Asus F3sv

Hello everyone - I just ordered a Asus F3sv (yeah, braggin' about it ) and was wondering if anyone knew if the 4965ABGN drivers were out under Ubuntu...AND if anyone has any experience with Ubuntu on the F3sv.

 

I can brag more- I ordered a F3Sv B1 with 3 Gigs of RAM, and 1 Gig Robson .
Nothing to contribute on the linux scene yet- haven't received. But will install some flavour as soon as I get it. hopefully it'd be easier than my F3Jp. The ATi card sure was a pain to set up.

 

Cool! Tell me about Feisty Live CD if you get your unit before I do...

 

I ordered a F3SV-B1 yesterday, and received it today (I was amazed at the speed).

I am going to install Ubuntu soon, within 2 hours. So if all goes according to plan, I should have my results in about 3-4 hours.

BTW, this laptop is awesome. It definitely needs more than 1 GB of RAM though, since in Vista it idles at about 1.2GB.

 

you must have a lot of stuff loaded up. when i used a vista notebook, it was only using 600ish mb on idle.

 

Yeah, my guess is that you gotta do a clean install the moment you get the baby.

 

Sorry, I ended up having to do some other things, so I didn't get around to installing Ubuntu today. I should have plenty of time tomorrow though.

And I think the reason so much RAM is being used is because TurboCache isn't working so the entire pagefile (if that is the correct term) is in RAM. Looking at the task manager, I noticed that all the processes don't take up 1.2GB (only about 200MB-300MB). Anyway, I don't mean to piggy back this issue on to your thread.

If you have anymore questions you want answered before you receive yours, just ask

Also, this is pretty much my first time using Vista, so I might be missing a few things.

 

Sorry for the double post, but here is a minor (disappointing) update.

I was able to boot Ubuntu through a "live CD" (which is really a "live USB flash drive"). The main problem I ran into here was that the display drivers didn't work, so I switched from "nv" to "vesa" (nvidia didn't work either). I was then able to load up gnome and install Ubuntu.

After rebooting I was still using the vesa drivers, so I decided to try the new nvidia official drivers. They didn't work and now I can no longer load up gnome with vesa. I get a really weird error (which to me was completely meaningless) so when i reboot i will post the log.

I got a little bored of it, so right now I am taking a break. Hopefully I will be able to find a solution soon.

 

Thanks for posting your experiences.

Actually the new Nvidia driver for Linux has 8600/8400M support in it. You can install it via Automatix or Envy if you don't want to deal with the command line.

I don't have my F3sv yet, but I know that the video will work, just MAYBE not the wireless drivers for the 4965AGBN.

 

well, I'm trying to get the nvidia drivers to work (100.14.09) on my F3sv-B1 but for now no luck. I tried the newest ones, tried 64 bit and 32 bit ubuntu and openSuse. Ubuntu Feisty doesnt even support the LAN card (neither does openSuse) out of the box. You can install linux drivers for ubuntu with ease.

oh, and the only way I could install ubuntu is with the use of the alternate CD (ie. text install)

edit: oh and ubuntu doesnt see cd roms ?_?

 

YIKES! Do I need to wait until the first betas of Gutsy come out?

 

They are out.

 

my nvidia drivers expierence

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1289009&posted=1#post1289009

and Ubuntu here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=476451&highlight=Asus+F3SV

 

i have a question about the F3SV and ubuntu, does the battery wear out faster under ubuntu vs on vista/xp?

and, are there any other minor problems, such as shutting hte lid and it wont turn back on or anything?

 

NO, actually, it's the reverse. Vista just CONSUMES the battery on the F3sv. I got 1 hour with Aero + Wi-Fi/BT on. You get more on Ubuntu, around 20-30 mins more, although I didn't verify that figure in real time. I know for example that on two notebooks (my Acer and an older Dell) that Linux saw better battery life than Windows.

ACPI bugs? I dunno, I will get back to you on this. Maybe Wattos can shed some light on this. I still haven't moved over to my new notebook fully yet.

 

You can shut the lid and open it up without any problems. Suspend and hibernate does have problems tho

 

I can verify this.

The F3sv has a lot of issues with a quick plug-in-play, out of the box experience. Having to deal with monitor, network, and other more minor issues.

 

The suspend and hibernate issues are likely related to nVidia driver problems, as they usually are. The drivers for the old cards still have this problem, and they've been around long enough to refine. I wouldn't expect the drivers on the 8 series to get a whole lot better for a while, especially considering how bad they are on Windows still.

 

Ive tried it with Vesa drivers and It doesnt work

 

Yeah, I'm getting the feeling that there is something else at bay here. Vesa AND NVIDIA drivers have similar problems.

 

@Wattos, etc - Have you tried the open source set of drivers for the 4965? I want to move away from ndiswrapper stuff if I can, since it still uses the Windows closed source drivers. I am going to toy around with this:

http://intellinuxwireless.org/

This week and post my success/failures. Let me know if it works for you or not if you are interested.

