Ubuntu 12.04 working great on Chronos 7 NP700Z5B

I am running ubuntu 12.04 with series 7 laptop -- NP700Z5B-S01UB

After a few tweaks, I now have it running nearly perfectly, so I thought I would document what I did to get more people on board with Linux on this great machine. Currently my only complaint is battery life which is approximately 3.5-4 hours.

I rarely hear the fan. Most function keys work (F2 through F8)

1a) Used proprietary video driver
fglrx-updates and fglrx-amdcccle-updates (did not install fglrx and fglrx-amdcccle)
I installed these through synaptic package manager, which I installed since I prefer it over the Ubuntu software center. apt-get will probably work also.

Note: Installing from System settings -> Additional Drivers did not work


Note: I later discovered that this next step causes the paradoxial effect of increasing power usage , I wouldn't recommend it at this time. Please see update post
1b) How to switch from GPU to integrated graphics, to save battery life:
Toggling can be done through AMD Catalyst control center.
Unity 3d did not initially work after switching to integrated graphics. I just got the background but no panel. Unity 2d worked fine though (click on the gear icon at the login screen to choose). However the following fix allows Unity 3d under integrated graphics:
from ( [all variants] AMD/Intel Hybrid Graphics works ! - Ubuntu Forums -- step 2)

Open the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx file with root rights :
Code:

gksu gedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx

At the end of 4th line this text : "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/" without the quotes. The file should now look like this :

Code:

 LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/fglrx/dri 
if [ `uname -m` = 'x86_64' ]; then 
if [ -d /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri ]; then 
LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri
if [ ! -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH: 
fi 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}/usr/lib32
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH 
fi 
fi 
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

2) Clickpad - right click is working
I created the following script (based on The Orange Notebook: Call for Testing: Clickpad) which can be set to run on startup

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# add it as Unity startup script using gnome-session-properties. 

# faster speed and acceleration
synclient MinSpeed=1.5 MaxSpeed=3.5 AccelFactor=0.1

# enable palm detect
synclient PalmDetect=1

# enable clickpad
xinput set-prop "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" "Synaptics ClickPad" 1

# enable right button

i=0
while read label min delim max; do
	if [ $i -eq 0 ]; then
		minx=$min
		maxx=$max
	elif [ $i -eq 1 ]; then
		miny=$min
		maxy=$max
		break
	fi

	(( i++ ))
done < <(xinput list "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" | grep Range)

left=`echo \($maxx - $minx\) / 2 + $minx | bc -l`
right=$maxx
top=`echo \($maxy - $miny\) \* 0.82 + $miny | bc -l`
bottom=`echo \($maxy - $miny\) \* 2 + $miny | bc -l`

xinput set-prop "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" "Synaptics Soft Button Areas" $left $right $top $bottom 0 0 0 0

3) Suspend - didn't work out of the box, had to create a script which would unload drivers prior to suspending. See here:
Fix Ubuntu (or Linux) Suspend/Hibernate Not Working Bug | Code Central
(Ignore "Step 2 old")

4) On occasion, the hard drive would spin up/down several times a minute. This can eventually cause premature drive failure. It is possible that this problem has been fixed already, but if you hear this occurring, do the following:

Code:

add ubuntu-proposed to my 'software sources' 

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hdparm/precise-proposed

accepted install hdparm v9.37ubuntu3.1

sudo reboot

Other:

-- Virtualization -- was not able to get VMWare working, however VirtualBox works quite well.

-- Have yet to investigate Samsung tools for linux Linux On My Samsung • View topic - HOWTO: Use the repository on *buntu 12.04 LTS

 

Nice post!

I suggest installing laptop-mode-tools. With laptop-mode-tools on my current laptop, I am able to get better battery life in Linux than I do in Windows.

After installing the laptop-mode-tools you can take a look at powertop if you haven't already. It should tell you if there is anything else causing higher battery drain.

 

Two questions about the setup:

You say right click works. What about two finger click (not tap) and two finger scroll. In windows I have two finger tap off, it was too sensitive. I have two finger click to be a middle mouse click.

