In preparation for this year's annual motorcycle trip, I purchased an Acer Aspire One Intel Atom N450 netbook. What follows are a few notes and suggestions for installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 10.04.

On the latest episode of the podcast I briefly mentioned that I’d recently bought an Acer Aspire Revo to use as an Ubuntu based media player. Well, I’ve installed Ubuntu and Boxee on it, and it plays back all kinds of video including 720p and 1080p HD video via the HDMI port.

"Acer Inc. did not install the Ubuntu Linux distribution on a batch of Aspire notebooks for sale in Singapore, but the company is installing a different version of the open-source operating system on some notebooks, local dealers said."

Linux has always been pretty easy to get your hands on. You just pick out your favorite distro, download it and install. Piece of cake, right?

I think this is a temporary offer only, and I don't have many more details than what is in the product page, but it looks like Acer is making a limited laptop series available now with Ubuntu Linux pre-loaded.

Dell is currently flogging a cheap-as-chips netbook that apparently comes loaded with that well-known Microsoft operating system, Ubuntu 8.04. Anyone dropping in on the computer maker's UK product website will be able to buy an Intel-based Inspiron Mini 10 laptop for £199 a pop.

Acer's Nvidia Ion-based micro desktop PC, Revo, will go on sale in the UK on 5 May, with Ubuntu Linux among the available operating systems.

Acer will not release Linux-based laptops in the UK due to a lack of demand, despite launching an Ubuntu-based machine in Asia.

I had to send my netbook, an Acer Aspire One, for repair after three months of use. I had installed Fedora Core 10 XFCE respin, but when sending in the unit I knew that Acer would probably re-install Windows.