Acer2428 Fully Linux Compatible
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Acer 2428 Lapptop Is Fully Kubuntu 6.06 LTS Compatible
The Acer 2428 is an economy laptop for entry level laptop buyers. It has a 1.7 Ghz. Centrino processor, a 915 chipset board, 256 MB DDR2 RAM (400 MHz. Bus), 60 GB hard disk, 14.1" wide Display and Intel 2200 B/G wireless card.
Hardware wise, the Acer 2428 is fully Linux compatible. The Kubuntu 6.06 Linux distribution is extremely compatible with this laptop and the article below deals with installation and setup of Kubuntu 6.06 LTS.
How to load Kubuntu 6.06 LTS on Acer 2428
The laptop comes pre-loaded with a console based Linux distribution. There is no GUI desktop installed. However the same partitions can be used to install Kubuntu or one can delete all partitions and re-partition the hard disk manually.
First boot the laptop with a Kububtu 6.06 Live + Installation CD.
Once the full Desktop is loaded live, click the Install icon to begin installation. You can visit this guide if you are doing it for the first time. Once the installation is over, it will ask you to reboot the system after removing the CD media. After the first boot from the installed system, you are now ready to load more software packages to make full use of your laptop.
In case your wired network does not support dhcp, then you can manually configure it using Kmenu > System Settings > Network Settings The following settings are required.
- IP Address
- Netmask
- Gateway
- DNS servers
In case for some reason the GUI interface is buggy, you can manually set network in the following way.
First open a konsole terminal using Kmenu > System > Konsole Terminal and enter sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
nano is a text editor which is easy to use for beginners.
In the text window, edit the line for eth0 as follows....
auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address X.X.X.X netmask X.X.X.X gateway X.X.X.X
Then save the settings using Ctrl + O and exit using Ctrl + X
Edit your DNS entries in the following way...
sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver X.X.X.X nameserver X.X.X.X
Again save and exit the file editor.
Now restart your network in order to enable the new configuration. Restart using sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Now you are ready to do the further updating of the system through the internet.
To setup the wireless network card look here.Wireless_network_setup
Adding Extra Software Packages
Kubuntu is a Debian based distribution and uses the popular package manager called Apt. It uses internet repositories that store additional packages, updates etc. to download and install packages that were not included in the CD. There is a list of such repositories available in the /etc/apt/sources.list file. However not all repositories are included in the default file so you have to manually add more repositories by editing the file.
Follow the instructions provided in this guide to edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file in order to add more repositories. Please note that the instructions in that guide are for Ubuntu which uses gnome as its desktop. Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop so use konsole as your terminal and replace gedit with kwrite or nano as the text editor. kwrite uses standard gui copy and paste commands. nano is console based so in order to paste externally copied text into it, use shift + insert. To save your file use Ctrl + O and Ctrl + X to exit.
Once the sources.list file is updated type sudo apt-get update in order to update the package manager with all the available packages in all the repositories in the sources.list file.
Kubuntu does not ship with the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client, so in order to use them, install them using sudo apt-get install firefox mozilla-thunderbird.
In order to have the tiny network icons in your task bar to monitor traffic, install knemo using sudo apt-get install knemo. You may have to log out of the desktop session and log in again to get knemo started.
Now you need to add multimedia support to play VCDs, DVDs etc. This is covered in the next paragraph.
Adding Multimedia support for non-open media formats
The instructions for this section are again taken from the guide. However, for Kubuntu you need to change
sudo apt-get install totem-xine totem-xine-firefox-plugin libxine-extracodecs flashplugin-nonfree msttcorefonts sun-java5-plugin skype banshee streamtuner xmms realplay f-spot
to
sudo apt-get install kaffeine-xine kaffeine-mozilla libxine-extracodecs flashplugin-nonfree msttcorefonts sun-java5-plugin skype banshee streamtuner xmms realplay f-spot
After that the instructions are the same for installing w32codecs and libdvdcss.
Now your system is ready to play VCDs, DVDs and other media formats. Please note that it may be illegal to do so in some countries.
Wireless network setup
Kubuntu 6.06 has very good GUI utilities for wireless network setup. Go to kmenu > Internet > Wireless Assistant
This is a GUI based wireless LAN manager and supports the wep encryption system too. You should be able to see available wireless networks and configure your card to connect to them. The Intel 2200 B/G wireless card in the Acer 2428 is very compatible with Kubuntu 6.06 LTS.
Your laptop is now ready with all the minimum software that is required in any Desktop operating system for Office, Internet, Email, Multimedia and Wireless. To browse and add more software packages, use the adept package manager in Kmenu > System > Adept Manager. You have over 20,000 packages to choose from.
