recently the source code for the original Simcity has been donated by EA to the One Laptop One Child project under GNU License.

The results are Micropolis and it’s available to play on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux through the package manager.

To install Micropolis on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux:

1) Activate the Mint Menu

2) Load the Synaptic Package Manager

3) Enter your Admin Password

4) Enter micropolis into the Quick search box

5) Click into the box next to Micropolis and mark for installation.

6) Click on install

Micropolis will now install and be available in the Games Menu.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this article I described how to install Mint Linux8 (Helena) on the Acer Aspire One.

As standard Mint Linux comes supplied with the Gnome Desktop which provides a stylish, easy to use and configurable user Interface, and one which puts the Windows XP experience to shame.

However on the humble Acer Aspire One sometimes Mint Linux 8 is a bit laggy, although using the Opera Browser rather the Firefox assists the web browsing experience.

There are other versions of Mint Linux available which use different desktop environments and one of them is the Fluxbox desktop.

Fluxbox is a lite desktop environment, which means that it’s less complex then heavier desktops and may be missing some of the more advanced functionality, eg you cant grab screen shots with a button press, but it makes up for it with speed, and the Fluxbox version of Mint Linux flies, it’s even quicker to use then Linpus.
It is a little less stylish to use then Mint with Gnome, eg there isn’t a menu button to access applications, the program menu is access through a right click on desktop, but both versions of mint run the same applications.

The table below shows a comparison of the usability and functionality of the 3 types of Linux I’ve tested recently with my scoring:

If you are looking with a really quick operating system for your Netbook and are looking for more flexibility then the original linpus then checkout the Fluxbox version of Mint Linux

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I described how to play FreeCiv in a Web Browser

In this post I described how to install FreeCiv on the Linpus version of the Acer Aspire One, and also how unfortunately it stopped working when a software repository was taken off line.

FreeCiv is an open source version of the PC classic game Civilization, and previously I’ve had difficulty getting it to work on the Acer Aspire One but on Mint Linux it works really well.

To install FreeCiv on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux.

1) Click on the Mint Menu Bar

2) Click on Package Menu

3) Enter your admin password

4)Search fro FreeCiv

5) Click on the box next to freeciv-client-gtk and click on mark for installation

6) Click on Apply

7) Freeciv will now install and will be available in the Games section of the Mint Menu.

Before Playing FreeCiv right click on the program bar at the bottom of the screen.

9) Click on Properties

10) Enable Auto Hide. This will slide the program bar off the screen when it’s not needed and will give you the extra space needed to play FreeCiv.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Most Internet users use some form of instant messaging (eg MSN messenger) to talk to their friends and colleagues and Netbooks cope with Instant Messaging applications very well.

Both Linpus and Mint Linux come with good instant messaging clients:

• On Linpus the Messenger application can be accessed through the Connect Section, and provides access to MSN Messenger
• On Mint Linux a great instant messaging application called Pidgin can be found in the Internet section of the Mint Menu Bar.

Pidgin supports many different messenger systems including MSN, Google, Facebook and many more.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I described how to install Skype on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux.

If you follow this procedure then you will find that the microphone doesn’t appear to work in Skype. If you shout in the microphone during the test call you will be able to hear your voice very quietly during playback.

To resolve this issue:

1) Click on the Mint Menu Button

2) Click on Sound and Video

3) Click on PulseAudio Volume Control

4)Click on the Input Devices Tab and Click on the Lock Channels together button (to Unlock the channels).

5) Slide the Front Right slider down to Zero and the right Left Slider upto 3/4.

6) Close the Volume Control Application

This solves the problem however as default Skype  breaks it again, by setting the volume to 0

To resolve this

1) Launch Skype

2) Go to the Options menu and click on the Sound Devices Tab.

3) Make sure that the option to allow Skype to automatically adjust mixer levels is turned off.

Apply and then close the options window, and make a test call to make sure that everything is working ok.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In  this Post I described how to install Skype on the Acer Aspire One running Linpus

This process below describes how to Install Skype on the Acer Aspire  running Mint Linux.

1) Click here to download the install file from the Skype site.

2)  Choose to Open the file with the Gnome installer.

3) When the Package installer loads click on Install Package.

Skype will now install and will be available in the Internet Section of the Menu bar.

There will be a problem with the microphone but this follow up post will show how to resolve this.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Traditionally I’ve always used Firefox, or more recently the quicker Google Chrome for browsing the Internet on the AA1, but I’ve just discovered Opera and I love it.

