[GTALUG] good deal on netbook; war story: putting Fedora on it

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

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.