good deal on netbook; war story: putting Fedora on it
I recently bought an Acer Spin 1 SP111-31-P95J refurbished netbook. <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_374&item_id=117446> So far, I quite like it. Those are gone but a slightly inferior model is available for a better price ($200): <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_374&item_id=120108> Why should you consider this: + nice size (11.6") and weight + FullHD (i.e. 1920x1080) IPS screen (IPS makes the display a lot better). Some people think that this resolution is too high for this size. I like it a lot. It's a matter of personal taste so don't take my word for it. FullHD + IPS is quite rare on this class of machine and even more rare at this price. + no fan! + folds almost 360 degrees (I don't care) + 4G RAM. That's twice what the cheapest netbooks have had. I find that it makes a big difference in Firefox (at least the way I use it) + 64G eMMC (disk). That's twice what the cheapest netbooks have. It should even be enough for a dual boot Win 10 / Linux system but it isn't generous for dual-boot. It's plenty for Linux. eMMC is slower than SATA of NVMe SSDs. Like most netbooks these days, the eMMC cannot be upgraded. - CPU is only a Celeron N3350 (dual core). That's good for electricity consumption and cooling but not a powerhouse for computation. + the Battery last quite some time -- way more than 4 hours. + supports 802.11ac + it seems to have been refurbed by the manufacturer and has a full year warranty. Mine sure looked as if it was never used. This model isn't current so they might just have been store returns. + 1 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0 - no ethernet ================ War Story ================ Adventures installing Linux on this netbook (condensed version). a) freshening up Windows and firmware After first boot, I did all updates. This requires you toask several times for updates since it will install a bunch and (incorrectly) say your system is up to date. Don't believe it. I updated the firmware too. This requires Windows, as far as I can tell. You have to hunt for the update on the Acer site. This whole process is excruciatingly slow and requires way too many user interventions. Allocate a day to babysit it. Don't bother with the Windows updates if you are just going to blow Windows away. But I would do the firmware update in any case. b) booting a live Fedora 29 installation medium Note 1: this thing should be used as a modern UEFI system. I don't even remember whether there is an option for legacy emulation (i.e. a CSM and support for an MBR system disk). Note 2: a number of useful settings in the firmware setup page are only enabled if you set an administrator password (you set it in the firmware setup page). A Fedora live USB stick is made by downloading the .iso file and dd-ing it onto the raw USB drive. The Acer just will not boot such a stick. Apparently the same thing happens with an Ubuntu installation disk. Linuxium (that's his nom de guerre) has a tool that apparently doctors such a USB to be bootable. He says that this is a generic Apolo Lake problem but I am skeptical. I think that it is an Insyde Firmware bug. My solution was to burn a DVD from the .iso and boot from that. I could do this because I have an external DVD drive. Note: the image is too large for a CD. c) making room on the disk When installing Linux on a Windows system to create a dual boot system, you need a way to divide disk space. - Windows needs at least 32G of disk; a nice Linux needs close to that too. - Windows comes with a tool that can shrink an NTFS parition. Unfortunately it is unwilling to shrink down to 50% or less. I think that is because certain metadata is smack dab in the middle of the filesystem and is marked as unmovable. - I use gparted to change NTFS partition sizes, especially when Windows won't. It seems to damage the FS but if you immediately reboot Windows after resizing, Windows will repair the damage. This time, when I rebooted Windows after gparted-resizing, Windows could not fix the NTFS partition. I gave up and blew Windows away. After all, I wasn't really going to use it and the disk space would be better used by Linux. I should have made a re-installation disk before I resized the partition, but I did not. d) installing Linux No problem. e) booting the installed linux I placed Linux ahead of Windows in the boot sequence. But the firmware always altered it to put Windows first. Crazy. Especially when there is no Windows (but I had left bits of it in the EFI System Partition (/boot/efi)). I could hit F5 on boot and specify booting Linux, but this is silly. My crude fix was to rename the Microsoft directory on the EFI System Partition to "Macrosoft", thereby hiding it from the bootloader.
Hugh, I am documenting my Linux installs on my website. I have had some time on my hands recently, so I have tried installing stuff on my old 32-bit Lenovo Thinkpad. http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson/Linux.html#NewUsers Ubuntu and Fedora worked nicely in a beginner installation. We need to build a library of this stuff. On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:51:00 -0500 (EST) "D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
I recently bought an Acer Spin 1 SP111-31-P95J refurbished netbook. <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_374&item_id=117446> So far, I quite like it.
Those are gone but a slightly inferior model is available for a better price ($200): <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_374&item_id=120108>
Why should you consider this:
+ nice size (11.6") and weight
+ FullHD (i.e. 1920x1080) IPS screen (IPS makes the display a lot better). Some people think that this resolution is too high for this size. I like it a lot. It's a matter of personal taste so don't take my word for it. FullHD + IPS is quite rare on this class of machine and even more rare at this price.
