Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga Ultrabook

[Ashade]

Can you share your pictures or possibly a youtube video. I tried to open it, but I was not able to separate the back with light force. If the HD and memory can be upgraded. I will buy this laptop as soon as the WiFi driver become available for Linux.

I'm currently travelling but I'll try to make the tutorial tomorrow. I upgraded both of them, so now I have 128+256gb and 8gb of ram. The ram upgrade is pretty straightforward. The ssd upgrade is easy as well but it requires a little bit more of patient. The best way to open it is using a credit card or some rigid thin plastic.

Regarding the Wi-Fi, people has been working on that and looks like there is no driver yet, but I couldn't play a lot yet neither. Some people have talked about replacing the Wi-Fi card as an option which shouldn't be much more than 20 bucks.

As I said, I'll prepare something more elaborated tomorrow for reference.

[alienoid]

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 12.10 amd64 on the Yoga. Overall, the experience is positive: Touch screen is recognised and works well, touchpad with 2 button scroll and the overall laptop experience is good and snappy.

As stated by others, there are a few major issues:
1- WiFi is not recognised.
2- Bluetooth is disabled.
3- Screen does not rotate automatically. If you manually rotate the screen, the inputs are incorrectly mapped. Anyone had success with this? http://cc.oulu.fi/~rantalai/synaptics/ Unfortunately, it is not available for 12.10 yet so I can't confirm.

For the Bluetooth and WiFi, anyone tried external USB cards?

Another issue with 12.10 is that there are random errors popping up. They are not critical but appear relatively frequently. I don't know what the cause is. I feel it has to do with the on-screen keyboard. The on-screen keyboard also gets stuck on a key at times.

Happy to help others moving this forward.

[Ashade]

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 12.10 amd64 on the Yoga. Overall, the experience is positive: Touch screen is recognised and works well, touchpad with 2 button scroll and the overall laptop experience is good and snappy.

As stated by others, there are a few major issues:
1- WiFi is not recognised.
2- Bluetooth is disabled.
3- Screen does not rotate automatically. If you manually rotate the screen, the inputs are incorrectly mapped. Anyone had success with this? http://cc.oulu.fi/~rantalai/synaptics/ Unfortunately, it is not available for 12.10 yet so I can't confirm.

For the Bluetooth and WiFi, anyone tried external USB cards?

Another issue with 12.10 is that there are random errors popping up. They are not critical but appear relatively frequently. I don't know what the cause is. I feel it has to do with the on-screen keyboard. The on-screen keyboard also gets stuck on a key at times.

Happy to help others moving this forward.

I am still working with Ubuntu in several ways... For the wifi, I am currently working with a shared connection on my Android phone. This worked since I plugged the phone on the computer. I am trying an Airlink 101 N150 and it is recognized but I am not able to get internet connection if a password is set up...

Another issue is the brightness. It does not work with the keys, but I got to change it through the terminal with this command:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --brightness 0.5

Still working on all of this. Will be posting updates.

EDIT:

To solve the brightness problem permanently:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

You will find this line in the new opened window:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Change it to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"
Save and close the window and type this in the terminal:

sudo update-grub

and reboot.

Found in: http://www.techjail.net/solved-brigh...-pangolin.html

[alienoid]

Thanks Ashade! Confirming the fix for brightness works with 12.10.

[alienoid]

Regarding wifi and bluetooth, I have been trying to install the realtek driver for rtl8723 as described here http://askubuntu.com/questions/13963...not-recognized

It seems this is the card installed in the Yoga even though the manual mentions rtl8732. So far, no success, even with the driver compatible with kernel 3.5. Continuing to work on it... If someone has had success, please let me know!

[Ashade]

Regarding wifi and bluetooth, I have been trying to install the realtek driver for rtl8723 as described here http://askubuntu.com/questions/13963...not-recognized

It seems this is the card installed in the Yoga even though the manual mentions rtl8732. So far, no success, even with the driver compatible with kernel 3.5. Continuing to work on it... If someone has had success, please let me know!

I tried them with the same result... Wi-Fi is not going to have an easy solution. I am going to play today a little bit more.

[Ashade]

I'm currently travelling but I'll try to make the tutorial tomorrow. I upgraded both of them, so now I have 128+256gb and 8gb of ram. The ram upgrade is pretty straightforward. The ssd upgrade is easy as well but it requires a little bit more of patient. The best way to open it is using a credit card or some rigid thin plastic.

Regarding the Wi-Fi, people has been working on that and looks like there is no driver yet, but I couldn't play a lot yet neither. Some people have talked about replacing the Wi-Fi card as an option which shouldn't be much more than 20 bucks.

As I said, I'll prepare something more elaborated tomorrow for reference.

A link to the promised tutorial.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/idea...-tutorial.html

[Triskite]

I also made a walkthrough for opening her up. Mine includes how to fix the fan noise that afflicts many units.

Also keep in mind you can leave an SD//microSD permanently in the machine as it fits flush. You can get a 20mB r/w/s 64gB microSD on Amazon for $49. Great to store movies & TC volumes on.

http://uselesspuzzles.blogspot.com/2...fan-noise.html

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[chrisdotcode]

[This post isn't quite yet complete. I just uploaded it in this almost-finished form so that people who are just getting the Yoga for the holiday season can have some sort of comphrehensive-ish reference. Merry Christmas Everybody!]

So I am a proud owner of the Yoga, and I'd like to share some information with you guys.