I’ve used Opera before on Mobile Phones but I’ve never considered it as an option for a desktop computer, but I’ve given it a go and and it’s the quickest browser I’ve ever used.

The Internet is rendered extremely quickly and the page update when scrolling is blistering.
Video On Demand  through YouTube or TV Catchup is fluent and impressive.

Opera is quicker then Chrome and much quicker then FireFox.

To install Opera on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux 8 ( Helena):

1) Click on the Menu Button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen
2) Click on Package Manager
3)Enter your Admin Password
4)Type Opera into the Quick Search box

5)Click in the box next to Opera and click on Mark for Installation.
6)Click on Apply and Opera will install on your Acer Aspire One, and can be run from the Internet section of the start menu.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I described how to Install Mint Linux on the Acer Aspire One.

Following the post Mark from the Linux Community Forum contacted me to explain that this procedure installs Mint Linux version 6, and pointed me in the direction of Mint Linux version 8 (AKA Helena).

Version 8 adds the latest software repositories for application downloads and is also a little quicker in operation. In addition Wifi automatically works without the need for extra configuration.

To install Mint Linux 8 on the Acer Aspire one, you will need a Windows PC with Internet connection and a 2gb USB memory stick.

1) Download the the Mint 8 ISO from here

2) Download the USB Installer by clicking here

3) Place the USB stick into the PC and run the USB installer.

4) Click on Agree

5) Choose Mint 8 and select the ISO file that you downloaded

6) Choose your USB drive and select next.

7) Choose the option with 1 GB RW and click on next.
Mint Linux will now install on your USB Drive and you will be able to boot from the stick.

Now reboot your AA1.
On boot press F12 on the AA1 to choose the boot device.
Choose your USB Drive and Linux Mint will now boot from the Drive.

After Mint Linux 8 as loaded feel free to have a play with it to make sure you like it.

You can install Mint Linux 8 permanently on your AA1 by running the install program that is sitting on the desktop, and selecting your internal drive when prompted, then follow on screen instructions.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this Article I wrote how to Install Wine on the Acer Aspire One running Linpus.

In this Article I’m going to describe how to install Wine on the Acer Aspire One Running Mint Linux.

Wine is an application which allows Windows Applications to run without emulation in a Linux environment.

To install Wine on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux:

1)Click on the Mint Menu Button in the bottom left hand corner  of the Screen

2)Select Package Manager and input your admin password

3)Type Wine into the Quick Search box

4) Click in the box next to Wine and choose Mark for Installation

5) Click on Apply and Wine will now install

A new section for Wine and Windows applications will now appear in the the Programs Menu.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

SeeSaw have launched their new Video on Demand Service in the UK.

The service provides access to BBC, Channel 5, Channel 4 and ITV content through a Internet Browser so no Set Top Box is required.

The good news is that the service works very well on the Acer Aspire One running either Linpus or Mint Linux, although you may want to use FireFox rather then Chrome as Firefox displays video a little better.

To View SeeSaw point your Browser at http://www.seesaw.com/

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I described how to play a Web based chess game on the Linpus version of the AA1.

I’ve found a great chess game for Mint Linux called DreamChess and it works well (in 2d mode) on the Acer Aspire One.

To Install Dream Chess on the Acer Aspire One running Mint Linux:

1) Click on the Mint Menu button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen

2) Click on Package Manager.

3) Type Dreamchess into the Quick Search box and press return

4) When DreamChess appears in window click on the selection box next to it and choose Mark for Installation.

5) Click Apply

Dream Chess will now install and will appear in the Games Section of the Mint Menu.

The get the best out of Dream Chess on the AA1:

1) When the Game has loaded go to the configuration Menu

2) Go to the Screen Resolution settings and choose 640×480

3) Turn Full Screen On.

4) Make sure you choose a 2d Theme, like Figurine or Sketch and the game will run really well.

3d themes do work but run quite slowly on the AA1.

The Figurine Theme

The Sketch Theme

On an unrelated note check out: iamamiwhoami

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

As Standard Mint Linux is supplied with the FireFox Browser, which is a great and secure browser that always produces great results when rendering pages, but it’s not always the quickest option.

It’s useful to have 2 different browsers installed on you computer as different browsers have different strengths, and if you want a quick and speedy browsing experience then check out Google Chrome, which renders web pages extremely quickly.

To install Google Chrome on Mint Linux.

