Asus X401A-BHPDN41

[caffeinatedev]

I did it and here's how it was done:

• I disabled Secure Boot in the BIOS by pressing F2 at boot.
• Pressing ESC at boot presents a boot menu where you can choose to boot from USB.
• I ran an Ubuntu x64 live USB and Ubuntu finished installing before I could even finish the first act of Hamelt!

The Pros:

• Ubuntu boots and runs very fast, faster than Windows 8, even.
• Everything seems to be compatible without proprietary drivers (there are none available for Ubuntu)

The Cons:

• function keys do not work (do I need to file a bug report for this?)

[Pendertuga]

I did it and here's how it was done:

• I disabled Secure Boot in the BIOS by pressing F2 at boot.
• Pressing ESC at boot presents a boot menu where you can choose to from USB.
• I ran an Ubuntu x64 live USB and Ubuntu finished installing before I could even finish the first act of Hamelt!

The Pros:

• Ubuntu boots and runs very fast, faster than Windows 8, even.
• Everything seems to be compatible without proprietary drivers

The Cons:

• function keys do not work (do I need to file a bug report for this?)

Do you mean the F keys or the Fn + keys? I'm also using this laptop and if you're talking about the Fn + F5 - F7 to change the brightness then I feel your pain. All the other ones seem to work for me though.

[bg4545]

The issue I had with the black screen was because of the Secure Boot option. After completely disabling it I am able to run Ubuntu.
The booting issue I mentioned before was that, since my BIOS was set to Fast Boot, I could not press any boot options on start up (F2 or Esc do nothing, Windows 8 starts anyways). The way to change options and boot from other drives is through the Windows 8 PC Settings. Disabling Fast boot in my BIOS allowed me to enter the boot options you described on start up.
Testing it out right now it seems brightness down (fn + f5) and brightness up (fn+f6) are the only ones that do not work, all other hot keys work.

[caffeinatedev]

Do you mean the F keys or the Fn + keys? I'm also using this laptop and if you're talking about the Fn + F5 - F7 to change the brightness then I feel your pain. All the other ones seem to work for me though.

I was talking about the Fn keys but it seems that the brightness keys ARE the only ones effected. My question is what route do we take with the non-functioning brightness keys and how do we repair the Windows 8 install? Believe it or not, keeping a legitimate version of Windows is appealing to me.

In other news, I'm elated to be reunited with Tux <3