Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
I see a lot of like-minded folks on this thread, and I can confirm a few things:
The Zenbook Prime is a sexy, fast and handy machine. The screen is excellent, and visible easily even outside on the balcony in bright sunlight. The keyboard is good, backlighting, etc. Sound is nicely tonal, and doesn't screech in either direction for normal volumes.
I bought the UX31A with i7 processor, 4Gb Ram. My unit runs Linux Mint 13, with the cinnamon interface, in case that matters. It's a wrapper around the Ubuntu 12.04 release. Before I shell out the 1000+ euros, I took a ubuntu liveboot usb to the store and confirmed that most things work -- and the same things do not work as listed in this wiki I have updated some entries in that wiki to reflect this.
Using the fix, most function keys do work. The touchpad usage is bearable, until a proper fix comes our way.
However, a serious problem in such a machine is the poor battery life. After 100% charge on the battery, with the brightness set at 50%, I unplug the charger and the immediate number is 3 hours battery remaining. That is hardly acceptable.
I have tried the Power Optimization tricks listed in the wiki above, and also enabled ALPM. My first tests were hardly promising: I've added an entry for wiki here.
Looking for suggestions on what to try to improve the abysmal battery performance.
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Anyone got a working patch for the quantal kernel ? - the above seems only to work on precise kernels.
Also is there instructions on how to install the nvidia driver without it conflicting with the intel/bumblebee combo ?
Any help appreciated :D
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
A small script to hack around the backlight function keys problem:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...reen_backlight
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Quote:
Originally Posted by
bzhb
Thanks for the tip - I tried it, and the neither the intel_backlight or acpi_video0 has any effect.
Did anyone get the Fn-keys patch to work on the quantal kernel (3.5.x) ?
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Quote:
Originally Posted by
screemo
Thanks for the tip - I tried it, and the neither the intel_backlight or acpi_video0 has any effect.
Really ? It is probably because Arch linux has a more recent kernel (3.4.4). At least it is working fine on my UX31A on Arch.
You should look at this http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...0&postcount=67
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Quote:
Originally Posted by
bzhb
Thanks I will check it out :)
I can confirm it works on kernel 3.2.0, but I get strange lockups sometimes I didn't see on 3.5rc kernel - think I will move to that, and maybe adapt the patch when quantal becomes more stable.
Anyone noticed that hotkey on the A-key - is that for automatic keyboard backlight or the screen ?
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Hi,
I'm interested by that ultrabook too :)
I just have one question to the people who have them: can we disable nvidia chips on the bios ?
It can be a nice try to save power if it exist :)
Thanks,
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Quote:
Originally Posted by
9rift
Hi,
I'm interested by that ultrabook too :)
I just have one question to the people who have them: can we disable nvidia chips on the bios ?
It can be a nice try to save power if it exist :)
Thanks,
From what found, the bumblebee project has a bbswitch command for turning the card on/off (see https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/FAQ).
I purchased my ux32 mainly because of the possibility to exchange hdd and add memory - the nvidia card is of no use to me.
However if something can save further battery it would be nice know :)
EDIT: appears that just installing bumblebee should give you an immediate benefit - it disables the discrete graphics completely when not in use (will use if you run optirun <application>).
https://launchpad.net/~bumblebee/+archive/stable
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
Quote:
Originally Posted by
screemo
From what found, the bumblebee project has a bbswitch command for turning the card on/off (see
https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/FAQ).
I purchased my ux32 mainly because of the possibility to exchange hdd and add memory - the nvidia card is of no use to me.
However if something can save further battery it would be nice know :)
EDIT: appears that just installing bumblebee should give you an immediate benefit - it disables the discrete graphics completely when not in use (will use if you run optirun <application>).
https://launchpad.net/~bumblebee/+archive/stable
That should do the trick, but have you tested it ?
I'm curious about difference of the battery between the nvidia chip on and off
Re: Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD
I've managed to get Ubuntu up and running on my UX31A. By upgrading to the Quantal kernel the trackpad is working better, I've got the Fn keys working all right, but I can't seem to get the Ubuntu bootloader to take over from Windows.
I've reinstalled about a dozen times but nothing seems to make a difference. Whatever the installation process is doing, it's not making grub the default bootloader. Right now the only way for me to boot into Ubuntu is to have a bootable USB key attached.
Can anyone help?