1) Click here

2) Click on Accept and Install

3) This will open the file download widow, make sure open with is highlighted and click on OK.4) When the file has downloaded, the install package window will open. Click on Install Package, and Google Chrome will now install.

Google Chrome will now be available in the Internet section of the Programs Menu.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I described how to install FreeCiv on the Linpus version of the Acer Aspire One, and also how unfortunately it stopped working when a software repository was taken off line.

I’ve also tried to install FreeCiv on Mint Linux but unfortunately that version of the game struggles to work on the screen format of the AA1.

I’ve come across a solution which allows you to play FreeCiv on the Acer Aspire One and it works on both Linpus and Mint Linux.

The solution is a web based version of the game that allows the user to play FreeCiv in a browser window. I recommend that you use the Chromium browser on Linpus, or the Google Chrome Browser on Mint Linux as although FireFox runs the game, it’s much faster on Chrome\Chromium.

This version of FreeCiv also lets you easily play on-line multi player FreeCiv

Just point your browser at http://freeciv.net/ Register for a free account and click on play now. Enjoy FreeCiv again on your AA1.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I explained how I installed Linux Mint on the Acer Aspire One.

The first thing I noticed is that although the wired network connected fine, I couldn’t get the Wireless interface to work.

The solution wasn’t straight forward but should be quick and easy with these instructions.

To fix the Wireless Network interface on the AA1:

1. Click on The Menu Bar in the bottom left hand corner.
2. Got to the Administration section and then select the Windows Wireless Drivers Application.
3. Enter your Administrator Password if required
4. Click on Install New Driver and this box will open.
5. Navigate to /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/drivers/i386/Atheros_AR5007eg and choose the inf file that’s there. Click on install.
6. After a couple of moments the driver will be loaded and will appear in the driver window.
7. Restart your Acer Aspire One.
8. You will now be click on the network icon in the bottom right hand side on the screen and you will be able to see your wireless network(s)

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

UPDATE – please check out this post to install a later version of Mint Linux.

As standard the version of Linux that comes supplied with the Acer Aspire One is Linpus Lite.

Linpus has a job to do and it does it very well, it has a small footprint, its aimed at the average user and provides a simple and quick interface to some powerful applications.

However Linpus has some downsides, it’s difficult to modify and even installing extra apps involves small hacks, and it’s now dated so that some modern applications are difficult to install.

So every now and again I like to try new operating systems for my Acer Aspire One, ans after stumbling across Linux Mint I thought it would be good to give it ago.

So what is Mint? It’s a version of Linux based on Ubuntu, and adds extra integrated Multimedia codec’s, it also has a great and simple to use interface and it’s reportedly quick to use.

To install Mint on your AA1 you will need, a Windows PC, a USB drive (at least 1 GB) and an Internet connection.

Before you start make sure you still have your Acer Restore disk, just in case you need to revert back to Linpus.

To install Mint:

1. On your Windows PC’s download and install UNetbootin by clicking here.
2. Put your USB drive into a USB socket on your Windows PC.
3. Run UNetbootin
4. Select Linux Mint in the Distribution Pull down List, and then select 6_live in the version Pull Down List. (as shown above)
5. Make sure that the Drive letter points to your USB drive and then click ok.  UNetbootin will now download Linux Mint and install it on your USB Drive in a bootable format.
6. Now reboot your AA1.
7. On boot press F12 on the AA1 to choose the boot device.
8. Choose your USB Drive and Linux Mint will now boot from the Drive.

After Mint Linux as loaded feel free to have a play with it to make sure you like it.

You can install Mint Linux permanently on your AA1 by running the install program that is sitting on the desktop, and selecting your internal drive when prompted.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

There are some programs that you might like to run on your Acer Aspire One automatically when it first loads. Eg DropBox

There is an application included on the Acer Aspire One where you can set which programs start on startup.

To launch the Application.

1) Press Alt F2 to open the Run Program Window

2) Type xfce4-autostart-editor into the text box and click on Run

A box showing all the programs that run on startup is now loaded.

3) Click on add to add an extra program.

4) Enter a Name, description and command (eg /home/user/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd for DropBox) into the appropriate boxs and click on OK

Your program will start on startup.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

As Broadband Internet speeds get faster, cloud computing is becoming more popular, and hosted off site storage is becoming cheaper and more accessible.

Internet off site storage systems provide a simple and quick method of backing up your files to a web based drive or sharing your data across the Internet.

