By David Meyer, 30 January 2009 09:05
NEWS
Acer has confirmed it plans to release a Linux version of its 10-inch Aspire One netbook, even though its initial announcement of the upcoming machine said it would be Windows XP-only.
Acer announced details of the 10-inch Aspire One last week, describing a netbook that has Windows XP as the operating system and a 160GB hard disk drive (HDD) for storage. The original Aspire One, which had an 8.9-inch screen, comes with a choice of XP or a Linux distribution called Linpus, and the option of a solid-state drive (SSD) or an HDD.
On Wednesday, an Acer spokesperson told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK that the 10-inch Aspire One "will be available with XP or Linux, and HDD or SSD", and confirmed that the Linux distribution would be Linpus. However, buyers will not have these options in the initial release of the netbook, which will launch in mid-February and cost £299.
The SSD will have a capacity of 16GB. There is, as yet, no launch date or pricing for the Linux flavour of the machine.
Unlike the 8.9-inch Aspire One, the 10-inch version will not have a second SD card slot. In the earlier version, the second SD slot was there to hold a flash memory card that would be more-or-less permanently housed in the netbook to augment the 8GB or 16GB SSD. According to Acer's spokesperson, the new version lacks that second slot "due to the increase in standard storage sizes".
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