Basic configuration For the Acer TimelineX 3820TG

After upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) there are some things you will need to do. I'll start this with the easy stuff.

1. Fix the screen brightness - unless you apply this, you will not be able to increase/decrease brightness on this computer (thus sucking battery life):

• As root navigate to (you can do this by entering "gksu nautilus") and edit : /etc/default/grub
• Change the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""    to  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux"
• save the file
• and then (in a terminal): sudo update-grub
• reboot

2. To enable vertical scrolling with the trackpad do the following:

• Navigate to /etc/modprobe.d/
• Make a file called psmouse.conf and paste this text into it:

options psmouse proto=imps

• save as root in the folder (you should already be there) /etc/modprobe.d/
• that's it. 

EDIT: I've found a touchpad driver which doesn't require any system tweaking at all. Just install this file:
http://people.canonical.com/~sforshee/alps-touchpad/psmouse-alps-0.9/psmouse-alps-dkms_0.9_all.deb

The source of the driver can be found here.

My next post on this computer will cover the switchable graphics card which will be a little bit more technical. Until we do that, you'll only have about 2.5 hours of battery life.

If you are feeling brave, you can always find this info in the Ubuntu forums.