+ no fan!
+ folds almost 360 degrees (I don't care)
+ 4G RAM. That's twice what the cheapest netbooks have had. I find that it makes a big difference in Firefox (at least the way I use it)
+ 64G eMMC (disk). That's twice what the cheapest netbooks have. It should even be enough for a dual boot Win 10 / Linux system but it isn't generous for dual-boot. It's plenty for Linux. eMMC is slower than SATA of NVMe SSDs. Like most netbooks these days, the eMMC cannot be upgraded.
- CPU is only a Celeron N3350 (dual core). That's good for electricity consumption and cooling but not a powerhouse for computation.
+ the Battery last quite some time -- way more than 4 hours.
+ supports 802.11ac
+ it seems to have been refurbed by the manufacturer and has a full year warranty. Mine sure looked as if it was never used. This model isn't current so they might just have been store returns.
+ 1 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0
- no ethernet
================ War Story ================
Adventures installing Linux on this netbook (condensed version).
a) freshening up Windows and firmware
After first boot, I did all updates. This requires you toask several times for updates since it will install a bunch and (incorrectly) say your system is up to date. Don't believe it.
I updated the firmware too. This requires Windows, as far as I can tell. You have to hunt for the update on the Acer site.
This whole process is excruciatingly slow and requires way too many user interventions. Allocate a day to babysit it.
Don't bother with the Windows updates if you are just going to blow Windows away. But I would do the firmware update in any case.
b) booting a live Fedora 29 installation medium
Note 1: this thing should be used as a modern UEFI system. I don't even remember whether there is an option for legacy emulation (i.e. a CSM and support for an MBR system disk).
Note 2: a number of useful settings in the firmware setup page are only enabled if you set an administrator password (you set it in the firmware setup page).
A Fedora live USB stick is made by downloading the .iso file and dd-ing it onto the raw USB drive.
The Acer just will not boot such a stick. Apparently the same thing happens with an Ubuntu installation disk. Linuxium (that's his nom de guerre) has a tool that apparently doctors such a USB to be bootable. He says that this is a generic Apolo Lake problem but I am skeptical. I think that it is an Insyde Firmware bug.
My solution was to burn a DVD from the .iso and boot from that. I could do this because I have an external DVD drive. Note: the image is too large for a CD.
c) making room on the disk
When installing Linux on a Windows system to create a dual boot system, you need a way to divide disk space.
- Windows needs at least 32G of disk; a nice Linux needs close to that too.
- Windows comes with a tool that can shrink an NTFS parition. Unfortunately it is unwilling to shrink down to 50% or less. I think that is because certain metadata is smack dab in the middle of the filesystem and is marked as unmovable.
- I use gparted to change NTFS partition sizes, especially when Windows won't. It seems to damage the FS but if you immediately reboot Windows after resizing, Windows will repair the damage.
This time, when I rebooted Windows after gparted-resizing, Windows could not fix the NTFS partition. I gave up and blew Windows away. After all, I wasn't really going to use it and the disk space would be better used by Linux.
I should have made a re-installation disk before I resized the partition, but I did not.
d) installing Linux
No problem.
e) booting the installed linux
I placed Linux ahead of Windows in the boot sequence. But the firmware always altered it to put Windows first. Crazy. Especially when there is no Windows (but I had left bits of it in the EFI System Partition (/boot/efi)).
I could hit F5 on boot and specify booting Linux, but this is silly.
My crude fix was to rename the Microsoft directory on the EFI System Partition to "Macrosoft", thereby hiding it from the bootloader. --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 03:51:00PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
I recently bought an Acer Spin 1 SP111-31-P95J refurbished netbook. <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_374&item_id=117446> So far, I quite like it.
Those are gone but a slightly inferior model is available for a better price ($200): <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_374&item_id=120108>
Just curious... Where/how do you use these little computers? I mean, $300 here, $200 there, $100 upgrade, $50 ram, $25 microSD, etc. they all add up. Right now, I'm looking for a real ThinkPad at $1000 range. I'm sure others are also. So, if you know a deal, let us know. Yes, I check Lenovo site everyday. :-) -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca>
| From: William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Just curious... Where/how do you use these little computers? I mean, | $300 here, $200 there, $100 upgrade, $50 ram, $25 microSD, etc. they all | add up. (I'm typing this on the netbook, on a couch, in front of the TV. That's a good use of a netbook.) Normally it is cheaper to upgrade a notebook than to buy it with generous resources. But it is critical to know what can be upgraded before you buy it. The only upgrade that can be done to the netbook I described is replacing the 4G memory with an 8G memory (I think it has a single slot). Currently it has enough ram so I'm not thinking of upgrading. | Right now, I'm looking for a real ThinkPad at $1000 range. I'm sure | others are also. So, if you know a deal, let us know. Yes, I check | Lenovo site everyday. :-) There are lots of OK deals. Thinkpads are quite expensive so I haven't bought any in five or more years. Lenovo randomly has good sales. And you can often get a little better deals by using their EPP program. I've been tempted by some older ThinkPads sold by Bauer Systems. I have no idea which features you value. That makes a big difference. redflagdeals.com has many users that find and post notebook deals. Search the fora for "thinkpad" and you might get a useful lead.
