OpenSuSE 11 on Aspire One

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Well, I decided to buy a Netbook in the form of an Acer Aspire One. Seems like a great little machine, 120GB HDD, 512MB RAM, Dual Core 1.6GHz Intel Atom, and a built-in Webcam. It even comes pre-installed with Linux!

The default  installation of Linpus ( basically Fedora Core 8 ) is perfect for what the machine is designed for; web browsing, emailing, messaging etc.. but as a regular Linux user the default install just wasn’t enough, it was just too restricted for my taste.

So that was that, off I went and downloaded the USB / Network install ISO of my favourite distro, OpenSuSE.

The install was absolutely painless, all done in around 2 hours. The new KDE 4.1 desktop  is awesome, crisp, clean, and full of eyecandy…just how I like it. Everything worked out of the box, the default desktop effects worked, the Atheros wifi card was automatically set-up with the ath5k drivers, the function keys worked, and even the webcam worked! But I wanted more.

Time to install Compiz, Emerald, and Fusion-Icon!

Quick and easy install through YaST, no more than 10 mins. Fired up Fusion-Icon, chose an Emerald theme I liked from the settings and did a quick ‘emerald –replace’ in terminal. Everything worked first time, all animations, 3D cude etc…or so I thought. Non-KDE applications where fine, but things like Konsole, Dolphin, and Desktop Settings windows where missing their Window Title Borders!

Google! After a few trips around the net and re-installs of Compiz I was ready for giving up, it seems that it’s a Full Screen issue between KDE 4 and Compiz. So I had tried nearly every repo for Compiz, from XGL:X11 to the ‘one-click’ installer from SuSE,  still nothing.

And then, after playing around with Compiz Settings Manager there it was, the fix, the solution! YES! one-click and it was done. Everything just as it should be, all effects and none of the bugs.

All in all, I’m happy with the Acer Aspire One ( now it’s running SuSE ) and now I’ve fixed the Compiz issue, I’m really enjoying using this latest release of OpenSuSE. Try it, you might like it…

(What!?!? he isn’t going to tell us the fix! Hehe, of course I am!)

Ok, well I don’t actually know if the version you have installed matters or not, but for reference I’m using the Cyberorg GIT YMP which you can get HERE. Once you have everything installed and set up, simply right-click on your Fusion-Icon and select ‘Settings Manager’. Scroll down the main list to ‘Utility’ and you will see ‘Workarounds’. This plugin should be enabled, go into the plugins settings and the first option in the list is ‘Legacy Fullscreen Support’, uncheck this option and your done. Everything should now work. Enjoy.