Wifi

Has anybody tried these wifi drivers on the yoga?

http://askubuntu.com/questions/13963.../165002#165002

I downloaded the Linux 3.8 kernel because I found out that they were adding RTL8723A support with a new patch (search either "rtk_btusb linux kernel" or "rtl8723a.bin" on google). It seems to be the bluetooth/wireless driver referenced from this question: http://askubuntu.com/questions/212029/help-identifying-device-and-driver-for-0bda1724, which Windows says the Yoga has (but it still might be an ethernet driver). I updated the Linux kernel to the latest nightly build, and it still didn't work for me, but I still have hope that I just did something wrong, and the solution is in fact there. I've attached the source for what seems the be the driver, but I couldn't compile it. Maybe somebody smarter than I can evaluate the situation.

Touch Screen

The touchscreen works flawlessly, and with a firefox addon or two (grab and drag), it works really well in stand mode.

Multi-touch doesn't seem to work. Thanks to this link (find phoronix article), we can see that we'll get kernel-level support for multitouch in 3.8 ...Or do we already have it?

Unity supports gestures, actually. And already, out of the box, 3-finger tap works. If you three-finger tap any open window in Unity, it switches to resize/move mode, and you can move things around. I don't know if any other gestures work, because I haven't tried any other ones. Let me know of your progress if you guys try this.

But wait, there's more! Either we've always supported multitouch, or Ubuntu has backported the hid-multitouch (find source link) drivers from the 3.8 kernel, because we *do* in fact have true, ten-finger support. I've included a shell script that does the following, but this is what you do to test it all:

1. Download the *amazing* mtdiag from ENAC:

$ cd /tmp
$ git clone git://git.lii-enac.fr/linux-input/mtdiag.git

2. Download dependencies:
(Ubuntu doesn't defaultly come with aptitude, so if you don't have it, install it using the method they recommend)

$ sudo aptitude install python-tk tix

3. Go to its directory, and run it

$ cd mtdiag
$ sudo ./mtdiag.sh

(WARNING: this won't run properly if you've changed your default color configuration (and/or default shell). I tested this earlier and got it working, but doesn't seem to work on my zsh solarized configurations. If you're a standard Ubuntu user, this should work fine.)

4. After running this program, you will be presented with two options to "activate". Like I said, I can't run it anymore, so I can't tell you which one, but I think it says something like "touchscreen" in the name or something. Figure it out and let me know so I can update this documentation, guys.

5. After choosing the correct touchscreen, touch away!

6. You might notice that the screenpoints are mis-calibrated. That's because you need to hit "fullscreen" and then, voila! Full ten-finger touch like magic on Linux Kernel 3.5 (WARNING: On Unity (and maybe other Window Managers,) holding and dragging with all ten fingers (at least with all ten fingers, but I didn't try any other possible combinations of fingers) can make your machine freeze or lag or do other strange things.

So yes, we have full ten-finger touch support on Linux Kernel 3.5 and Ubuntu!

The reason that it doesn't seem to work with most applications is because they just don't support it. TFT is brand spanking new, and so it would make sense that your favorite application wouldn't have support for it just quite yet. Opera Mobile, for web browsing, would have worked great (and has a fantastic on-screen keyboard) ...but the version I found crashed instantly, because the desktop version is technically discontinued.

Laptop Modes

There's *partial* support for modes. When going past 180 degrees, the keyboard is disabled sometimes, and sometimes it's not. The trackpad is *always* operational, however. Keys *do* get stuck from time to time, but *only* in non-laptop mode.

I really wish this issue was *fully* resolved, because it's impractical to switch between modes, scared of accidentally triggering either the touchpad or keys and having to fiddle with the unwieldy USB wifi dongle I have attached at the side to get it folded.

Also, Linux needs more touchscreen software, but that's an issue that can only be solved with time.

Battery Life

Battery Life is... pathetic. I get around 3 hours and 15 minutes from full, non-stop youtube/torrenting (Ubuntu torrents, don't worry ). Advertised is 8, but the realistic trend has been said to be 5 and a half. What gives?

Booting / Virtualization

Booting works fine after disabling EFI. Virtualization also works fine after enabling something from the BIOS (don't quite remember what it was).

Brightness

I am still working with Ubuntu in several ways... For the wifi, I am currently working with a shared connection on my Android phone. This worked since I plugged the phone on the computer. I am trying an Airlink 101 N150 and it is recognized but I am not able to get internet connection if a password is set up...

Another issue is the brightness. It does not work with the keys, but I got to change it through the terminal with this command:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --brightness 0.5

Still working on all of this. Will be posting updates.

EDIT:

To solve the brightness problem permanently:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

You will find this line in the new opened window:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Change it to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"
Save and close the window and type this in the terminal:

sudo update-grub

and reboot.

Found in: http://www.techjail.net/solved-brigh...-pangolin.html

Brightness works fine after the fix suggested. On MATE, there was some more problems, but nothing I couldn't fix by fiddling with the Power Management options in the preferences.

Touchpad / Gestures

On Linux Mint, the touchpad sucks. ...Ubuntu, for some reason fixes the jumpy touchpad to a much more sane level. After some adjustments to my own preferences, it works decently. Two-finger touch works nicely as well. Oddly enough 4+ finger scrolling also works, but not three-finger scrolling. Maybe three-fingers on the touchpad has another meaning?


Other issues:

Some of the keypad buttons don't work, like the "disable touchpad" function key. Also, the button on the right side of the device doesn't work. SD slot works, but I haven't got a chance to test HDMI yet.

You can have Best Buy replace the SSD for $50 without loosing the warranty.

I don't believe this is true. According to http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-.../907267/page/2 , only one person says that it voids it, and they don't work for Lenovo nor Microsoft. Everyone else says that there are no warranty stickers or anything like that, plus there's a whole other SSD slot on the inside, so I'm thinking it won't void your warranty. Granted, none of that comes from Lenovo themselves, so modify your system at your own risk.

Hope all this helped!

[Ashade]

Thank you very much chrisdotcode I am going to try these codes during the evening and will come back with some feedback.