My wife has a new laptop

Few days ago was my wife’s birthday. As a gift I gave her new laptop — Acer Aspire One 722. With last released version of Ubuntu on it (with XFCE desktop).

As I got device two weeks earlier I had some time to play with it and do setup. Installed full XFCE desktop (xubuntu-desktop), LibreOffice, XBMC with set of plugins for Polish VOD services, VLC etc. No games as requested. Firefox + Thunderbird as default browser and MUA.

And then there was a day. I gave Ania laptop box with some Belgium chocolates inside (instead of computer) and when we stopped laughing I gave her new notebook in useful case. After coffee I started to migrate her configuration from Dell D400 she used before (with Microsoft Windows XP). Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and then documents etc. Easy stuff.

Configuration phase was funny — I connected our printer/scanner and before I found where to add printer I got notification “EPSON Stylus DX4000 printer configured”. OK, so maybe scanner needs configuration… Nope — Simple Scan just started scanning instead of complaining (which it did when I bought it few years ago).

Connected netbook to TV and Meta-p gave me choice which display I want to run on (my 42″ Panasonic does not like 1366×768 so cloning does not work).

There are few things which I still have to find out:

How to remove “something has crashed” notifications. My wife will rather not report bugs directly.
How to make audio switching automatically to HDMI when on cable insertion.
How to make internal microphone working.

But other than those I did not have problems. And it is a strange feeling when you take new device, boot Linux on it and it just works.

Related content:

Epson Stylus DX4000

11 thoughts on “My wife has a new laptop”

claudio February 8, 2013 at 13:39

sudo apt-get remove apport

(from memory)

Fouad Hassouneh (@Fo2adZz) February 8, 2013 at 13:40

Hi there, I have the same netbook and I followed these 2 forums to get everything perfectly working :) https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne522 (this link is for the acer aspire one 522, but it has the exact same hardware as the 722)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1811178 (and this link is a bit old, but it contain a lot of useful information)

Cheers

Marcin Juszkiewicz Post authorFebruary 8, 2013 at 13:42

I used microphone hints from there. All I got was noise.

Marky February 8, 2013 at 13:45

Just disable apport from starting on startup. That should be sufficient. Hope your wife likes Ubuntu/Linux. :)

Matt Sealey February 8, 2013 at 14:09

it’s a little more complicated than just removing apport as any updates to the system could pull it back in again (it’s a recommendation in the package)

I’ve just spent a week trying to figure this nonsense out and still not there (several indicator applets also seem to love apport-gtk)

don’t forget to remove kerneloops daemon as well as apport if it really is that simple there too.

pythonic1 February 8, 2013 at 13:50

This easy guide may help you with the error messages http://www.tutonics.com/2012/11/disable-apport-error-messages.html

elvisd February 8, 2013 at 13:56

Apport (Problem Reporting) issue: http://www.techdrivein.com/2012/08/how-to-disable-system-program-problem.html

Kempe February 8, 2013 at 19:19

For error reporting doesn’t this work? Haven’t tried it my self yet, but i saw it somewhere and added it to my list of useful tweaks

sudo vim /etc/default/apport enabled=0.

Aaron Wolf February 8, 2013 at 19:48

for microphone, use something that accesses ALSA, so go with alsamixer in terminal. Access all the channels and disengage/re-engage the built-in mic as the “capture” item. For some reason on my AO720, I need to just click this and then it works