What battery life are either of you getting with Ubuntu? I get over 5 hours of continuous VPN, wifi, eclipse (development) and web usage in Windows 7 with less than half brightness.

I tried Fedora 17 and I got 1 hour and 52 minutes.

 

Thanks for the tip dalingrin - I installed laptop-mode-tools. It brought my idle discharge rate to 16W from 18-19W. Not a huge difference, but every bit helps.

I did have to make a few adjustments after installing laptop-mode tools. My hard drive began to spin up/down frequently again. I had to go into the configuration script and change the LM_BATT_HD_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS parameter and also set BATT_HD_POWERMGMT=128.

Also it caused my mouse to freeze when idled due to usb being put to sleep. Was able to blacklist it in the usb-autosuspend.conf file.

PS are you the same dalingrin from CM7 for nook color forums? If so, extra thanks!!

 

pcm2a:

Tapping with two fingers brings up the right click menu. Is that what you mean? However I found it a bit difficult to use, could probably fix it by adjusting sensitivity, but I mainly use a mouse.
Two finger scroll does work.
Sensitivity can be adjusted if you want to add or tweak parameters in the script I posted.

As far as battery life, I am getting close to 4 hours. Don't know exactly because I've been going by the battery indicator icon and it seems to jump back and forth a bit.

 

I wonder how dalingrin gets more than Windows then.

So in windows you have two different things you can do with the trackpad, a tap and a click. The click is actually pressing down and you can audibly hear it click. In the settings you can set the two finger tap and the two finger click to be on/off and to do whatever you want, like right click, middle click, etc. I use middle click so I can open new tabs in Chrome.

As long as it handles two finger clicks, what it does when you click it can be customized pretty easily in linux I believe.

 

So I thought I would give it a shot but before wiping out my OS again, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 x64 to a USB stick. Boots right up and things seem to work good except for the known things that need to be tweaked like video and mouse.

I've been using it for about 15 minutes and I started out at 1 hour 40 minutes and am now at 1 hour 18 minutes. The fan has ran pretty much non stop.

I installed powertop and it tells me that I am discharging at 38-40, which is pretty terrible. I'm not sure what to make of all the other powertop information. It's not clear how to use powertop to get the discharge down to reasonable levels.

 

I am pretty sure you will get a lot of power savings after you install the proprietary video driver (step 1 in my initial post). The fan quieted down immediately after I did this.

I was a little optimistic earlier. The battery indicator doesn't seem to be accurate. I'm guessing I'm getting closer to 3 hours. I briefly had an idle power draw of 16 watts but it seems to have gone back up to 18-19 watts. Will work on whittling down my power consumption but it will take some research.

In regards to two finger click, I did a bit of googling but couldn't find anything. However, there is a three finger tap which can be configured to be the middle mouse button. By default on my setup it is used to move the windows around.

 

That's me =)
I'm in the market for a new laptop and notebookreview.com has always been my resource for info on upcoming models.

I should have prefaced that my current laptop is an HP 17" DV7T. After using laptop-mode tools, powertop, and turning off the discrete GPU I was able to get power down to around 10 watts with minimum brightness. It is very important to completely disable the discrete GPU especially if you just have the open source ATI drivers installed. The easiest mechanism to disable the discrete GPU is via /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch. I'm hoping to do the same with the Chronos 7 I'm about to purchase. I was surprised to find that I get around an extra hour with Linux.

Also, there are a few other things you'll need to get that power usage down that I forgot to mention.
I suggest adding the following kernel parameters:
pcie_aspm=force
i915.i915_enable_rc6=1
i915.lvds_downclock=1

FYI, to do so in Ubuntu or other grub2 distros, you need to edit /etc/default/grub
Add them to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable
eg. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1"
Then run grub-update to save the settings to the bootloader.

The i915 rc6 and pcie aspm are the two that make the most difference. RC6 lets the integrated GPU go to a low power state whilst idling. PCIE aspm allows the system to run the PCIE interface at slower speeds and lower power states if the bandwidth isn't needed.

Let me know how your power usage looks after adding those.

