ASUS UL30A
About the laptop
- 13.3" LED Screen 1366 x 768.
- 4GB DDR3
- 1.3Ghz Dual core.
- 320GB HDD.
- 8-cell battery 84wh.
- HDMI
Compatibility
Everything in this laptop is Linux compatible, therefore you will not have any issues installing Linux. I recommend Xbindkeys for sound buttons. Every other fn-X button works. Suspend, wifi, brightness works. The video out button does not work, use xrandr instead. HDMI works as well. The battery is properly read. Use Laptop Mode Tools for power saving. You can run xorg without config file. xf86-video-intel is the package you need. I could not run x with vesa on this chipset, it just froze completely. HDMI and VGA out works, but not via fn-F8. You can use lxrandr, GUI for xrandr for setting up video out. You can make fn-f8 work by configuring Acpid.
Powersaving
See power saving.
Fun
This computer has an extra power button on the left, you can configure this with Xbindkeys and run something useful. Like I use it for switching songs. The extra button is originally for powering up with Asus Express gate.
Freezes while/after booting
On my UL30A current Arch or Manjaro install will not boot (freeze somewhere along the process) unless I pass processor.nocst
as kernel parameter. This deactivates a certain APIC feature to determine the C-state but should not affect performance or stability since a legacy one is used instead. Do not forget to add that to your GRUB config afterwards as well.
Other things I pass to the kernel to improve battery life are nmi_watchdog=0
and pcie_aspm=force
. You have to see how well those work for you.
In general if you encounter freezes during boot APIC and ACPI should be looked into and deactivated if a solution cannot be found.
lspci
$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation WiMAX/WiFi Link 5150 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8132 Fast Ethernet (rev c0)
lsusb
$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 064e:a136 Suyin Corp. Asus Integrated Webcam [CN031B] Bus 001 Device 004: ID 8086:0180 Intel Corp. WiMAX Connection 2400m Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0b05:1751 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. BT-253 Bluetooth Adapter Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0458:00b5 KYE Systems Corp. (Mouse Systems) Bus 008 Device 003: ID 058f:6366 Alcor Micro Corp. Multi Flash Reader Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub