Experiences with Asus UL30

[avilella]

Hi,

Has anyone installed Linux on an Asus UL30?

[avilella]

I've seen in a non-Linux forum that 2 users report an almost fully working system with Karmic 9.10.

Can anyone confirm this?

But the best of all is:
The lastest Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 Linux (Alpha 6) works like a charm! Everything is running out of the box, incl sound, lan, wlan, suspend, keys. (hdmi to be tested...)

An update on the ubuntu upside-down webcam issue: the fix linked earlier in the discussion does not work on ubuntu 9.10, and the linux video developers have explicitly discouraged that approach because it requires kernel modifications. Instead, it can be fixed with a 32-bit build of libv4l version 0.6.2 or later. I built it from source and installed it to /usr/lib32. Then when running skype, I use the following command:
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l2convert.so /usr/bin/skype &

and presto! I no longer look like an antipode!
other webcam-using apps can be similarly prefixed with the LD_PRELOAD on the command line, and it might even be possible to put LD_PRELOAD into the systemwide profile, haven't investigated yet. Anyways, hopefully this will help someone somewhere.

Unrelated topic: I updated the BIOS to 206 to get the BIOS overclock setting. It works smoothly at 4%, but at 5% gnome fails to start on my laptop. I get a running linux and command prompt, but no gui. Maybe 5% is more than some circuitry in the Intel GMA4500 can handle?

I also have a weeeeak wifi signal with lots of connection drops.

Hi,

Has anyone installed Linux on an Asus UL30?

[Magnesium]

Hi avilella!

I am interested in this laptop also...we'll see if anyone here has tried it.

What's the link to that forum you quoted from? I've looked and looked and can't find it.

Thanks,
Mg

[avilella]

There seems to be 2 different Linux users on notebookreview.com:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=418429

But that forum is probably not the best to gather Linux users...

Hi avilella!

I am interested in this laptop also...we'll see if anyone here has tried it.

What's the link to that forum you quoted from? I've looked and looked and can't find it.

Thanks,
Mg

[neehilo]

Hi,

I installed Karmic Koala (9.10) 64 bits and it works very well out of box, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi (Atheros 9285). To get a stable and fast Wi-Fi connection, it is advised to install "linux-backports-modules-karmic-generic" packet, since the included ath9k driver is much better than the default one.

For now, the only little problem I encountered is the webcam image flipped up/down (I saw something on the net to fix it but did not test yet).

SD card reader is ok. Did not test HDMI output for now.

And the UL30A is very responsive under Karmic, quiet as fast as my previous laptop (Core2Duo T8100), and quicker than under Win 7, and very very quiet. An extremely good laptop IMHO.

Neehilo

[Magnesium]

Hi,

I installed Karmic Koala (9.10) 64 bits and it works very well out of box, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi (Atheros 9285). To get a stable and fast Wi-Fi connection, it is advised to install "linux-backports-modules-karmic-generic" packet, since the included ath9k driver is much better than the default one.

For now, the only little problem I encountered is the webcam image flipped up/down (I saw something on the net to fix it but did not test yet).

SD card reader is ok. Did not test HDMI output for now.

And the UL30A is very responsive under Karmic, quiet as fast as my previous laptop (Core2Duo T8100), and quicker than under Win 7, and very very quiet. An extremely good laptop IMHO.

Neehilo

Hi Neehilo,

I'm glad to hear that Linux works well on the UL30. Have you had a chance to see if suspend and hibernate work correctly? Also, is there a VGA port on that laptop, or just the HDMI?

Thanks,
Mg

[groner]

Hi,

I installed Karmic Koala (9.10) 64 bits and it works very well out of box, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi (Atheros 9285). To get a stable and fast Wi-Fi connection, it is advised to install "linux-backports-modules-karmic-generic" packet, since the included ath9k driver is much better than the default one.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try that.

The HDMI output works ok, but there were a few issues:
- Chunky looking text, some of the time. I didn't see this with the VGA output.
- Disappearing mouse cursor, some of the time.

HDMI Audio works, and the video looks fine.

I'm glad to hear that Linux works well on the UL30. Have you had a chance to see if suspend and hibernate work correctly? Also, is there a VGA port on that laptop, or just the HDMI?

Suspend has had no problems for me, I haven't tried to hibernate.

I haven't found a way to disable the touchpad while I'm typing. The Elantech PS/2 touchpad driver does not recognize it, so there is no configuring it for now. On the plus side the default settings for the touchpad are pretty good.


Kai

[orionid]

Hi,

Has anyone installed Linux on an Asus UL30?

Installing Ubuntu 9.10 karmic, 64 bits, kernel 2.6.31-20-generic, on an ASUS UL30A (Intel Core2 Duo ULV U7300 1.30 GHz 3Mb L2 cache, 4 Gb RAM, 500 Gb HDD, webcam)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Installation went flawlessly. The ASUS comes with 3 partitions:

- 1st (FAT32) of about 15 Gb containing the Express Gate system (which is a fast booting -7 secs- partition in which you can browse the Internet, use Skype, listen to audio and watch videos.

