ASUS & Linux

Which ASUS laptops have the best Linux support. I'm trying to find out if there is a 13" they offer with dedicated graphics & good Linux compatibility (e.g. - Suspend to Ram, Card reader, sound, ethernet, wireless, etc.)...this is a portable laptop, so things like battery life, quiet fans & HDs, and limited amounts of heat to burn my wrists & thighs!!

Let me know what you guys think of ASUS in general. Are they durable laptops, esp. around the hinges?? I recently noticed some Thinkpad T-Series the other day for their great build quality. If I knew ASUS was as good as IBM or better...I'd probably order one from PortableOne and add on a transreflective screen (those are hot!).

Well, you guys have any tips or suggestions?

 

Asus makes a very nice notebook and I am certain that you could get the Suspend, Ram, sound, ethernet and wireless to work. You may have trouble with the card reader, but typically you can get most things that are hooked up through USB to work in linux.
Back to the Asus. Asus makes notebooks that are typically performance oriented, as a result they are not the coolest running notebooks, in fact they run rather hot. As far as I know you will have to go to a 14inch size to get a cool running notebook with a dedicaited GPU. Look into the Compal HEL30 and the Lenovo T60 with. Lenovo is a good brand for Linux as some companys actually purchase notebooks from them with linux already installed. also you could check out the Sony SZ. Though Sony notebooks do not have very good linux support, so you would have to finagle with the notebook a lot in order to get linux to work.

 

I personally have an ASUS z63a (same chassis as the w3j,) and everything works using Ubuntu 6.10 "edgy" with minimal fuss (in fact, just 915resolution to set the video mode properly,) even the WiFi light/button works! A lot of the time the noisiest part is the harddrive and not the fan - I haven't taken the time yet to see if hdparm can quiet it down.

you'll probably want to look at the w7j (the "j" indicates dedicated GPU) or the w5f ("f" indicates intel integrated graphics). the w7 is a 13.3" screen and the w5 is a 12.1" screen, both wide aspect (16:10, I think). the w7 has an nVidia 7400, so drivers for Linux are simpler, although intel graphics solutions are the most "compatible" when it comes to Linux. the only things I can think of that might be a hassle are the built-in webcam and possibly the bluetooth module, although I've never actually researched bluetooth under Linux.

w7: http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=5&l2=64&l3=412&model=1142&modelmenu=1

w5: http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=5&l2=64&l3=412&model=1142&modelmenu=1

 

OK...now I'm shooting for battery life, so I'm just going to stick with Intel 950 GMA. This means I'm back to liking the PortableOne SX (ASUS Z35F) moreso...plus it's cheaper, which means easier for me to buy their transflective screen.

Must be 12" or 13", 4.5 lbs is the absolute max weight, must have TOP-notch build quality, must have pretty close to 4 hours of real-life battery life, would prefer transreflective or glossy widescreen, would prefer integrated dual-layer dvd burner.

This is the latest round of contenders to become my next laptop. Have any of y'all used one of these or have a better suggestion? If so, let me know how you like it overall, the build quality (esp. hinges), how well linux, & ubuntu in particular, work "outta the box", excluding 915resolution for the widescreens.

Highest Probability
PortableOne SX (aka: ASUS Z35F)
Toshiba Satellite U205
Lenovo V1000
IBM Thinkpad T60

High Probability
HP nc2400
IBM Thinkpad X60
Saeger NP6260

 

Well, the D420 is a pretty good laptop, not to mention very thin and light. Battery life is so-so, mostly due to the fact that it can only hold a small battery. However, if you don't mind it sticking out, you should be able to get crazy amounts of battery life with a 9-cell battery (like 6 hours or maybe more). You can even buy the D420 pre-loaded with Linux here.

That being said, getting help for a Thinkpad should be pretty easy, as they are pretty highly used Linux machines, and a lot of their components are very compatible with Linux such as the Atheros wireless cards (still don't know why they insist on ATi cards though). My suggestion would be to look up all those laptops you are considering at www.tuxmobile.com. That should give you a good idea of what you want and which distro is gonna give you the easiest time.

