Acer D255E Aspire One -- Lets upgrade to Debian 9.3 (Stretch)

So, if you've been following along; last year we installed debian jessie (the same revision of debian that runs on small computers like the raspberry pi) -- most of the big blog sites are still touting other revisions of linux for these small computers some of them are based on debian, some not.  My thoughts? -- well it depends on what you need.

I wanted a very crisp install, minimalist with very little messing around (we still have to manually install the SD card but it works, just fine).  I wanted modern word processing, as well as to be able to use the webcam for occasional web conference/ hangouts session.  I don't care as much about the QOL improvements offered by ubuntu (though i don't mind them, I just don't have the resources on this platform).  I wanted stable, free/open (as possible), well supported/secure.  This is how I landed on debian last time, this time I did again

Why Stretch?:

In a word, Jessie is old... it comes out of the box with old pre-configured packages... AND the big one ... Stretch seems to perform better on streaming video in almost every aspect, even with 1G of ram.  It's fairly amazing how well it works (still not perfect but it doesn't peg the CPU usage when Netflix is running for the time being at least.)   Debian is about as no frills as it gets, without REALLY roughing it.  You could throw DSL (Damn small Linux) on there and try it ... it would very be small but very much you bring everything to the party yourself. 

With regards to video performance I should have checked before I wiped the laptop if Debian Jessie was using the VESA drivers under X.  Sure seems that way based on the video performance, the other thing to keep in mind with that is the platform the graphics card runs on is completely not open (and lacks good support within the linux community)  I did check on the new install and it seams at least that Stretch is using intel branded drivers for the graphics .... perhaps this means all is well now?

What I Assume: 

 Again, assumed you know a bit about linux, about putting a ISO on a thumb drive to boot and install linux ... you  could google these things; none of them are obscure.  I assume the D255E you are using has the same hardware options as mine, and that you've updated the firmware all the way to the latest and greatest (though i don't know if this matters much).  Also I assume you have skimmed at least my last blog post about the D255E:

https://davesmindsoup.blogspot.com/2017/02/breathing-new-life-into-my-acer-d255e.html

Below are the directions for a clean install, you will want to have taken care of backing up your data first. You can do a in place upgrade but I don't like to do that between revisions.  I also made a complete drive image with parted magic of my working install before i started, I always recommend this with any full clean install.  Ok, Lets GO!

Let's Start by downloading the Netinstall:

I'm not so sure if you have to use the non-free installer anymore, I did, as its got a lot of non-open architecture in the laptop (the CPU / Graphics Card).  I did this to play it safe more than anything.  I did find it odd the laptop's memory card reader is still not supported in non-free by Debian. (yet the wifi adapter and the web cam are)

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 

You will use a USB thumb drive to boot the laptop. (whatever method you choose)

I again did the non-graphical standard install at boot up.  I picked LXDE again, I still think its the best window manager for the laptop but you should play around and decide for yourself.

Not much to recommend about the install itself.  It went off fairly without a hitch.  I would recommend you write down your WIFI password if you don't rely on your memory for it ... otherwise you are going to have to reference the sticker on your router (or wherever you are keeping it) during the install.

Chrome:

to put chrome on (the distro comes with firefox).  You can now simply:

 wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb


You will want to install an ad blocking addon, i use fair ad blocking, but i turn everything on because i have to for performance reasons, there are alot of unoptimised flash ads and this will over tax the CPU making simple tasks on the internet unbearable.

The Memory Card Reader:

We still go over to:

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

Download all 6 files and put them in a new directory /lib/firmware/ene-ub6250

then we do:

depmod -ae
update-initramfs -u
reboot


(I got a warning ... it may be a bug with depmod because it still worked)

again you may have to cycle the memory card in and out of the slot to get it to show up in PCManFM, but it should automount memory cards now.

Again I came across the idea for this here, Thanks again dale for your blog:

http://blog.dale.id.au/ene-technology-inc-sd-card-reader-ub6250/

Running updates:

so when you are done installing running updates from within debian is fairly simple.
go to the root console and type:

apt-get update
apt-get full-upgrade
reboot


You may get a prompt to continue a few times but usually just one.  There are no automatic updates though i suppose you could write a script for this to be checked every time you boot up -- this is kind of at cross purpose from the nature of debian.

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