Small howto for installing arch on the Acer Aspire Timeline 1810tz

Hardware

Audio: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
Video: Intel GMA 4500MHD
Processor: U4100 @ 1.30GHz
Wired: Atheros Communications Device 1063 (rev c0)
Wireless: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 1000 Series

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Device 1063 (rev c0)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 1000 Series

Wireless

Detailed info found at Wireless Out of the box with Kernel ≥2.6.34.X.

Wired

Out of the box with Kernel ≥2.6.32.X.

xorg

Detailed info found at Xorg

pacman -S  xorg-server xorg xf86-input-synaptics xf86-input-keyboard xf86-video-intel

Issues

I was experiencing some problems with the Touchpad, it was becoming unresponsive kind of laggy. Here is a forum thread that helped

~/.xinitrc

xinput --set-prop "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad" "Synaptics Two-Finger Pressure" 280

Extarkeys

To enable mute volume up and down do following

install xbindkeys

pacman -S xbindkeys

~/.xbindkeysrc.scm

(xbindkey '("XF86AudioMute") "amixer sset Master toggle")
(xbindkey '("XF86AudioRaiseVolume")' "amixer set Master 2dB+ unmute")
(xbindkey '("XF86AudioLowerVolume")' "amixer set Master 2dB- unmute")

autostart xbindkeys while starting X. I use the .xinitrc for this.

~/.xinitrc

# keybindings 
xbindkeys

KMS

Enable Intel KMS. This works quite nice.

Sound

Detailed info found at Alsa

Webcam

Works out of the box

mplayer tv://

I added !uvcvideo to rc.conf modules to prevent it from auto loading to save power. Can be loaded by modprobe when needed.

Powersaving

enable power saving wireless(add to /etc/rc.local)

iwconfig wlan0 power on

powertop

powertop can give some nice hints how to save power.

add to /etc/rc.local

echo min_power > /sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy
echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

tmpfs

Stop writing logs and tmp stuff to the Hard-drive.

Warning: All logs will be gone after reboot

add to /etc/fstab

none	/var/log	tmpfs	size=10M	0	0
none	/tmp	tmpfs	size=100M	0	0
none	/var/tmp	tmpfs	size=20M	0	0

noatime

Added noatime to all my partitions in /etc/fstab to reduce hdd IO. This is usually done when using an SSD but i think it can't harm if i also use it on my normal Hard drive.

/dev/sda3 / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1

Fan-Control

Acerhdf [1] is a module you can load to control the fan-speed. Download the latest version, unpack it and follow instructions in the readme file. You probably need to add your bios-version in the config-file. Your bios-version is in the error message when you load the module. Add acerhdf in your rc.conf. If it doesn't work, you can also follow these instructions: Acer_Aspire_One#acerhdf

Misc

Keyboard in X

Disable caps lock and set keyboard layout in X

~/.xinitrc

# set german keyboard layout and disable caps lock
setxkbmap -layout de -option ctrl:nocaps &&

mplayer 1080p 720p

720p: works out of the box
1080p: currently not working

Trying to get it to work:

Multithreaded mplayer aur/mplayer-mt-git does improve the situation but not solve the problem.
- mplayer -lavdopts threads=4 -vo gl2
aur/mplayer-coreavc-svn tries to install wine so I didn't test it
VA-API GPU Acceleration coming for GM45 around Q3 2010 [2].
- using aur/mplayer-vaapi mplayer -vo vaapi file should play the content with out a problem as soon as support arrives.

External Resources

Acer Aspire Timeline 1810tz

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