- 2nd (NTFS) of 120 Gb containing Windows 7 64 bits Home Premium

- 3rd (NTFS) of 335 Gb: empty

I installed Ubuntu on the third partition, so I did not have to touch any of the windows that come pre-installed. Used ext4 filesystem on all linux partitions: /boot (250 Mb), /(15Gb), swap (4Gb),
/home (130Gb), /data (~185).


Installation (from an external USB Asus DVD drive) went flawlessly:

Things that worked out of the box:
- Touchpad (good response, two-finger vertical scrolling and three-finger right menu)

- Wireless But had to install linux-backport-modules to fix weak wifi signal and frequent drops of the connection. First go to Administration > Software Sources > Updates and enable "Unsupported Updates (karmic-backports)
Then: sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-karmic

- Microphone Just need to go to Sound Preferences (right click under volume control in panel), select Input tab, and in Connector button select Microphone 2. Adjust volume to your liking.

- SD Card reader

- Suspend (suspend Fn - Zz button and closing lid when on battery)

- Volume and screen brightness buttons

- Wifi On/Off button

SOFTWARE:
*********
Being a professional astronomer, I installed other software in addition to the stanrdard things (web browsing, e-mail, video/music, etc).

- Firefox 3.5.3 comes preinstalled and works great. I installed XMarks...works fine.

- I installed Java using Ubuntu Software Center, and then installed Topcat, which is an application for dealing with tabular data, and the Aladin Sky Atlas. Everything worked without a hitch.

- Installed Thunderbird + Lightning (Calendar Add-On). Worked fine.

- Skype worked out of the box, except for video. I downloaded the Ubuntu 8.04+ 64 bit version. Though video was ok from the beginning, I was upside down! It took me a while to fix this, since several recommended solutions I tried did not work. Finally, what seemed to do the trick was to follow Hans de Goede´s instructions (http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/7622.html), and restart.
(just in case, go to the Synaptic Package Manager in System -> Administration, open it, search for libv4l, and reinstall the libv4l- libraries: libv4l-0, libv4l-dev, lib32v4l-0, lib32v4l-dev)
I run skype with a script that contains the following lines:
#!/bin/bash
#LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 && LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

- I installed SuperMongo (compiled for 64 bits):
SuperMongo (http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~rhl/sm/sm.html) is an interactive plotting programme with a flexible command language.
As a professional astronomer I use it for my everyday work...though more people are migrating toward other software like gnuplot, pgplot, or IDL. I followed these instructions:

by superluminique - 01/28/2009 - 11:46

This problem is not unique to Fedora and it did happen to me on Ubuntu 8.04 as well. Here's how I solved it:

1. Using your package manager (apt, dpkg, synaptic, etc.) make sure that you install the "bison" package.

2. Run ./set_opts as usual.

3. Go to the sm2_4_XX/src directory and edit Makefile.
Make sure that:
YACC = /usr/bin/bison -y

Change:
all_src : Bison, sm
for:
all_src : sm
(i.e. remove Bison) This will prevent the make script to try to compile Bison from the source code included with SM, which, for some reason, crashed at compilation.


3. Run ./set_opts and at the question:
"""
You are on linux using the
cc -Wall -Dlinux -DNEED_SWAP
compiler; is this OK? [y|n]
"""

Answer no (i.e. type "n")
Then set_opts will prompt you with:

"""
type compiler command or q to exit
"""

You should type "cc -Wall -Dlinux -DNEED_SWAP -fPIC -L/usr/lib64 -lX11¨


4. Run "make" as usual.

Came out with errors, but I still went ahead and installed successfully:
...
x11.c: In function ‘x_clear_pixmap’:
x11.c:1376: error: expected declaration specifiers before ‘Display’
x11.c:1377: error: expected declaration specifiers before ‘Pixmap’
x11.c:1379: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘XFillRectangle’
x11.c:1379: error: ‘SMX11’ has no member named ‘erase_gc’
x11.c:1380: error: ‘SMX11’ has no member named ‘width’
x11.c:1380: error: ‘SMX11’ has no member named ‘height’
make[2]: *** [x11.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/briceno/linux/graphics/sm2_4_1/src/devices'
make[1]: *** [Devices] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/briceno/linux/graphics/sm2_4_1/src'
make: *** [sm] Error 2


5. Run "make install" as usual.


6. Edit .sm file to define appropriate locations of libraries: e.g. /usr/local/lib/sm
in case you installed in /usr/local

7. I have tested it with various of my existing SuperMongo scripts and found no problems yet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note that "make install" might fail to copy the python module
"""cp: cannot stat `swigInterfaces/{_smLib*,*.py}': No such file or directory
make: *** [install] Error 1
"""
In this case, simply copy the files manually:
cp sm2_4_30/swigInterfaces/_smLib* /usr/local/lib/
cp sm2_4_30/swigInterfaces/*.py /usr/local/lib/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Installed f77 compiler: sudo apt-get install fort77

- Installed PGPLOT (requires f77 compiler)
The PGPLOT Graphics Subroutine Library (http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/) is a
Fortran- or C-callable, device-independent graphics package for making simple scientific graphs.
It is intended for making graphical images of publication quality with minimum effort on the part of the user. As an astronomer I use it often, specially with the WIP graphical application.