One popular service is DropBox. Dropbox provides  an automated method of replicating a locally hosted folder with an online storage facility, and the they give 2GB storage space free of charge.

To join DropBox click here

Although the web interface for DropBox works well on FireFox, The Linux versions of the Dropbox Desktop application provided by DropBox don’t install as standard on the Linux version of the Acer Aspire One but I found a solution to make it work on Linpus on the Acer Aspire One User Forum.

Here’s the procedure I followed to get DropBox working on the Acer Aspire One.

1) Download the tar.gz file from here: http://www.getdropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86 .This will download it to the Downloads folder.

2) Navigate to your Downloads folder using the File manager Open a terminal through the file menu.

3) In the terminal window enter the following command tar xvfz dropbox-lnx.x86-0.6.97.tar.gz   (if the file name of the downloaded gz file is different then alter this command to match)
This will extract to a hidden folder in Downloads called .dropbox-dist

4) View hidden files in the file manager via the View menu.

5) Copy Cut the hidden .dropbox-dist folder and paste it into the  /home/user/ directory.

To run DropBox press Alt and F2 to open the Run Program and enter ?/home/user/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd  and click on run and the log in/ new user screen should appear

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

In this post I described how to install Chromium on the Linpus version of the Acer Aspire One.

However a number of you had let me know that the process had stopped working, and nothing happened after you clicked on the Chromium Icon.

So I downloaded and installed the latest version and found that I go the same problem.

When I ran Chromium from the command line I got the following error:

/opt/chrome-linux/chrome: error while loading shared libraries: libbz2.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Fortunately the excellent Macles site had the sollution:

After you have completed the steps described in the previous post:

• Open a terminal window and type the following 2 lines
• rm -rf /opt/chrome-linux/libs/libbz2.so.1.0
• ln -s /lib/libbz2.so.1 /opt/chrome-linux/libs/libbz2.so.1.0

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Last.FM is a free (in some countries) Internet Music Radio Service that plays music through your computer. The music is tailored to your taste based on your searches for artists, songs & Keywords. Last.FM claims to have over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries.
Users  of Last.FM can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in the services music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand.

Users need a user account from last.fm

There is a Linux.FM client which is easy to install and works well on the Acer Aspire One.

To Install Last.FM:

• Right click on the desktop to display the advanced menu.
• Choose system
• Choose Add/remove Software
• Enter your Admin Password
• Click on the search tab
• Search for Last.FM
• When the search finishes put a tick next to LastFM and then click on apply.

• When the install has finished, you will be able to launch Last.FM from the Multimedia section in the advanced menu.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Elite is one of the most famous and legendary computer games of all time, and it’s possible to the play the space trading game on the Linux Version of the Acer Aspire One using DosBox.

To install DosBox:

• Right click on the desktop to display the advanced menu.
• Choose system
• Choose Add/remove Software
• Enter your Admin Password
• Click on the search tab
• Search for DosBox
• Select and install DosBox

DosBox is now available in the system area in the advanced menu.

Elite (and Elite Plus) is freely and legally available from Ian Bell’s Website who co-wrote Elite.

• Download the version of Elite you want to play from http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/pc/index.htm
• using XAchiver extract the files to your DosBox folder (eg /home/user/dosprog)
• Launch DosBox from the Advanced Menu and map the c: drive to your DosBox folder (eg mount c ~/dosprog).
• Switch to your mounted drive.

You can now launch Elite from the Dos prompt in DosBox

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

There are many mundane administrative tasks that can be made easier using a computer, and I’ve found a neat little utility which makes the creation of Dungeons and Dragons characters a doodle.

The 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons Character Generator 4.6 tool is a downloadable web page based utility that runs well in the Acer Aspire One’s web browser. The tool allows you to generate a character for the 3rd Edition version of D&D, and even simulates Dice Rolls.

To down load the utility:

1. Click here
2. Open the downloaded Zip file with XArchiver 
3. Extract the files to your Hard Drive
4. Open the dnd.htm file in firefox

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn

Google Wave is the new multimedia communication tool from Google. It’s a cross between email, instant messaging and Flash. Whilst Wave still obviously has a long way to go to become the completed article, it does show hints of being a really useful tool.

Unfortunately Google Wave doesn’t work very well on the version of FireFox that comes with the Acer Aspire One, due to it being an older version of Firefox.

It does however work really well with Google Chromium which can be installed on the Acer Aspire One.

To see how to install Google Chromium click here.

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/netbookjohn