Has anyone tried and successful installed a linux distro on their alienware?
Problems? (Optimus, wifi etc?)
Thanks![]()
I need to install linux on my laptop since I'm using it alot more this semester, so want to know if it was possible or if I should buy a small netbook to do it (or possibly a desktop...which I prefer not to since I'm not home a lot).
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L1qu1d likes this. -
Otherwise everything else is working fine. I boot Linux from an mSATA SSD and have windows on a SATA SSD. I have the mSATA set as the boot option and use Grub to select the OS at boot time.L1qu1d likes this. -
I run Arch with gnome as my primary (non-gaming OS) on my M14xR2 and everything is working fine (wifi, hibernation, audio, hdmi out, optimus graphics, etc., etc.). I do recommend against using intelrst caching between the msata drive and your windows drive (mechanical), assuming you share the mechanical drive with linux. I boot windows 8.1/Arch in UEFI mode with grub off of the mechanical disk, and have PC-BSD on my msata drive (things are not as smooth on the BSD side for this hardware - specifically I can't figure out how to get the screen brightness to change). This is all changing when my new msata drive comes in and I'll move windows to that and arch to a dedicated ssd.
PyAlienFX lets you control your keyboard lights (and turn them off) - it's in the AUR and it's a simple python program that runs in every distro I've tried. I use laptop-mode-tools as well to help with battery life and setup events to change my governor to powersave when unplugged. Battery hovers around 2.5-hours of browsing at low-medium brightness (not as good as windows).
Any Linux Success Stories?
Discussion in 'Alienware 14 and M14x' started by L1qu1d, Feb 10, 2014.