1 Create target directory: sudo mkdir /usr/local/pgplot

2 cd /home/briceno/linux/astronomy/pgplot/

3 sudo vi drivers.list and uncomment postscript, null and XWINDOW drivers

4 From target directoru run:
sudo /home/briceno/linux/astronomy/pgplot/makemake /home/briceno/linux/astronomy/pgplot linux fort77_gcc

5 sudo vi makefile and fix typo: instead of FCOMPL=for77 should be FCOMPL=fort77

6 sudo make (some errors came out, but still intallation seems to work just fine)

7 sudo make cpg
This creates three files:

cpgplot.h (ANSI C header file)
libcpgplot.a (library containing the C binding)
cpgdemo (demonstration program)

which are needed in order to compile WIP (later)
Test PGPLOT by running one of its demos, e.g.: pgdemo1

- Installed WIP (http://bima.astro.umd.edu/wip/)
WIP is a graphics software package intended to be used to generate high quality graphics
(using the PGPLOT graphics library) with a minimum of effort.

1. Dowload WIP from ftp://ftp.astro.umd.edu/progs/morgan/

2. Uncompress and untar

3. In the directory where you untared wip, run:
makewip -wip source_directory -pgplot directory_where_pgplot_is_installed -xlib /usr/lib

in my case: makewip -wip /home/briceno/linux/astronomy/wip -pgplot /usr/local/pgplot -xlib /usr/lib

WIP worked ok.

- Installed Kile using the Ubuntu Software Center. I use Kile for editing and working with LaTeX. Works great.

- Installed Acrobat Reader (see http://plagatux.es/2009/01/adobe-acr...ntu-64-bits/):
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
Add CPG key: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

Install using ¨sudo apt-get install acroread¨

- Adobe flashplayer: installed the 64 bits alpha version from
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
follow installation instructions there

- Movies work in all formats I´ve tested: avi, wmv, mpg, mpeg4, rmvb, using Totem, which will download and install the required decoders as needed.

- YouTube works great....no video problems, great sound.

- Music sounds great in Rhythmbox

- Installed Screenlets (desktop eye candy) from Ubuntu Software Center. Works great.

- Installed IRAF (Image Reduction and Analysis Facility).
IRAF is a free software widely used by professional astronomers worldwide to process and analyze astronomical data (images, spectra, data cubes). I used a simple installation file created by favilac in http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-912583.html.
Its a 232 Mb file that contains IRAF 2.14, ds9, etc. Download it, open it with Ark or other archiver tool. Extract the deb folder, the IRAF source file iraf.tar.gz and the appropriate installer script. In my case
I used install-ubuntu64.sh. Then just run it as root: sudo sh install-ubuntu64.sh
It will download all the files it needs, create the iraf user and home directory, install IRAF, the FITS image visualizer ds9, xgterm for command line control, etc.
When finished, just do an mkiraf in your iraf directory (or create a /home/xxxx/iraf directory) and select xgterm as your preferred command line shell. Then launch iraf normally. Depending on your Internet connection, the whole process should only take from a few to maybe 20 min.
(I do it with the following alias:
xiraf ´ds9 | cd /home/briceno/iraf ; xgterm -fg black -bg grey -fn 8x13bold -sb -cr red -title IRAF -e ecl &´
which I defined in my .cshrc file)
Iraf installed this way runs without any problems I have been able to detect so far.

- Installed WCSTools 3.8.1.
WCSTools is a package of programs and a library of utility subroutines for setting and
using the world coordinate systems (WCS) in the headers of the most common astronomical image formats

1. Download the latest version from: http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/wcstools/

2. Ucompress and untar it. cd to wcstools-3.8.1

3. make (some warnings but programs seem to run ok)

4. Make sure the path to the wcstool-3.8.1/bin directory is in your path


- I also installed XPDF and Okular, and Qalculate (an advanced calculator) from the Ubuntu Software Center.
They all run fine.

******* After the install, and after updating packages, my system boots into linux in roughly 32 sec.
(thats from hitting the power button till I get a fully loaded desktop, including wireless connection,
and screenlets) NOT BAD!!! *******

[The Flying Penguin]

Very informative thread.

I think I can live with not being able to use the G210M in Ubuntu. As long as the onboard graphics can handle most of my movies/tv and youtube videos I'll be happy. I do all my gaming in Windows anyway and I can always jump to Windows if I want to watch the occasional 1080p movie. IMO it is just a matter of time before Nvidia releases a Linux driver with G210M support anyway.

My main concern at this point is the brightness control. When you guys/gals say you can't adjust the brightness do you mean via the keyboard shortcuts or not at all? You can manually adjust it via Ubuntu correct?

[Hobbes]

I've gotten brightness controls to work both from my keyboard and from manually inputting brightness levels through the terminal. I did it with the acpi events (also turning touchpad off is a must because it really is sensitve/annoying while typing) posted above (i think, it was a few days ago). Anyway basically everything works here except that I get some weird graphics corruption occasionally on the bottom half of my screen. I'm using lucid and updating a bunch of stuff now, we'll see if it helps.