 

Dalingrin,
the pcie and rc6 options are already included in Ubuntu 12.04 (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagement/PowerSavingTweaks)

Nonetheless before I figured this out, I tried your suggestions and now powertop shows an idle rate of 17-18 watts which is a minimal improvement, i'm assuming from the lvds_downclock option.

With regards to disabling the discrete graphics gpu, I have already done so (step 1b in my first post).

When I get a chance I will dig deeper into the power consumption issue. Powertop shows a lot of "wakeup events" which increase the CPU power draw, hopefully I can figure out why.

 

I installed the drivers (from thrombus' instructions) and used the ATI Catalyst tools to switch to the Intel GPU. Does using vgaswitcheroo do anything different, in regards to power saving?

Also, am I correct in thinking that vgaswitcheroo would allow me to change on the fly? ATI Catalyst requires a restart, which is garbage.

I also installed Jupiter, a power management tool. In addition I put powertop on and flipped all the bad's to goods, although I didn't look into what each one meant.

I have gotten my power down to around 17-18 as well. This nets a solid 3:45 to 4 hours. Win7 sometimes will get down to 11W.

 

Have not looked at vgaswitcheroo, though if it allows switching GPU's without rebooting, that would be nice.

Hadn't heard of Jupiter - just looked at the description. I wonder if it does something similar to laptop-mode-tools. Getting down to 11w in Ubuntu would be great if possible.

I have been running powertop with all "bad"'s switched to good (except for my mouse) with no problems.

On an unrelated note, check this out
Bcache - BcacheWiki
and
[Phoronix] BCache For The Linux Kernel Still Being Tackled

I wonder if this could serve as the linux equivalent of ExpressCache running on the iSSD. I imagine it would further save power and improve performance. Haven't been able to find any reference of anyone using it with ubuntu though.

 

Update:
After banging my head for months trying to figure out how to reduce power consumption, I discovered that the culprit was using integrated graphics. I believe the discrete chip was not completely turned off, and it continued to consume a large amount of power. After switching back to discrete graphics, I am now getting typical power usage of 12-15 watts, previously 17-22 watts! Battery time (set to charge only to 80%) is about 5 hours according to the battery utility. The laptop is also noticeably cooler.

Also since my last post, I have done the following
-- switched to tlp instead of laptop-mode-tools. I can't confirm that it is better than laptop mode tools, however it is more understandable and easier to configure. Also now running Jupiter, though I'm not sure if there's a noticeable effect.

-- I'm now running the linux OS off the 8Gb SSD on the hybrid drive. Laptop seems snappier and is definitely quieter. Probably saved an additional watt or so.

-- Running linux mint 13 Mate which is essentially the same as Ubuntu 12.04, though I like the UI more.

 

Just another note, is possible that vgaswitcheroo might be able to completely turn off the discrete GPU, after using Catalyst to switch to integrated graphics. Looking back, Dalingrin had suggested this on a previous post.
If I have extra time (meaning probably not), I'll try it. If anyone feels up to confirming this, that would be great.

 

With regard to the vgaswitcheroo switch, it's not located where dalingrin specified for my Mint 13 x86 KDE install. I have the Chronos Z5B-W model as opposed to the OP's S model. I believe that the only difference is hard drive size (I immediately swapped in a SSD), backlit keyboard (I do not have it) and the Centrino Wireless chip having a switch to WiMax (I chose this as it is a rarity and high usefulness, but so far only functions under windows).

From what I read on other forums and wikis, the switcheroo functionality requires muxing and the Chronos does not have that.
Further, there is no BIOS switch for selecting graphics mode and it is not likely to come.

To be honest though, after about a year of using this laptop on various OS configurations, I'm highly suspicious of Samsung's power control profile actually delivering the 6, 7, 8, 9 (even 10 when it was first purchased and tweaked hard) hours of battery life that it reports. And the effective battery life through normal use very closely jives with the roughly 5 hour estimate tweaked Linux provides.

My 2 cents.

I'm guessing dalingrin didn't pick up this laptop after all because he hasn't been back here. Love his work. I actually just started learning Android-specific Java programing due to his and others' efforts on the Nook Color.

Good times.