Asus X205TA hardware support in Ubuntu

[Mason_B]

This is a great little machine so far. But it is begging for ubuntu. Hopefully 15.04 will add the needed hardware support for wifi, sound, etc. I really hope that I can get ubuntu minimal installed on here in the next couple months!

[mörgæs]

You don't have to wait. You can try 15.04 (beta) right away.

[Mason_B]

You don't have to wait. You can try 15.04 (beta) right away.

But has 15.04 added the needed hardware support yet?

[mörgæs]

If you try a live boot you will find out.

[Jon Bradbury]

I tried Ubuntu Mate 15.04 Beta 1 and it would not boot from CD or USB. I thought that 32-bit efi support was baked in now? I did try to install a 32 bit efi on the USB stick per lopaka's instructions (see first post) but it seems that 15.04 uses a different directory structure for the boot files and it wouldn't get past the GRUB screen.

I'd just like to add that the workaround mentioned on other sites of deleting the /dev/mmblk0rpmb device seems to clear up the USB wireless card problem, and it allowed me to use gparted to shrink the Windows Recovery Partition and increase the size of the main windows C: drive.

[Jon Bradbury]

Rightyho, I have got Ubuntu MATE 15.04 Beta 1 working. I realised I'd downloaded the i386 (32 bit) image and this doesn't have /EFI/BOOT directory... d'oh! I downloaded the AMD64 image and discovered that it doesn't have a bootia32.efi in its /EFI/BOOT directory, so copied a fresh one in there, following lopaka's instructions.

Here are my impressions:

• Wireless still not working
• Hotkeys not working apart from mute, volume up and volume down
• Sound still not working
• Touchpad still looks like a mouse. New to 15.04, it has a certain abount of lag that makes it look like it has momentum when you stop moving it. Very tricky to use.
• Backlight intensity can now be changed from the power settings.
• Still no battery status and it thinks it's on AC power even when disconnected from the mains.
• Still no sleep mode (although the backlight cuts out when you close the lid as before - but this might be implemented in hardware).
• Still doesn't recognise the micro-sd card adapter.
• A wireless USB mouse (Logitech) failed to work.

All in all, the only improvement I can see is the screen backlight setting is working now. However the weird trackpad behaviour cancels this out.

This release is using a later kernel which is 3.18.0-13-generic and it's a shame it doesn't support more of the hardware. However, there is hope: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA

[mörgæs]

Thanks for testing 15.04. If you feel like it you could discuss the problems in the development forum and / or report the bugs in Launchpad.

I don't have ideas right now for troubleshooting, sorry.

[Jon Bradbury]

Shouldn't these support questions go to the kernel devs at kernel.org? Happy to discuss here but I think we're downstream of the devs who would provide fixes (correct me if I'm wrong).

[mörgæs]

I guess you are right but you will be better off by getting a confirmation in the development forum. I don't have much experience in this field.

[TheNighthawk]

Hi all,

I've done the following on my girlfriend's brand new X205TA:

(1) Make a bootable USB stick and back-up whole flash drive

(2) Install on the Windows partition Lubuntu 15.04 beta1 (nightly build) following the steps from: https://github.com/lopaka/instructio...asus-x205ta.md .
Note that at the end of the procedure one should do a "sudo update-grub". Afterwards, no boot issues anymore.

(3) Upgrade to Linux kernel 4.0 RC3

(4) Get the microsd card reader working: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA

(5) I have the kernel modules loaded, but no audio devices found, somebody any idea? This is lsmod, would there be modules missing for the sound device to be created? Afaik, snd_soc_sst_baytrail_pcm and snd_soc_rt5640 are the ones?

vempc:~$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_soc_sst_baytrail_pcm 28672 0
snd_intel_sst_acpi 16384 0
snd_soc_sst_dsp 53248 1 snd_soc_sst_baytrail_pcm
snd_intel_sst_core 73728 1 snd_intel_sst_acpi
snd_soc_sst_byt_rt5640_mach 16384 0
snd_soc_sst_mfld_platform 77824 1 snd_intel_sst_core
snd_soc_rt5640 94208 1 snd_soc_sst_byt_rt5640_mach
dw_dmac_core 28672 2 dw_dmac,snd_soc_sst_dsp
snd_soc_rl6231 16384 1 snd_soc_rt5640
snd_soc_core 200704 4 snd_soc_rt5640,snd_soc_sst_baytrail_pcm,snd_soc_ss t_byt_rt5640_mach,snd_soc_sst_mfld_platform
snd_compress 20480 1 snd_soc_core
snd_pcm_dmaengine 16384 1 snd_soc_core
snd_pcm 110592 5 snd_soc_rt5640,snd_soc_core,snd_soc_sst_baytrail_p cm,snd_soc_sst_mfld_platform,snd_pcm_dmaengine
snd_seq_midi 16384 0
snd_seq_midi_event 16384 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_rawmidi 32768 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_soc_sst_acpi 16384 0
snd_seq 69632 2 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_device 16384 3 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_midi
snd_timer 32768 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd 86016 8 snd_soc_core,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi ,snd_soc_sst_mfld_platform,snd_seq_device,snd_comp ress
soundcore 16384 1 snd


(6) Now trying to get the Wifi working (on-going battle). Based this comment: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.lin...general/135839 , I can now finally see Wifi's but the connection still fails (via network-applet and via wpa_supplicant)

vempc:~$ sudo wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -cwpa.conf
[sudo] password
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCGIWSCAN]: Resource temporarily unavailable
ioctl[SIOCGIWSCAN]: Resource temporarily unavailable
wlan0: Trying to associate with a1:b1:e9:da:fd:75 (SSID='WiFiD85' freq=2472 MHz)
ioctl[SIOCSIWFREQ]: Operation not supported
wlan0: Association request to the driver failed
wlan0: Authentication with a1:b1:e9:da:fd:75 timed out.
wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=a1:b1:e9:da:fd:75 reason=3 locally_generated=1
ioctl[SIOCSIWSCAN]: Invalid exchange


thanks for the help,
Koen.