Experiences with Asus UL30

[wconstantine]

I'm also interested in this, because i want to _underclock_ my 50vt. 2x800MHz in already than enough for my daily basis. I wonder how much power it would save clocking it down to 600MHz...

EDIT: Have you tried to enable the HDMI screen from nvidia-settings manager?

Yeah. I've got the video output to work from nvidia-settings. However, there's no sound options available there from what I saw.

[weshallallbefree]

Hi virtual Ubuntu and Asus friends

Returning to Ubuntu after a few years in a OSX galaxy far far away, found a 449€ UL30 to host the return of the Linux Jedi. No further SW puns ever write I will .

First challenge good old partition scheme and backing up Win 7 partition. Having no external DVD writer (or intention to ever buy one) I've decided to:

Part I:

1. shrink Win7 partition to minimum, about 40gb via Disk Management in Win 7
2. boot from USB http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-m...n_an_USB-stick
3. create image file of Win 7 partition w Partimage
4. copy image to FAT32 partition on external 250gb USB drive
5. copy image back to second partition on Asus harddrive
6. boot from any USB live linux in order to test recovered, Win7 partition

Part II:

1. delete Asus 15gb recovery partition
2. create 10 gb partition for Ubuntu + swap
3. create extra 10gb partition for any other distro to try
4. create huge FAT32 partition to hold day to day dox, pix, media, to be shared between Ubuntu and Win 7

To summarize goal:
- create image file of Win 7 partition in order to restore at any given time
- create space for Ubuntu and one other optional distro
- share data between OS on a FAT32 partition (estimated 240gb)

Any comments highly appreciated before execution. Noob re. the image file stuff.

[wconstantine]

Hi virtual Ubuntu and Asus friends

Returning to Ubuntu after a few years in a OSX galaxy far far away, found a 449€ UL30 to host the return of the Linux Jedi. No further SW puns ever write I will .

First challenge good old partition scheme and backing up Win 7 partition. Having no external DVD writer (or intention to ever buy one) I've decided to:

Part I:

1. shrink Win7 partition to minimum, about 40gb via Disk Management in Win 7
2. boot from USB http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-m...n_an_USB-stick
3. create image file of Win 7 partition w Partimage
4. copy image to FAT32 partition on external 250gb USB drive
5. copy image back to second partition on Asus harddrive
6. boot from any USB live linux in order to test recovered, Win7 partition

Part II:

1. delete Asus 15gb recovery partition
2. create 10 gb partition for Ubuntu + swap
3. create extra 10gb partition for any other distro to try
4. create huge FAT32 partition to hold day to day dox, pix, media, to be shared between Ubuntu and Win 7

To summarize goal:
- create image file of Win 7 partition in order to restore at any given time
- create space for Ubuntu and one other optional distro
- share data between OS on a FAT32 partition (estimated 240gb)

Any comments highly appreciated before execution. Noob re. the image file stuff.

Linux can read/write to NTFS partitions nowadays. Don't know if you need FAT32 partitions hence.

[weshallallbefree]

Linux can read/write to NTFS partitions nowadays. Don't know if you need FAT32 partitions hence.

- good news!

Following this guide for a start http://lifehacker.com/348858/use-a-s...n-dual-booting

10.04 has landed after some gparted battles, looks really, really good. Great to be back in Ubuntu land.

[Cierreics]

Hi all!! Some news from Guiodic blog: if you have installed guiodic repo and VLC media player you have to do this:

"You could have an error upgrading VLC from my ppa today, because a slight difference between oldest and newest packages. To solve it please remove packages named vlc and vlc-nox by synaptic, then reinstall them. If you use mozilla-plugin-vlc you should to reinstall it too."


Now I'm on 2.6.35-10 kernel, all is working well.

I think I've solved my last little issue, concerning bluetooth: I suspend to ram many times a day, and sometimes bluetooth switch on panel indicator applet stop to work after resume, and I have to press "Fn+F2" keyboard shortcut 2 times to reset wifi and bluetooth to solve it.
So I wrote this little script to force bluetooth reset at suspend-hibernate-resume, I've tested it for a week and it seems to work very well, never had that issue again, so here it is:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/sleep.d/asus-bluetooth

paste this:

#!/bin/bash
case "$1" in
 hibernate|suspend)
  invoke-rc.d --quiet bluetooth stop
  ;;
 thaw|resume)
  invoke-rc.d --quiet bluetooth start
  ;;
 *) exit $NA
  ;;
esac

save and close, then:

sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/asus-bluetooth

Now my UL30A is really 100% functional, very stable and productive, I think it's a perfect Ubuntu laptop!!

As usual, I've updated #110 post.

[Thryn]

Hey, I've used most of the tips from page 11 on my UL30A (except the bluetooth and SSD tips, I think), and mostly it's nice and it certainly uses less power. So thanks.

But I can't turn on and off the touchpad with F9 any more than I could before (though there is now a setting to turn it off when typing, which is a help). Also, I used to be able to see a display of how bright the screen was when I used F5 or F6 to adjust it (I found a tip elsewhere on the grub settings to activate this feature). Now I can't, but it's not a big deal because the screen still gets brighter or darker.

