Linux on Acer Aspire One 722

History

My father-in-law offered me this old mini-laptop from around 2012. I replaced the old 320 Hard Disk with Windows 7 installed with a cheap 256 GB SSD. I bought a DDR3 4GB so-dimm module to replace the 2GB one. The two pieces from less than 20 Euros.

(Xubuntu) Linux tips

CPU “turbo” mode

Install the recommended requirements:

sudo apt install build-essential git

Compile and install the undervolt command:

AMD C-60 CPU under Linux can be “unblocked” with the C60-tweak tool.

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/melma/c60-tweak.git
cd c60-tweak
sudo ./c60-tweak.sh

The speed improvement is quite noticiable.

GPU

The Radeon HD 6290 gpu with the radeon and amdgpu linux drivers only supports Hardware decoding for MPEG2, VC1 and H.264 (AVC) video codecs, according vainfo command:

k$ vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 1.14.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/r600_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_14
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.14 (libva 2.12.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 22.2.5 for AMD PALM (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.19.0-41-generic, LLVM 15.0.6)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   :	VAEntrypointVideoProc

Install the package ubuntu-restricted-extras to get H.264 hardware acceleration. The best performance for mpv videoplayer I have found is with the parameters: --vo=vdpau --hwdec=vdpau

Xubuntu tips

CPU Freq applet for XFCE Desktop

Install: sudo apt install xfce4-cpufreq-plugin

Firefox

Remove firefox from snap and use the Mozilla Team PPA one.

Blueman disable

In XFCE, go to Settings Manager > Session and Startup > [ ] Blueman (uncheck it). Logoff and login again

Reference