The main problem with doing this is that there are a lot of different distributions (or ‘distros’) of OSX86, and knowing whch of them will work fine on the AAO is a bit of guesswork. There are, however a few that have been used by quite a few people. The XxX, iPC and iAtkos distros have all been installed successfully, and I believe that all of these are available up to OSX 10.5.6.

Each distro has a very similar set of optional components, though if you use a guide for one for another, then you may have to go hunting through the options to find the things you need, and they’re not always named the same.

A great guide is available at :-

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=153352  

This is for the iAtkos distro, but works fine for the others if you can search out the relevant bits in the install. Its a good step by step guide with a lot of feedback from other forum users afterwards also.

One tip – make sure you install the ‘Shutdown Fix’, as if you don’t then your AAO will crash about 50% of the time when shutting down running on batteries. It’s not a big issue (just hold down the power button to switch off), but always feels better and neater when it doesn’t crash!

Insanelymac in general is a great source of info for anything OSX86-related.

Also, the OSX86 Wiki at http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page is also a godsend.

Cheers!

Aspire One - OSX Flavour

I’m always the same.  I get a device or gadget, and, when I’m getting used to it in the first few weeks, I always go into ‘What can I do with this?’ mode.  I’ll see what it can do, even if its things that I’d never use again.  I was happily playing around with Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire one, and actually getting very used to it and being very happy with it.  However, after using my desktop iMac for so long, I pined for something a little more mac-like.  I went hunting, initially for themes for Gnome.  However, I soon started to come across loads of stuff on the web about how people have installed Mac OS X onto theirs.

I’d read quite a bit in the past about so-called ‘Hackintoshes’.  Ever since Apple made the move to Intel x86 Hardware, those in the know (1337 Haxxorrs and the like) had been fiddling with OSX’s innards to get it to run on vanilla PC hardware.  Previously, I hadn’t really followed this up, as early reports were of nightmarish installs, and unstable environments, making it more of a hobby / experimental thing than anything.

Thing is, stuff never stands still for very long.

The stories I was now reading were much more tales of success, and how OS X on x86 PC platforms had become a reality that was no longer out of reach of the common (non-1337) user.  A project called OSX86 (http://www.osx86project.org/) has been brewing to a fine vintage quite nicely for a few years now.  This has now got to the point where several ‘Distros’ of OSX are now available (from various… ahem… locations), which can be installed on a wide range (though not exhaustively so) of PC hardware.

Although the quality (generally) of Apple hardware is very high, and the consistency good, not everyone can afford the admittedly high prices that Apple charge for you to take one of their machines home, but they still want to experiment with OSX.  In my opinion, OSX is an OS that I haven found equalled, both for speed, stability (apart from Linux and *nix-based OSs), and lovelyness in the usage stakes.

With netbooks being de rigeur at the moment, many have longed for a Mac-based version.  MacOS is the perfect Netbook OS.  However, Apple have never got closer to the Netbook form factor than the (extortionate) Macbook Air, and (oversized for this purpose) Macbooks.  This is what has prompted getting OSX86 up and running on Netbooks, particularly ones like the Acer Aspire One and the Dell Mini 9.

Now… the main issue with this is one of legality.  Apple have a EULA that, strictly-speaking, prohibits the use of OSX on anything other than Apple hardware.   Now, you can form your own opinion on this, but many believe that as long as you purchase a license, you should be ale to install the OS on whatever compatible hardware you want to.  One thing I would NOT condone is running OS X without a license.  It is a fantastic OS that has taken many years of development, and is a joy to use.  It’s WORTH THE CASH.  I am lucky enough to have a license for Leopard that I once used on my original iMac G5, but when i sold that, I restored it back to Tiger and sold it as-is.  I’ve had a spare Leopard license hanging around since then.  I repeat – if you want to use it, BUY IT. Due to the restrictions, I suggest that this is for experimental and educational use only.

Anyway!  After much faffing, scouring the net for hacks and tweaks, I got OS X up and running on my Acer Aspire One A150L.  All-in-all, it wasn’t too difficult (though took a bit of trial and error).  One of the finest resources for info on this is the InsanelyMac forums at http://www.insanelymac.com/forum.  Make sure you check it out. Tutorials a-plenty on this are available therein.