On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 at 22:53, William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Just curious... Where/how do you use these little computers? I mean, $300 here, $200 there, $100 upgrade, $50 ram, $25 microSD, etc. they all add up.
I have been carrying around a Chromebook running Linux-y bits via Crouton for 3.5+ years now; it's coming towards the end of its lifespan, and only cost me a bit past $200, with no extras adding up. Quoting my own email from 2015-03-15 on this list... "I'm liking my Samsung ARM-based Chromebook well enough; I'm running Debian "in behind" via the Crouton layer, which has been working fine. I'll bet that by the time I care for something more, there will be a newer model with more storage, memory, and CPU than I presently have." It's 2018, and the reason I'm looking for something newer mostly has to do with the fact that such a cheap laptop has a fairly fragile case, so it's beginning to age a bit ungracefully. That something newer has greater capacity is fine. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
| From: Christopher Browne via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | It's 2018, and the reason I'm looking for something newer mostly has to do | with the fact that such a cheap laptop has a fairly fragile case I find I treat my netbooks more roughly than I treat my ultrabook that cost 5 or 7 times as much (I have two netbooks, thus the two factors). Being able to treat it more rougly makes it more useful. Think: jeans vs suit. I'm fascinated by tacit differences like this. Another example: I find fan noise disturbing (in proportion to its volume) but also it adds to my tension about battery life. In the electric car world, a similar phenomenon is called "range anxiety".
The current Chromebooks will run a Linux userspace sandboxed very nicely *right out of the box, *neither crouton nor dev mode required. I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus (gen 1, with the high-dpi screen -- watch out for gen 2 where they dropped to 1080 (and also regressed from ARM to Intel)) and the LInux userspace (Debian) is fabulous -- full development toolchain (including gdb etc), X window and wayland app support, and so on. The environments are semi-integrated -- there's a separate directory in the ChromeOS "Files" application that maps to $HOME in the sandbox/container, but any graphical apps you install into the sandbox show up on the ChromeOS main menu (e.g., LibreOffice, Gimp, Eschema, and so forth). Apparently deeper integration is coming; releases in the pipeline include the ability to do things like mount your Google Drive filesystem within the sandbox. My wife has a Pixelbook (top-end Chromebook, gorgeous build with glass trackpad etc - I gave her the nice machine this time ;-) and the Linux userspace is supposed to work really well there, but I haven't tried it yet. -Chris On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 3:41 PM Christopher Browne via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 at 22:53, William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Just curious... Where/how do you use these little computers? I mean, $300 here, $200 there, $100 upgrade, $50 ram, $25 microSD, etc. they all add up.
I have been carrying around a Chromebook running Linux-y bits via Crouton for 3.5+ years now; it's coming towards the end of its lifespan, and only cost me a bit past $200, with no extras adding up.
Quoting my own email from 2015-03-15 on this list...
"I'm liking my Samsung ARM-based Chromebook well enough; I'm running Debian "in behind" via the Crouton layer, which has been working fine. I'll bet that by the time I care for something more, there will be a newer model with more storage, memory, and CPU than I presently have."
It's 2018, and the reason I'm looking for something newer mostly has to do with the fact that such a cheap laptop has a fairly fragile case, so it's beginning to age a bit ungracefully. That something newer has greater capacity is fine. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
| From: Chris Tyler via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | I have a Samsung | Chromebook Plus (gen 1, with the high-dpi screen -- watch out for gen 2 | where they dropped to 1080 (and also regressed from ARM to Intel)) I take it that your model is the XE513C24-K01US. I was very impressed with how it worked for you during a presentation at FSOSS last month. Somehow presentations bring out the worst in computers but yours worked well. The resolution seems to be 2400 x 1600 in 12.3". That's a nicer aspect ratio than most notebooks. The disk space seems a bit low for Linux (but generous for ChromeOS): 32G. I would guess that it is eMMC and not upgradable. The price here seems quite high: $731.82 on amazon.ca. walmart.com has it at US$499. Why are they still selling it if there is now a V2?
