You’ve only to select the directories you want to keep in sync (tipically the “documents” folder, and maybe your music or pictures archive), the SugarSync client will run in background, automatically monitoring every change. If the other computer is switched off, it will be synchronized the next time you will power it up.

It is a direct competitor of the famous (and good) Dropbox (2Gb for free), but it offers several addictional features: Dropbox syncronizes a single folder and it gives a mobile app only for iPhone, even if the free accounts are elegible to be linked to an unlimited number of computers, while SugarSync free supports only two (plus a phone). SugarSync is available for Windows and Mac OS X (Dropbox has also a Linux client).

You can expand the space limitations of your free account referring your friends: SugarSync offers you 250Mb of addictional space for every new user you refer (and your friend will get the same, starting with 2.75 Gb of free storage space!); if someone you referred will upgrade to a paid plan – starting from $4.99 per month for 30Gb – you’ll get an addictional 5Gb for free.

Go to SugarSync website

I tried a couple of alternative OS (for example Ubuntu Netbook Remix), but none of them fully fit on it: too weight, drivers problems, etc.

Finally, I found an italian project: “Linux4One“, a modified Ubuntu distro, optimized for the Aspire One. It includes drivers for this notebook, with a good interface, derived from the Netbook Remix version.

It’s very easy to install it: just download the ISO, “burn” it on a USB key (I suggest using usb-creator, a simple application for Ubuntu), plug it into one of USB connection on the Aspire One, reboot it and press F12 at the first boot screen, then choose the USB key as boot device and install it. After the installation process (and a first reboot, that is necessary to make wi-fi work), you’ll get a full Ubuntu system on your Aspire One.

It supports all the onboard devices (also standby mode!) and it runs quite fast (not fast as Linpus, but anyway it’s acceptable to have a “real” operating system!).

Notice: This little tutorial assumes that you have some basic Linux knowledge, and that you know what SSH is.

Christmas is coming, and I’ll be out of office for a while.

I was a little worried because I could need some data from my main desktop PC… I’ll copy the most important documents on the laptop, but if I’ll forget something? I don’t want to leave my desktop turned on, nor to be obliged to pass the evening of 24th of December in my car to come back to the office.

So it’s time to activate Wake On LAN

Wake On LAN (aka WOL) is a feature of many PCs. It leaves the network port in standby mode, without turning off it completely. It requires very little power, and it allows you to activate a PC from your LAN.

In my office network I have a Linux server that is always on: with WOL I can login into this, launch a very simple command to activate my desktop and then login into it to do what I need. When I finish I can also turn it off again: it will remain available to be re-activated later!
I’ll do this from my office server, anyway the same feature (the ability to send a special command to the local network to turn a PC on) is embedded in some good home and office routers, so check yours

• The first action I had to accomplish was to activate WOL from the BIOS of my desktop motherboard (an ASUS M2A-MX). Usually, this option is easy to be found… even it wasn’t so in mine (here the option is called “Resume from S5 by PME#”);
• The second thing is to discover and write somewhere the desktop MAC address. I found it from my router web interface, listing the connected devices… anyway you can read it directly from the PC to be turned on remotely, with ifconfig command. It will list a lot of information about the computer’s network interfaces… usually the LAN card is identified by eth0 code, and the MAC address is in this form: HWaddr xx:yy:zz:01:02:03
• Then I installed a little utility called wakeonlan in my office server (that was already configured to accept remote users login via SSH), with a single terminal command:
  sudo apt-get install wakeonlan
• At this point, WOL was already working if I turn my desktop on, then I turn it off with its power button. I login into the server via SSH, then I send this simple command:
  wakeonlan xx:yy:zz:01:02:03
  (just change the MAC address with the one of your target PC)
• Unfortunately, it didn’t work turning the desktop off from Ubuntu (with Gnome’s shutdown command),  so I needed to create a boot script to activate the feature everytime the PC starts:

1. create a new script:
   gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/wol.sh
2. paste this and save the file:
   #!/bin/bash
   ethtool -s eth0 wol g
   exit
3. give execute permission to this new file and add it to startup scripts:
   sudo chmod a+x /etc/init.d/WOL.sh
   sudo update-rc.d WOL.sh defaults

It’s ok! Now you’ve only to reboot and shutdown the PC normally, the network interface will remain in standby mode, allowing you to wake the system from any another PC (or router, see above) in the LAN!

You’ve to edit fstab (e.g.: sudo nano /etc/fstab in the terminal) and add this lines at the end:

#usbfs
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=46,devmode=664 0 0

Now reboot and install the official Samsung driver package for Linux. If you already tried to install it (but it failed detecting the printer), it should be enough to simply reboot: the printer and the scanner will be automatically detected and they will appear in the “Samsung unified driver configurator” (see applications menu).

Enjoy printing

PS: Thanks (again) to the Ubuntu Forums where I found the solution (even if the topic is dedicated to a different question: Intrepid/Virtualbox/USB