Ubuntu on Asus F3Jp

This will be a short account of what to expect from Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft with this laptop. I
am intendind to write a full account when I will have everything working.
My Asus which I bought on saturday, came with Vista preinstalled. To make room
for Ubuntu I shrunk Vista partition by using Vista built-in tools. Ubuntu install was pretty
straightforward, insert the disk answer the questions and voilà. I created the
partitions for Ubuntu before installation process. Since I intended to use Vista
bootloader instead of grub, I chose to install grub at the beginning of my root
partition. In my setting that was sda5, so I told grub to install to (hd0,4).
After install, I rebooted, and Vista started, then I added Ubuntu to Vista
bootloader menu by using program EasyBCD. After this, now upon boot I have the
option to boot into Linux.

Do not install Ubuntu into this laptop if you do not have internet connection.
After install Ubuntu used vesa driver for X, and did not recognize correct
resolution. My laptop has 1280x800, X was using 1024x768. Since default
installation does not include fglrx drivers, you have to download them. I had an
wireless connection, which worked out of the box. Although I had to fiddle a bit
with network-admin. My wireless card was eth1, and driver controlling it, was
ipw3945 and ieee80211. After establishing Internet connection I downloaded the
updates (about 250MB) and then I apt-get installed fglrx driver. After
installing fglrx driver, I configured X with aticonfig --initial, and after
restarting X, everything was normal, the resolution was correct and the view was
spectacular. Note that the card on this laptop is ati x1700, but Edgy drivers work just fine.

During the download of the updates I noticed that console was not working. After
pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 I just got the black screen. I solved this problem by
modyfing grub menu. I changed the option quiet splash to verbose. After reboot
console appeared. Beware, this disable pretty Ubuntu splash when booting.

This laptop came with Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, both cores have been recognized.
The Cpu frequency scaling however was not working out of the box. I followed the
instructions in
here, and it worked. But I have to load module speedstep_centrino after each reboot,
despite the fact that I added it to /etc/modules.

Lm-sensors did not work. I followed the instructions in here
but it did not work. Sensors complains that it does not find sysfs. In Ubuntu
forums I saw people with similar problems, but nobody presented the solution. It
seems lm-sensors do not support this laptop. This is a pity, since I want to
control the fan speed. Its setting is too agressive for my taste. Even if I
scale cpu frequency to the lowest setting the fan starts in highest regime too
frequently. In Vista I can solve this problem by enabling Quiet office with Asus
Power4Gear. In Vista besides Power4Gear power settings you can also see the
settings corresponding to speedstep settings: conservative, ondemand, powersave
and userspace. Under Vista these settings works exactly like in Linux, with too
aggressive fan setting. So it seems that it should also be possible to set
something like that in Linux. Any ideas, success stories?

Suspend and hibernating is working without problems. After suspend though sound is not
working. But it is easily fixable. Just quit all sound using programs and do
sudo modprobe -r snd_hda_intel
sudo modprobe snd_hda_intel

The touchpad is working, but it is not configured with synaptics driver. So the
scrolling does not work and you cannot disable tapping.

The special buttons work more or less. The sound buttons work, but the screen
brightness does not. According to Asus manual that came with the laptop it
should be other way arround. You can change brightness by echoing values between
0 and 15 to /proc/acpi/asus/brn.

Sound is working, but I read in the internet that headphones do not. Did not
have the time to check. The video is working with vlc out of the box. For
gmplayer I had to use aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv to make it work. Without it
the fullscreen does not work. Use opengl output.

So to sum up you can use Ubuntu succesfully on this laptop. But I really would
like to find out how to change power settings like Power4Gear in Vista. The fan
is really too loud in room withouth the background noise. Watching DVD with
little sound is practically impossible, the noise from the fan and the spinning
disk overwhelms the film.

If you have any suggestions how to solve my problems or have any questions
how exactly I did that or this please tell. I am planning to find all the solutions
and put up this on linux-laptop.net.

 

Great post! It's always good to hear success stories, though it sounds like you've still got some things to work out. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to help you there, but hopefully someone will.

 

Go to the Ubuntu starter guide it shows you how to control fan speed and to check temps and such etc: etc:

Doesn't work on Every machine, but give it a try. Just follow direction to the tee and use some sense.

Almost everything you need to get started is on that page.

 

you can also get to the "real" console by any of the 6 tty sessions.

ctrl+alt+f2 from X, and then alt+F2-6 will give you the virtual terminals. the first terminal is taken up by the X server. alt+F7 will send you back to X, of course.

