Breathing New Life into my Acer D255E Aspire One (Installing Debian Jessie with LXDE, and thoughts on doing so)

Lets face it netbooks were always cheep.  and it was already sluggish when I bought the thing. single core Atom N455 at 64 bit, 1 Gig RAM ruining windows 7 starter.  I initially ran Xubuntu after lack luster performance under updated windows 7 brought it crawling to a halt.  After updating it a few days ago I ended up messing up my boot loader and didn't want to mess around re-installing.  I opted to put on lubuntu, issues with wireless brought that to a screaming halt.  Again not wanting to mess around, also I wasn't happy with the performance, I switched to mint.  It worked out of the box, but again was sluggish and not really what was looking for in a lean distro so I scraped it.   I ran in to a project called crash bang (now defunct) who's former developer recommended Debian.  I'd heard of Debian, its been around since at least the late 90's  I've tried it a few times but looking back haven't really had much in the way of comparison -- alot of distro's I Have used before were based on it but never out of the box Debian.

For one thing Debian is fast, stable, and really well supported.  Here's what i did.

 Go over to my new blog post for directions on the latest revision of Debian:
https://davesmindsoup.blogspot.com/2018/03/acer-d255e-aspire-one-lets-upgrade-to.html

I downloaded the net install:
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/archive/9.2.1+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-9.2.1-amd64-netinst.iso

I picked BitTorrent but you can use the ftp to get the image if you like waiting on a boggy server.

I put the ISO on a thumb drive (there are apps for windows to do this)  I just used cp in the root console:

cp iso filename  /dev/sdb


You will need to set up the bios with F2 to boot from the usb stick first after that it should boot and you can install Debian.

during the install i picked the LXDE window manager (its fast and light choose what you want this is the best for this laptop as far as I'm concerned)

After installing and setting up the WiFi I downloaded 64bit Chrome (you don't have to but I didn't want to mess around and Chrome is fast and supports extensions)

(you will have to mess around with dependency's after running dpkg to install the binaries but it's one and apt-get will basically walk you through the process.)

i did in the root console:

 dpkg -i chrome binary .db package name
 apt-get install libappindicator1
 apt-get -f install
 dpkg -i chrome binary .db package name


New directions:

  wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 apt-get install libappindicator1 (maybe, haven't tested this run if its needed)


after that it basically worked.

I installed Adguard extension in chrome to stop a lot of the boggy script activity, this was a lot of the issues I was having with web pages.

I set up the LXPanel to auto-hide and show battery levels and the mixer.

Its not perfect, there are still big issues with the CPU getting bogged down with flash but its not as bad as mint was for certain.  You could try the new LXDE distro linux.com just said it might be the most popular distro for low footprint computers this year. -- If anybody tries it on this model specifically I'd be interested to see your results.  The main difference is LXDE distro is running on Ubuntu.  You could install 32 bit Debian and get the same performance maybe slightly slower arguably there should be no performance difference under 2 gigs of ram.  I chose 64 bit to be able to support chrome you could look for a 32 bit version or run Chromium but I needed flash.  There are also open source flash players out there but I did not play around with them.


UPDATE:
Sd Card reader does not work out of the box.  I was able to get it to work by manually copying the firmware to /lib/firmware

from:
https://github.com/rhertzog/firmware-nonfree/tree/master/linux-nonfree/ene-ub6250

copy whole directory to /lib/firmware/ene-ub6250

then do in root console:

depmod -ae
update-initramfs -u
reboot

you might have to cycle the sd card a few times to get it to mount to /media

came across this fix at:
http://blog.dale.id.au/ene-technology-inc-sd-card-reader-ub6250/

A big thanks to dale for his blog.

UPDATE 2:

Netflix works in chrome if you go into your account settings and drop the quality all the way down, a bit of hesitation every once and a while but it is watchable. my guess is 2 gigs of ram most likely helps with this.  if you don't want to set back your main profile for other devices make a profile for low def and set it.  Works good for saving money if you are streaming over your data as well.

EDIT:
Netflix is night and day better on Debian Stretch, my link at the top will take you to my new install guide.

UPDATE 3:

New version of debian (stretch) image is at:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/9.3.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-cd/firmware-9.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso 

I am currently working on a guide to use it.  (no idea of the performance difference, trying this out to see mainly.)  the old image link is broken... I will look into finding a new link for jessie soon hopefully, it should be just a matter of finding where backdated versions are stored in the repository.

UPDATE 4: (last update before new guide)

I found this link also researching the graphics hardware:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/intel-graphics-media-accelerator-3150-a-944496/ 

I am hoping to get the accelerator working to decode MPEG for the CPU.  Hopefully this will improve streaming performance on the computer.
Turns out intel drivers are rolled into 9.3 -- no need for this :D