The verdict?  Well tickle me with a feather and call me Jeffrey if I wasn’t surprised…!  I must admit, I was expecting to install it, have a mess around, get frustrated and wish I hadn’t bothered with this in the first place…  I couldn’t have been more wrong!

After a few patches, everything now works!  That includes…

• The built in webcam
• Wifi (after the change outlined below)
• Mobile Broadband Dongle (and management App)
• Sound and Mic
• All graphical effects
• Keyboard layout
• Fan speed (no noisy MicroMac for me!)
• Battery indicator
• Card Reader (as long as you have it inserted on boot, and make sure you eject it before inserting another)

And if I’ve missed anything out… then its because basically, you can take more-or-less everything else as read…

Okay – let’s dampen the fires a little.  There is one thing that would be useful that Doesn’t work, and that’s sleep mode.  However, this, to me, is not actually that vital, as I don’t really use it that much.  In the end, I can easily live without it.  You CAN get hibernation working, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered, as the OS boots so damn fast anyway (about 30 secs or so…!).  Secondly, the in-built wireless (an Atheros PCI Express card) doesn’t easily or reliably work with OS X.  I changed it for an Dell 1490 Wifi card for a few quid off ebay, and OSX picked it up as an airport card with no issues at all.  There we go, that wasn’t so painful on the negatives front was it?

OS X runs like a dream on the Acer Aspire One, with it’s Intel Atom 1.6Ghz CPu and it’s 1Gb or RAM.  I don’t know how well it would run on the 8Gb SSD version – I reckon a HDD is pretty much a must, just for space’s sake.  Nothing stopping you giving it a go though, as a browse of the forums shows it has been done.

I thought, as I did a quick vid for the last post, I’d do the same for this one.  So… just to prove it, here’s a vid of the OS starting…

How good is that eh????

(Note to the noise-sensitive : for some reason you can REALLY hear the fan on this vid, especially after the OS starts. In all honesty, it’s not loud at all, and the power management seems to deal with the fan speed absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about! The condenser mic on my camcorder is waaaaaay too sensitive!)

Anyway.  I’ll sign off now, and leave you with the thought that for £250ish, you can get yourself an A150L plus a copy of Leopard, and experiment with a MicroMac of your own!

Cheers.

Aspire One, Ubuntu Style!

After much deliberation, hand wrangling, and reading around, I decided to go for a netbook.  Many people look on these things as underpowered toys, but after having a bit of a play with one in PC World, I decided to take the plunge.  After all, if it ended up being no good, I could sell it on the back of the current netbook craze and make my money back easily enough.  So how did it work out?  Very well as it happens. The model I decided to go for was the Acer Aspire One.  After a bit of cashback and some vouchers, I managed to get hold of one for £125, which was, in my opinion, a great price.  The A150L is an Intel Atom based 8.4″ netbook, with 1Gb of RAM, plus a 120Gb Hard Drive (rather than the Solid State thing in the earlier models).  It has built in 802.11b/g WiFi, but no bluetooth.  The screen is glossy, but to me this isnt an issue, as the display is bright and clear, and very sharp (despite only being 1024×600).  The keyboard is pretty responsive, and I actually like the feel of it, and dont find it to be flexible like others have reported. The keys are 85% of the size of standard laptop keys, and whilst small, are still easy to get used to, unless you have a bunch of sausages for fingers.  The built in webcam is basic, though works absolutrely fine for the likes of MSN or Skype.  The trackpad is small, but again works very well.  The placement of the left and right buttons is unorthadox, with the buttons mounted to the right and left of the trackpad.  I use ‘tap to click’ anyway, so the placement doesnt really bother me, but if you like your buttons rather than your taps, you may want to use a notebook mouse with it.

The case is mostly glossy, and along with the screen, soon becomes close friends with your fingerprints.  You’ll find yourself obsessively wiping the thing for a while, until you get used to it… The ‘L’ models come with Linux preinstalled.  The flavour in this case is a kind of cut down distro known as ‘Linpus’.  This has Firefox 2 (rather than the more up-to-date 3) installed, as well as a simple messanger client, a proprietary mail client, as well as Openoffice, and various other apps.  However, for someone with more than a little OS experience, the whole thing feels a little restrictive.  You can enable a more advanced mode, which actually enables you to install more apps.  However, it still feels a little ‘Knobbled’ (so to speak!).  The whole Linpus install has a relatively pretty front end, which is great for people who just want to use it in its basic configuration, and makes it a brilliant first computer for a technophobe who just wants to surf the net, write a few emails, do a bit of word processing etc. After a good play with the installed OS, I decided to do a bit of research and replace the installed OS with something a little more flexible.

