Showing posts with label netbook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label netbook. Show all posts

Friday, January 16, 2009

More Netbook

AAO tweak #2
Optimising the SSD I/O

Normaly the I/O algorithm for writing/reading to/from the disk is optimised to read blocks from the disk in an sequential order.
This is so that the heads in the disk doesnt have to jump, for example from block 3 to 189 to34 to 947 to 4,,and so on... , instead the head will read/write the sequence 3 to 4 to 34 to 189 to 947,,,, speeding up access times and so on.
Which is all good and well if you only have one harddrive.
However, since the AAO is using an SSD, there are no heads that needs to be moved around, the SSD will read anything, in any order you want, so what we can do is to disable that sequencial algorithm and free some CPU cycles for more important stuff, like blagging. =)
It is quite important to get thing right here, since if something goes wrong the netbook might become unusable, if you have any doubts about what youre doing,  just dont do it. (that should be enough for the obligatory disclaimer)

- First open up the RUN window with ALT+F2
- write "xterm" and press RUN, to open up the terminal
- and write "sudo mousepad /boot/grub/grub.conf"
  this will open something that looks suspiciously just like notepad in XP
- Find the line that says "kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=LABEL=linpus vga=0x31 splash=silent loglevel=1 console=tty1 quiet nolapic_timer"
- to the end of that line, add " elevator=noop"  
   (there should be a space between "nolapic_timer" and "elevator=noop")
- make sure your edited line looks just like this "kernel /boot/bzImage ro root=LABEL=linpus vga=0x31 splash=silent loglevel=1 console=tty1 quiet nolapic_timer elevator=noop"
- save the file and close all the windows , or close and select save,, which ever works for you.
Once the netbook has rebooted, it should no longer be optimizing the read/writes for the heads of the harddrive that doesnt exist in an SSD. =)


Netbook

Got myself a netbook, a nice and shiny Acer Aspire One  (also known as "AAO").
Eventualy I'm going to do some modding to it, but for now it will be limited to software.
One thing about it, is that the default setting for Linpus Linus that comes with it, is'nt very tweak friendly.
You got a bunch of icons for some programs, and that's pretty much it.
So the first tweak will be to enable the rest of the OS.

Tweak #1
Enabling the advanced menu
- by pressing ALT+F2 we can bring up the RUN panel, which looks just like the XP one. (infact the whole OS is skinned to look like XP, which makes alot easier for Linux no0bs like myself to work with. =)
- In the run panel, just write "xterm" and click RUN.
   This brings up the terminal for linux, which is just like the command promt in XP
- In the terminal window, write "xfce-setting-show" and press enter.
   this will bring up the GUI settings manager.
- Click on the Desktop icon to bring up the Desktop preferences.
- Under the behaviour tab, check the "show the desktop menu on right click" option.
- Close all the windows.
Now, whenever you click the right mousebutton (or right touchpad thing as the case might be), it will show you a menu, listing all the installed apps you can use. any new apps installed will also show up here.

More to come i'm sure =)