Aspire One Linux question…
- posted by Michael Walsh on January 13th, 2009
- (15)
Hello everybody,
Sorry it’s been a while – I’ve been getting everything ready for this weekend’s 2009 Kick Off meet up in London. Don’t worry, it won’t be on you calendars – it’s the annual internal meeting with Acer people from all over the world to set goals, establish objectives, present a whole bunch of surprises and drink lots of beer in proper pint glasses. OK that last one isn’t on the official agenda but you know how it goes. I will be filming…
Anyway, I have an Aspire One question I’d like to throw at the community which has been bugging me for a while. It probably only affects about 0.01% of the market (i.e me in all of Italy) but I’m sure someone else somewhere will be glad I asked.
OK. As you all know I live in Italy which means I bought an Aspire One with an Italian keyboard. So far so good. When you first switch on the Aspire One it asks you where you are and selects the Operating System language and keyboard settings in line with your choice.
I know this as the first time I set it up I selected “UK English” and the keyboard was all over the place and I had to reset everything.
So, right now I have an Italian OS and an Italian keyboard.
The question is how do you change the Operating System language without resetting everything and overcoming the keyboard/OS link? Basically I want a UK Operating System (interface) and an Italian keyboard.
I’ll turn the best answer (the one that works) into a “How to..” post.
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Morris Lee wrote, on January 14th, 2009:
I am not sure, but maybe give this command a try in the terminal:
system-config-language
Rodrigo Fuentealba wrote, on January 17th, 2009:
First you have to set up your language, then change your keyboard layout as the root user in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
It should look (with more or less comments) like this:
Option “XkbLayout” “it”
It works in any Linux distribution, not just Linpus (which I hated mainly because I use Linux since 1995 and prefer some old-school stuff like Slackware).
marco wrote, on January 19th, 2009:
Hi Michael,
If you don’t want to recover your Italian system and just want to change the OS language only, you can follow to change it.
As i known, Aspire1 without provide the application for end-user easy to change the system language, but you can modify by yourself through terminal.
Anyway, just for your reference~
1. After the home screen is ready, press Fn+F2 to run a program, select “Run in terminal” to open a terminal first.
2. Type “sudo vim /etc/sysconfig/i18n” to modify the configure.
3. If you want to change your default language to Italian, it is modified such as,
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=it_IT.UTF-8
SUPPORTED=”zh_CN.GB18030:zh_TW.UTF-8:zh_TW.Big5:zh:en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en:da_DK.UTF-8:da_DK:cs_CZ.UTF-8:fi_FI.UTF-8:fi_FI:fr_FR.UTF-8:fr_FR:de_DE.UTF-8:de_DE:el_GR.UTF-8:el_GR:hu_HU.UTF-8:hu_HU:it_IT.UTF-8:it_IT:ja_JP.UTF-8:ja_JP:ko_KR.UTF-8:ko_KR:nl_NL.UTF-8:nl_NL:nn_NO.UTF-8:nn_NO:no_NO.UTF-8:no_NO:pl_PL.UTF-8:pl_PL:ru_RU.UTF-8:ru_RU:es_ES.UTF-8:es_ES:sv_SE.UTF-8:sv_SE:th_TH.UTF-8:th_TH:tr_TR.UTF-8:tr_TR:pt_PT.UTF-8:pt_PT”
SYSFONT=”latarcyrheb-sun16″
4. After you have modified the configure, press “Esc” and than type “:wq!” & press “Enter” to save & quit
5. reboot your system.
By the way, please update your system through online update service to update your keyboard layout setting, if you want to change your keyboard layout by yourself.
If you still have any Aspire ONE linux question, i prefer you send your issue to helpdesk@linpus.com
Tyler wrote, on March 4th, 2009:
Hi,
I live in Taiwan and I just ordered an Acer One in the mail. It will come with a Chinese OS language, and I need to change the OS language to English. Since the computer is new, I don’t mind if it erases data or anything like that, but I think that it should be easy to do and stores here want to charge a lot of money to do it for me. Does anyone have step-by-step instructions for changing the OS language in a new Acer One (Linpus)? Thanks a lot!
Best,
Tyler
P.S.- I am also very bad with computers, so the easier, the better.
Morris Lee wrote, on March 4th, 2009:
@Tayler,
the simplest way should be downloading the English version of the recovery disk and recovery from that. To make USB recovery disk, you can try using Virtual Machine parallels to load the disk image you downloaded and mount the USB device.
Morris Lee wrote, on March 4th, 2009:
@Tayler,
forgot to mention, it should come universally, it should ask you what language you want at the first start up of the laptop.
tyler wrote, on March 4th, 2009:
Thanks so much for the advice, Morris. I didn’t quite understand the USB recovery method (which is what I would need, since I have no external CD/DVD), because when it comes to computers, I am …stupid, haha. But hopefully that should work at the startup. I think that English is loaded onto Linpus (along with most major Asian languages if I remember correctly), but I wasn’t sure how to switch from one to the other. That is great if I can choose English from the start. Thanks again!
Best,
Tyler
Morris Lee wrote, on March 5th, 2009:
@tyler,
I believe you just have to choose english at the start up, then it will default english, unless it is for the keyboard layout only, but if it is still Chinese, I know for sure that someone has a Linpus English edition posted on the net some where, it is freeware after all.
ermie wrote, on March 15th, 2009:
hey guys please help me for my acer aspire one linpus lite, i can no longer use it because everytime i will gonna open it after the logo appear it will be all black with the mouse pointer like cross in style. i dunno waht happen its very often for me to use it coz i cant use it for watching movies, im just using it for internet and reading ebooks in pdf.please help me i tried the recovery boot cd by transferring it in USB still not working… i just bought it last september 2008 and now its dead…i dunno that it is linux till i open it at home.
ermie wrote, on March 15th, 2009:
hi morris lee please do help me this is my email add if anybody can send me how to do it.. smeagol2282@yahoo.com
thanxs dude!!!
Morris Lee wrote, on March 16th, 2009:
@ermie,
When you recover from the USB flash disk you have created, what happens?
ermie wrote, on March 18th, 2009:
linux?….. my big regret of buying it it gave me really pain in the ass!!!
Morris Lee wrote, on March 18th, 2009:
@ermie,
this is why I invented this:
http://www.theacerguy.com/2009/01/aspire-one-a110-25-sata/
or gave birth to it, or wrote it, uhmmmmm…. lets just say I currently don’t have any better choice of word or phrases.
Cheers!
AcmeUK wrote, on April 1st, 2009:
Hi Guys
To change the keyboard layout, update your unit using Live Update. On reboot you will find a Keyboard Layout manager in Settings.
Shawn wrote, on February 10th, 2011:
Hello my 10 year old son forgot his password on his Acer aspire one. When we cut it on it goes straight to password. Tell me what do i need to do please.