Ubuntu 12.10 on Samsung Series 9 with everything working (including keyboard backlight)
Samsung Series 9 is a praised machine. Despite this, I used half a day troubleshooting why the keyboard could not be lit (as the last thing not working). It turned out that the kernel module samsung_laptop could not be loaded because "samsung_laptop: This computer does not support SABI" (from dmesg). By Googling, I found out that it was because of UEFI. I found as follows:
I stumbled across
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x/+bug/1012284
which led to problems with the file drivers/platform/x86/samsung-laptop.c. Searching for "ubuntu 12.10 drivers/platform/x86/samsung-laptop.c" I was led to
http://osdir.com/ml/kernel-team/2012-12/msg00752.html which indicated the problems with UEFI. To confirm my findings, I enabled CSM only and tried booting using a Live USB. You can read more about UEFI and CSM at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified...ware_Interface .
As I could not easily find the solution, I now post this.
My version of the Samsung Series 9 is NP900X3C-A04 with BIOS/firmware version P02ABK but the following is maybe true to other versions, too.
To get a fully working Ubuntu 12.10 system, do as follows:
1) Go to System settings (what was called the BIOS in "old" days)
1.1) On the Advanced tab, disable Fast BIOS mode. (I also enabled "Battery Life Cycle Extension" for better battery life but this setting has nothing to do with this.)
1.2) On the Boot tab, disable Secure Boot and then select "CSM OS" as the OS Mode Selection
1.3) Set Boot Device Priority such that you can install Ubuntu (this would normally be to set USB HDD as the first boot device and use a USB drive to install Ubuntu)
2) Install Ubuntu and boot it
3) Update the system:
3.1) sudo apt-get update
3.2) sudo apt-get upgrade
4) Activate the Fn keys as described on
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SamsungSeries9#FnKeys
5) Additional conveinient fixes as those described on
http://www.rileybrandt.com/2012/11/18/linux-ultrabook/ and
http://www.math.helsinki.fi/mathphys...ulcio_new.html
5) Reboot and enjoy!
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