I decided on Ubuntu Linux NBR (Netbook Remix).  This is a version of Ubuntu that, whilst not being cut down, has a rather nice Netbook front end shell. The install couldnt have been easier.  I just used a little app to write the 1Gb image to a USB flash drive, which was then booted from on the netbook.  This booted into a live distro, which I had a play about with.  Once I decided I wanted to carry on with a permanent install, I just selected the relevant menu option, and the OS install proceeded.  I made a few tweaks to the partitions, but apart from that it was a case of next, next, next. Once installed, the OS takes only 40-50 secs to boot.  All devices work absolutely fine, apart from the SD card reader, which only works if a card is in it at boot time.  As long as you do this, you can take the card out and put another in and it will read it fine.  The webcam, sound, Wifi, etc, all work with no issues whatsoever.  The device has three USB connections, as well as VGA out, and the normal Mic and Headphones sockets.  It’s also furnished with two memory card slots.  The left one is SD only, and just serves to expand the machine’s storage (i.e. it comes up as a separate partition I believe).  The Right one is a multi card slot which takes SD, MMC, Memorystick and XD cards.  This is a more standard reader, but as previously mentioned, is not 100% working in Ubuntu. With Ubuntu, you can install any number of packages from Linux application repositories with the ‘add/remove’ app.  The main menu (the Ubuntu version of the windows ‘Start’ menu) is presented on the netbook shell as a nice full screen interface.  It’s easy to switch back and forth between the NBR shell and the standard Ubuntu desktop. Even the suspend/resume works perfectly, meaning you don’t lose the good power-saving facilities that netbooks are designed for. The battery life only weighs in at about 2 hours maximum, so you need all the power-saving you can get. You can buy bigger batteries (twice and three times the capacity and physical size), but this has an obvious impact on the size and weight of the device, kind of diminishing the point of it.

It works!

I was gobsmacked that even a ’3′ mobile broadband dongle was picked up and installed via a wizard. All it did was ask for my provider, and it went away and did the rest.  It then just appeared as a connection option in the networks menu.  Brilliant!  Even though, in relation to the Aspire One itself, the dongle seems huge, it’s not really a problem as you’ll be taking the thing out when you pack it away anyway. Playing video (including streaming DivX, Xvid etc over the WiFi) worked well, but this is partly due to Ubuntu.  Apparently the pre-loaded Linpus Linux is not so forgiving, and lacks basic support for DivX, XviD, Quicktime and some other common codecs.

Overall? I’m impressed.  I didn’t think the thing would be more like a mini laptop than a purpose-built net surfing device.  It has, however, proven to be much more powerful than I though it would be, and is, in effect, a fully fledged linux box.  It even runs the Visual effects if you choose to enable them, but only in the full Ubuntu Desktop.  Running these in the NBR mode causes issues with graphical glitches. You can buy the same model with Windows XP installed, but the idea of using Windows for a dedicated surfing and email machine kind of fills me with dread security-wise.  Apparently, some have even installed Vista, and Windows 7 on it, with reports that both run fairly well.  I’ll stick to good old Ubuntu though. All-in-all, its a really good purchase.  It does exactly what I want, and it does it well.  For the price, it amazes me what you can get now.  With more and more companies sticking their toes into the lucrative waters of the netbook phenomenon, it seems that price to power ratio is only going to improve.   Going by the few days usage that I’ve had with the Aspire One, I’d recommend it heartily to anyone who wants what it proclaims to do.  Anyone who wants a true laptop replacement would be best to try it out first if possible.

I won’t list full specs here, as you can find them easily via the gift of google. Just for a bit of fun, I thought I’d stick a quick video overview (and I mean quick).  See below – press the HQ button for a much clearer view once playing if your bandwidth will handle it. Oh, and apologies for the apparent widescreening that youtube has done. It seems to have chopped it a little, but it doesn’t really affect it too much…