 

From what I've gathered from others experiences...Thinkpads are still troublesome in terms of suspend to ram, etc. I think that ASUS & Linux compatibility would be relatively good.

And yea, it seems crazy that Lenovo/IBM doesn't offer NVidia...makes me wonder if those Chinese folks know what they're doing. ;-)

Thanks for the tip...I'll be checking that site later today.

 

I will attest to the fact that suspend to ram works well with my ASUS lappy. Unfortunately, sometimes the graphics (Intel 915) will start to act strangely (usually after a couple of suspends, but I can't pinpoint anything in particular,) necessitating a total reboot. This happened in Windows too, and actually with greater frequency, so it's not a Linux issue.

 

I've seen that happen on almost every Ubuntu computer that suspended, maybe once outta every 10 times.

 

interesting... it's not Ubuntu-related, though, as the exact same thing happened in Windows, I'm assuming it's hardware related. basically it's like the screen won't refresh, so if you drag a window, it'll draw the whole move of the window, permanently. and scrolling a document will look like you're somehow scrolling diagonally.

oh yeah, suspend to disk works fine with Ubuntu 6.10 on my z63a, although I don't know if the graphics gremlins will pop up.

 

Yea, I guess these graphics gremlins came after resume from suspend, from a screensaver even....once happened to gdm on a fresh boot!!

I've seen X.org do some crazy stuff before, but that was mostly pre-Dapper era I guess. Before the GUI actually became usable.

Tell ya the truth, before I recently busted my laptop to death, I recovered from suspending to ram only twice in a two months w/Edgy...mostly because it'd eat thru battery life in several hours, or overnight...and then my data was gone. So I didn't get to test suspend out too much with Edgy. But wouldn't suspend to ram copy that data to the hd too, in case of power loss?

 

To increase battery life, remove any USB devices that you're not using. USB devices eat a surprisingly large amount of your battery. I read somewhere that the difference between using a USB mouse and not using it could result in 20 - 30 minutes of extra battery life.

 

Don't count out Lenovo, their latest ATI driver does support Suspend, Resume, etc.. under SuSE. I have not heard of the other manufacturer's looking into that sort of problem. I had an ECS and finally had to give up on Linux because they never got it working with S3 or S4 which I really need. ASUS might support it, I have a Z96J from ASUS but I haven't looked into anything more than VPC Debian on it.

Cat

P.S. I have to say I like them only offering ATI, nVidia sucks from all my previous experience, the only vid cards I've ever had that died on me were nVidia's while my ATIs (now AMD) have always worked like a charm. Look out for nVidia Lenovo systems possibly in the future tho since they are the first to DX10...

 

I can definitely say that s3 and s4 work properly on my z63a, I would think that a newer chassis like the s96 would have the same, if not better support for ACPI.

 

Hmm...what about a bluetooth mouse working with integrated bluetooth?

 

I know what you mean....I'm gonna be ticked when I get this laptop and both suspend to ram & hd don't work. Very ticked because I'm just gonna have to send the **** thing back.

On the contrary, nVidia's drivers are better when it comes to Linux. I've never had trouble with them at all. And the Beryl developers confirmed my suspicion that nVidia's Linux drivers are much more mature than ATI's...this may change due to AMD's buyout of ATI.

Anyway...I'm really trying to wait for Intel's Santa Rosa platform which will have integrated graphics including DX10 (=bad arse lookin' Linux effects AND savin' tons of battery life)!! That's why I might end up just buying a used Thinkpad. Ya never know.

 

And not just under Linux... I used to work for a 3D graphics company. NVIDIA is the only one with a consistent, correct OpenGL implementation... ATI's was horrible. They finally had to issue a press release to get ATI to fix some outstanding bugs (which they did, but ATI still causes them a good bit of grief). ATI is definitely a gaming-only card, and sometimes falls down at that.

 

I have been using an A8JS (14.4" screen) with Ubuntu 6.10 and Linux Mint with no problems.

Alex