 

Just curious... when you shut down or hibernate, do you hear your hard drive "click"?

 

I was talking about real console. It was not working just after install. When I pressed ctrl+alt+F1-6 I just got the black screen It started working after upgrade to a new kernel. Do not know what fixed it, the new kernel or modified startup options.

 

No, I did not. But maybe I did not hear it because of the loud fan I will check this evening, when I return home.

 

Thanks for your information, mpiktas.

 

I'm not really able to help, but just wanna say thanks for posting your experiences. I hope you will find a solution for the fan problem.

 

I checked, no strange noise from harddrive when going to sleep, hibernate or shut down. The harddrive of my old HP nx9105 laptop is producing clicking noises, especialy when on battery. But it is happily clicking away for almost two years now, so probably nothing to worry about too much.

Concerning fan noise, I think I am starting to understand what to do. But it will involve a lot of hardware related stuff. The key I think is ACPI settings, when I will be able to control these, then I will solve my problems. But for that I have to sign up to several mailing lists, write dozen of emails and spend a lot of time. We will see

BTW Ubuntu feels faster than Vista

 

Hehe... ACPI settings... huge pain in the rear. Make sure you have the latest BIOS installed on your machine, as that will often solve ACPI problems. Other than that... ACPI is horribly molested by many hardware manufacturers. That's why I was happy with my Compal. Everything pretty much just works.

And I would worry about that clicking... or at least make sure you regularly back up the data on that drive. Clicking is always bad. You might check the smartmon tool (if Linux is installed) and see what it says about the drive.

 

Yeah molested is really the right word

New things I found out. After sleep the sound is not working. To get it back, quit all programs who uses sound (volume changer applet is among those programs). Then do

sudo modprobe -r snd_hda_intel
sudo modprobe snd_hda_intel

Gnome will say that the it found new sound device, just ignore this message and do not change anything.

 

Aah, yes. This is how I get my internal card reader to work

Code:

 
$ sudo modprobe tifm_sd
$ sudo modprobe tifm_core

 

I just bought one of these laptops and I when i boot it up with edgy everything is fine until the login screen at which point the screen gets completely messed up and unreadable. Anyone got any ideas for fixing it? I hope i don't have to go back to windows because of this.

 

Hi to all

I'm new a this frum , and I can say that I've found very interesting this topic as I have f3jp laptop too!
One question ,did you get 3d aceleration with x1700???
My driver works fine ( i installef fglx drivers) but direct rendering shows not working...
Another thing, in a begining I think I had my special buttons all working ,but after installing cpugfreq utils they don't work any more as well as before.Some has been as me?

Thanks a lot

Pd: sorry for my english (i'm spanish)

 

If you have XGL turned on (for Compiz/Beryl), direct rendering doesnt work.

 

Finally ,with a little work I get 3d acceleration with my ati x1700. But now I would like to install Beryl/XGL or Compiz, It is possible with this card??? I would like to see that fantastic enviornement on my laptop

Another questions , how do you activate the cardreader?and is possible to turn on rollscroll Touchpad function?

Thanks a lot for your help

 

There is a thread here on the first page for the touchpad stuff, and the Ubuntu Guide stickied has links for Beryl. You'll need to choose the XGL method though.

 

Thanks a lot Lysander !!
I'm freakin out with Beryl/XGL !!!I followed the guide in http://lhansen.blogspot.com/2006/10/3d-desktop-beryl-and-xgl-on-ubuntu-edgy.html
and It worked perfectly, although there's is something I don't undestand. If it is shown that direct rendering isn't working, why I can run 3d apps ?

sorry but I don't see that thread about the touchpad


Thanks!



Viva UBUNTU

 

Well, XGL adds another layer to the X server, so the GPU has to write through that. You may experience some issues with fullscreen OpenGL apps.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=121831 for the touchpad.

 

Strange! although I've installed gsynaptics driver and control program, when I try to run the configuration tool it shows the following error:
"gsynaptics couldn't initialize, you need to configurate the variable SHMconfig to "true" in xorg.conf"
And of course I have it done!


Could someone pass me your xorg configuration file about this device??


Edit: I've installed the packet "powersaved" through synaptyc , and now the cpufreq-utils (speedstep-centrino) is started at the begining with only including it on /etc/modules and in >sesions>start programs. No need to type sudo modprobe speedstep... anymore