Can you go into more detail about this "userspace Linux sandbox"? -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 05:28:00PM -0500, Chris Tyler via talk wrote:
The current Chromebooks will run a Linux userspace sandboxed very nicely *right out of the box, *neither crouton nor dev mode required. I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus (gen 1, with the high-dpi screen -- watch out for gen 2 where they dropped to 1080 (and also regressed from ARM to Intel)) and the LInux userspace (Debian) is fabulous -- full development toolchain (including gdb etc), X window and wayland app support, and so on. The environments are semi-integrated -- there's a separate directory in the ChromeOS "Files" application that maps to $HOME in the sandbox/container, but any graphical apps you install into the sandbox show up on the ChromeOS main menu (e.g., LibreOffice, Gimp, Eschema, and so forth). Apparently deeper integration is coming; releases in the pipeline include the ability to do things like mount your Google Drive filesystem within the sandbox.
My wife has a Pixelbook (top-end Chromebook, gorgeous build with glass trackpad etc - I gave her the nice machine this time ;-) and the Linux userspace is supposed to work really well there, but I haven't tried it yet.
-Chris
For me, similar start but different end. I bought HP Chromebook 11 G3 for about $200 also. I ran (still do) Kubuntu through Crouton/Dev mode. Initially, I liked it. Then, - the battery died. I bought a replacement, and it too died in 3 months. - WiFi doesn't connect when coming out of "sleep" mode. - I bought 64GB ultra fast Samsung microSD, to install and run Kubuntu from the microSD. - Right now, I have it always plugged in, which defeats the purpose of Chromebook. In the end, though, it turned out to be $400 lesson. That's why I'm not too keen on these little toys, whose primary purpose is to clear out inventories of old obsolete parts or to keep production lines going until payback is reached. -- William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 03:41:30PM -0500, Christopher Browne via talk wrote:
On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 at 22:53, William Park via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Just curious... Where/how do you use these little computers? I mean, $300 here, $200 there, $100 upgrade, $50 ram, $25 microSD, etc. they all add up.
I have been carrying around a Chromebook running Linux-y bits via Crouton for 3.5+ years now; it's coming towards the end of its lifespan, and only cost me a bit past $200, with no extras adding up.
Quoting my own email from 2015-03-15 on this list...
"I'm liking my Samsung ARM-based Chromebook well enough; I'm running Debian "in behind" via the Crouton layer, which has been working fine. I'll bet that by the time I care for something more, there will be a newer model with more storage, memory, and CPU than I presently have."
It's 2018, and the reason I'm looking for something newer mostly has to do with the fact that such a cheap laptop has a fairly fragile case, so it's beginning to age a bit ungracefully. That something newer has greater capacity is fine. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 10:53:12PM -0500, William Park via talk wrote:
Right now, I'm looking for a real ThinkPad at $1000 range. I'm sure others are also. So, if you know a deal, let us know. Yes, I check Lenovo site everyday. :-)
Well I think the current price on a T580 at $830 is pretty good. That's for 8GB ram, 500GB HD (not SSD), 1920x1080 15.6" IPS panel and i5-7200U (2.5GHz) CPU. -- Len Sorensen
| From: Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Well I think the current price on a T580 at $830 is pretty good. | That's for 8GB ram, 500GB HD (not SSD), 1920x1080 15.6" IPS panel and | i5-7200U (2.5GHz) CPU. Looks good. Where is that? Is it ending today? (Not important to me -- I don't actually need a new computer. But I'm interested.) I assume (but don't know) that you could easily add an NVMe SSD to this. Aftermarket SSDs are cheap and seem to be getting cheaper. I kind of thought that T5n0 models would have n'th generation Intel processors. I have noticed that there are exceptions, unfortunately. The i5-8____ series are usually better than the i5-7___ series. Often twice as many cores.
On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 12:20:33PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Looks good. Where is that? Is it ending today? (Not important to me -- I don't actually need a new computer. But I'm interested.)
Lenovo website. For an extra $90 the 500G HD becomes a 512GB NVMe drive, and the keyboard becomes backlit. That is the 20L9S14T00 model. Quite the deal (about 50% off regular price where as the one with the HD is about 33% off).
I assume (but don't know) that you could easily add an NVMe SSD to this. Aftermarket SSDs are cheap and seem to be getting cheaper.
I kind of thought that T5n0 models would have n'th generation Intel processors. I have noticed that there are exceptions, unfortunately. The i5-8____ series are usually better than the i5-7___ series. Often twice as many cores.
Yeah seems both 7th and 8th gen CPUs are used. -- Len Sorensen
participants (6)
-
Chris Tyler -
Christopher Browne -
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
Howard Gibson -
lsorense＠csclub.uwaterloo.ca -
William Park