Still, can anyone help me activate the F9 control? If it helps, I have Lucid 32-bit with 2.6.35-10-generic-pae.

Also, F2 (wireless on/off) seems to respond sluggishly. Or maybe it's just the wireless status applet that has this problem. Is this the case for anyone else?

[Cierreics]

Still, can anyone help me activate the F9 control? If it helps, I have Lucid 32-bit with 2.6.35-10-generic-pae.

generic-pae?? I can't find it in synaptics...

Try to install 2.6.35-10-generic kernel and check again all tips in #110 post!!


EDIT:

Obviously I can't find generic-pae kernel because I have a 64bit system...

[The Flying Penguin]

So after running the 2.6.35-8 kernel for a few days and then the 2.6.35-10 kernel for another few days, I have noticed a substantial improvement in suspend/resume and startup/shutdown times. I was getting really frustrated with how long it would take me to resume especially if I had a lot of things open (which I often do). I have probably seen a 75% decrease in these times. I have no hard data to back it up but I swear its made a difference.

One issue though is now I keep getting a notice that not all updates can be installed and I need to run a partial upgrade. I keep doing that but I still get the message. I see I have two packages that are grayed out in the update manager:

Other updates (LP-PPA-guido-iodice-best-intel)
1) Userspace interface to nouveau-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime
2) A free implementation of the OpenGL API -- DRI modules

I've read posts about fixing this. I know I can go in and prevent it from giving me this error and basically ignore these updates but should I? Do I want these upgrades or are they irrelevant to me? I'm running the Nvidia card.

Hi.
EDIT: Got it this morning. A fully working Kubuntu took only 40 minutes to set up. Thanks for the tips and tricks

I was amazed at how fast Ubuntu installed on this machine.

Yeah. I've got the video output to work from nvidia-settings. However, there's no sound options available there from what I saw.

Yeah, video works great but audio doesn't work out of the box. Apparently, you have to follow: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title...40&redirect=no to get audio over HDMI working. That appears to be for the desktop version though. I'm not sure if the mobile version is any different. Try it out and let me know. I haven't had the chance to monkey around with it. I've just been plugging in audio separate to my hdtv.

- share data between OS on a FAT32 partition (estimated 240gb)

Linux can read/write to NTFS partitions nowadays. Don't know if you need FAT32 partitions hence.

Yeah Ubuntu (and I think most modern Linux distros) read NFTS partitions just fine. No problems whatsoever. It's windows that has a problem reading Linux's file system (the ext file system). I've used this driver: http://www.fs-driver.org/ for Windows XP in the past to read ext3. I think it will work with ext4 too. It supports Vista x64 so it may work with 7 x64.

I have Lucid 32-bit with 2.6.35-10-generic-pae.

Any reason you're not using the 64 bit version? Did your version only come with 2GB Ram? This machine is the first I have ever run 64 bit on and I was a little nervous at first because of various compatibility issues I read about but it runs great on this machine! Being able to utilize 4GB ram is wonderful especially since when I run a VM I can give 2GB to Ubuntu and 2gb my guest OS. I'd recommend going x64 if you have the memory to utilize such a feature. Otherwise, stick to 32bit.

Also, F2 (wireless on/off) seems to respond sluggishly. Or maybe it's just the wireless status applet that has this problem. Is this the case for anyone else?

No delay whatsoever for me.

In Windows there's an app that ships with this laptop that can put it into performance mode. It clocks the proc to 1,9 GHz if I'm not wrong. In Linux we only have 1,3 GHz and 800 MHz. Is there any tool for overclocking Intel proc's in Linux? I know the bios won't let us do it. Sadly.

There is an option in my BIOS but I haven't seen anything to make me believe it is actually happening in Ubuntu. In Windows, that AMD app your talking about will OC to 1.73GHz on demand. Very nice for gaming.

I would like to get this working as well for gaming in Ubuntu. It would be nice to be able to select 1.7Ghz in addition to 1.3 and 800.

[Cierreics]

One issue though is now I keep getting a notice that not all updates can be installed and I need to run a partial upgrade. I keep doing that but I still get the message. I see I have two packages that are grayed out in the update manager:

Other updates (LP-PPA-guido-iodice-best-intel)
1) Userspace interface to nouveau-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime
2) A free implementation of the OpenGL API -- DRI modules

I've read posts about fixing this. I know I can go in and prevent it from giving me this error and basically ignore these updates but should I? Do I want these upgrades or are they irrelevant to me? I'm running the Nvidia card.

Have you tried to remove those packages then install them again?

[The Flying Penguin]

Have you tried to remove those packages then install them again?

I just went into Synaptic and manually upgraded the nouveau package. Doing that allowed the update manager to work properly and it upgraded the other package on its own.

I had a complete lapse in memory because I had to do this once before with another package. I should have just remembered to do that instead of waisting bandwidth on a question I already had the answer too.

But thank you!