Installing Xubuntu 14.02 on AcerOne model A0751H

I have a number of laptops.  While the Dell Inspiron 1300 is my favorite,  I just got back an AcerOne netbook (model A0751) from my daughter who had been running Windows XP on it.  Of course, I did not want to keep using Windows XP so I decided it was time to wipe it clean and install Linux on it.

I chose Xubuntu 14.02 because it looked so nice on the Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop I thought it was worth a try.  My only hesitation was the AcerOne has a strange Intel integrated graphics chip that goes by GMA500 or sometimes referred to as Poulsbo.  I recall installing Ubuntu previously on this netbook and it was a pain.  This time I did some research.

Booting the Xubuntu 14.02 Live DVD ends up in a funky graphics mode.  The entire display is scrunched up into 1/2 the screen size and it is somewhat distorted.  You can make out the desktop and the mouse is visible but installing from this is not good.  The solution I found was very simple:  at the boot screen for the Xubuntu 14.02 Live DVD, press the e key to add the following two additional boot parameters:

                 console=tty1 mem=986mb

I put these right after the boot parameters: quiet splash

The first screen will appear without any problems and all will be good.  These additional parameters will be included in the installation so there is no need to fix them (I do not recall exactly but it would not be hard to boot from hard disk and enter the parameters).

The only other problem I had was when I was listening to internet radio via VLC.  The audio was real choppy.  The solution to this problem is to add the following two lines into the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf at the bottom:

         options snd-hda-intel model=generic
        options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1

A reboot is needed to make this fix work and VLC is no longer choppy.