Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A and UX32VD

[olanod]

Hello, I had kernel 3.5 using indicator-brightness to adjust brightness and updated to 3.8.3 to fix several issues including brightness keys but now neither of them work and now I'm stuck with 100% brightness level.

[Wolfgang Griech]

Hi,
am just using out-of-the-box kubuntu 12.10 64bit on an UX31A, BIOS 218, and about everything is working properly, even now the fn-f5+f6 for screen brighness control, found a simple fix for it on another thread here, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2006790&page=5 post #47:

UX31A -- A simple way to fix the brightness Fn keys

This does not involve changing the kernel.
I tested it with precise, using both the standard 3.2 kernel, or the upgraded 3.5 kernel.

Change kernel command lines in /etc/default/grub as follows

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash rootfstype=ext4 pcie_aspm=force nmi_watchdog=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX='acpi_osi="!Windows 2006" acpi_osi="!Windows 2009" acpi_osi="!Windows 2012"'

Then run update-grub.

After rebooting, the screen brightness function keys work.

[Wolfgang Griech]

..and just to give an idea how low power consumption could be under kubuntu 12.10 64-bit on an i7 UX31A, here a screen shot of today, after applying about all what was said here in this thread and in the appropriate wiki https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime, average power consumption dropped below 5.5 W, of course BT and Wifi off, and screen at minimum brightness, and kbd backlite turned off, and ALPM activated:

powertop_ASUS-UX31A_2013-04-04.png

[babooka]

I am trying to install 12.10 on my new ux32vd, however after grub menu, the screen is black and nothing is happening.

I have tried using "nomodeset," with the same results.

ps; I am booting off of the external dvd drive

Update: nevermind, needed to disable "SecureBoot" in BIOS

[raidflex]

Is there anyway to get the Ambient light sensor to work for the screen brightness on the Asus UX32VD with Ubuntu 13.04? I can use the function keys to do it, but it was nice when I had Windows 8 on the laptop that it would automatically adjust the screen brightness.

[Wolfgang Griech]

today my system got upgraded to kubuntu 13.04. Basically everything worked, except the fn keys, just f5+f6 still did it. After some short investigation it showed up that

/sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/

was completely missing. After some searching I figured out I had to uninstall the asus-wmi-dkms package I needed before on 12.10 according to recommendations here. So I did:

sudo dpkg -r asus-wmi-dkms

and after a reboot all fn keys worked again (probably reloading the asus_wmi module would have done the same..). Just for completeness how my /etc/default/grub looks like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash rootfstype=ext4 add_efi_memmap i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 pcie_aspm=force drm.vblankoffdelay=1 i915.semaphores=1 nmi_watchdog=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX='acpi_osi="!Windows 2006" acpi_osi="!Windows 2009" acpi_osi="!Windows 2012"'

[k-o-x]

I just installed Ubuntu 13.04 (GNOME edition) from scratch on my UX32VD and everything works out of the box, except for the ambient light sensor (and of course I needed Bumblebee to enable/disable the discrete GPU). Thanks a lot to the community for their work on supporting hardware. The experience with this zenbook is close to perfection !

I've seen people having problems with Fn-F5/F6, and the wiki states that it doesn't work, but I dind't have any problems with them (even Fn-F3/F4 work for the keyboard backlight, which was a very pleasant surprise). Doesn't this problem affect only upgrades from 12.10 ?

I still have some questions about power management, as it is not really clear to me what the various fixes from the wiki do:
- Are all kernel parameters still needed ? I couldn't see any difference when adding them (actually, drm.vblankoffdelay=1 prevented X.org form starting)
- Is the PCI udev power management script still useful ?
- Does TLP conflict with those, or does it perform a completely different job ?

[AsusLappy]

Alright the above post seems promising, but after skimming several sites on the ux31a running ubuntu I'm a little confused. So what doesn't work out of the box in 13.04?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime
This site states right off the bat that nearly everything works out of the box, but then seems to outline things that still don't work. What is the ambient light sensor? Because apparently that doesn't work. Does the keyboard backlight not work after suspend? Can you not right click or click and drag? These issues have fixes on that site making me wonder if they work in 13.04. And finally, how is power management, do I still need to edit some files?

[raxman]

I installed Linux Mint 14 on my ASUS UX31A with no problems. There are some things to do to improve it I think but I have not tried any of them yet because it works so well. Well actually, I think the webcam is often too dark but I think that could be fixed

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime
"
Ubuntu recognizes the camera out of the box. If you find video too dark when using video-conferencing apps (eg. Skype, Google Hangouts) install and run guvcview and adjust your brightness, contrast and gamma settings.

sudo apt-get install guvcviewIf this option doesn't work you can also try entering

uvcdynctrl -s "Exposure, Auto Priority" 1in the shell while Skype is running, to boost your gamma settings."

[k-o-x]

The ambient light sensor is used (when using Windows) to automatically adjust keyboard/LCD backlight to ambient light.

I don't know the difference between UX31A and UX32VD but I had no problems with the touchpad or backlight. And about power management, I installed TLP and added some kernel parameters as stated in the wiki, and everything seems fine. I had to install Bumblebee to turn off the nvidia GPU when not using it, but I don't know if the UX31A has a discrete GPU.

No problems either with Fn keys, Bluetooth, Wifi, USB 3 or the webcam.