 

I havent done it myself but Ive seen a post on the forums :

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=476451&page=2

 

im quite familiar with the ubuntu OS, but for some reason i just cant get it to work properly on my new ASUS. I first tried the normal install cd, but that didnt work so i used the alternate cd. After i used that cd to install ubuntu onto my machine i tried booting it, but the screen just turned black and i think the computer was doing something in the background (but i cant tell because the screen was black, but the busy light was flashing) so because i couldnt see anything i did a hard reboot and i think that screwed up the grub loader (giving me error 15) now i couldnt get into either vista or ubuntu, so i had to use my recovery cds to get vista back on my machine. now i set it so vista has the whole HD (i figure it will be easier for me to partition it that way)

but, why am i getting this black screen? what can i do about that?

 

well im assuming your using ubuntu 7.04 or older and im not sure the drivers on those disks work with your graphics card you if could install using alternate and you get a black screen when booting after the installation try pressing alt-f1 ti see if you can go to the console if you can type sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf and go down to the section about the grahpics card and se what the driver it claims to be using if it says "nv" press x to delete it and then press i to start editing to "vesa" then press esc and write :wq then press enter after that restart your computer using reboot command or press ctrl-alt-del (does the same thing) when the computer boots ubuntu then you should get a screen

EDIT: if you screw up when editing xorg.conf press esc then :q! and press enter to quit without saving

 

Fittersman, I have merged the threads. Please use the search feature to get answers, since your question may have been answered already.

 

where can you get the newer version of ubuntu? i was trying 7.04

and ill try the xorg.conf thing

 

well the only newer version would be the second alpha of 7.10 which is not to good

 

even if the newer version isnt stable, it will be beter than a not working 7.04 so ill give that a go sometime.

and, what i figured out was that when i first boot into ubuntu and its loading, it changes to tv-out or something, so i pressed fn + F8 and the lcd turned on and showed the ubuntu loading screen, but after it finished loading it shut off the lcd again and i couldnt press fn + F8 to show the screen, and i couldnt adjust brightness, so id like to give that new version a go sometime.

 

ok, i got the visuals up and running as root (in recovery mode)

instead of booting into normal ubuntu i booted into recovery mode and then i got the command line, so after that i went to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and i changed the driver to vesa, but after that when i saved it and went startx, the highest resolution i could get was 1024x768 which isnt that nice (and yes, in the xorg.conf file i have selected the 1440x900 resolution) i was just wondering if that is the max resolution for the vesa driver and why i still cant use the normal way of booting ubuntu (i have to use recovery mode to get the visuals)

 

I have to resurrect this thread, as I have installed Kubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5 on my F3Sv.

There are minor problems, like bluetooth not working, as well as trouble with the nvidia card driver, but other than that it runs smoothly.

THE PROBLEM

I installed Gutsy through the alternate install CD, where I partitioned the unused space I had previously created with windows partitioner by resizing the Vista partition. So, the existing partitions are now: Recovery partition, VistaOS partition, reiserfs partition (root - primary), swap (logical), ext3 (/home - logical).

I proceed with the installation, everything goes fine and I get a running Kubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5. BUT, when I choose to load Windows Vista through Grub, I only get to the Vista splash screen (without login name/password area present) and then it crashes, giving me the attached image with the huge ERROR window, and of course a headache.

I tried to use the ASUS Recovery CD, but the results are the same. So please, help me shed some light on this, as I REALLY NEED WINDOWS!!!

 

well, since nobody else has any suggestions, ive only got one idea (and i dont think it will do the trick, but you can always try it if you want), and that would be to download a 3rd party app like gparted and use it to format your harddrive before you try the recovery cd. Like i said, its a long shot, but it might work, you never know

 

Well, that was the idea I got since there was nothing else to do (apart from sending the notebook to Asus)! I downloaded gparted LiveCD and started erasing partitions -except the recovery one. Then created a new ntfs partition and ran Vista recovery DVD. The installation was smooth but the old grub installation persisted (broken of course) on the MBR, so I installed Kubuntu Tribe 5 on top, and everything was fine! I only had to modify /boot/grub/menu.lst a bit to point it at the correct Vista partition (hd0,1).

The only question that still runs through my head, is what if someone doesn't want to reinstall a linux distro? How does he repair the MBR, since the recovery CD doesn't offer a "recovery console" to use a command like fixmbr?
I guess the only answer would be either to send it to Asus, or install grub only, and fix it to load Vista quietly. Any ideas?

 

Window's fixmbr command?

 

This isn't an option, because the recovery DVD doesn't offer a console option. So no fixmbr. I heard that there is a possibility of getting an MBR backup. How is this possible?

 

Anyone tried ubuntu 7.10 gutsy gibbon (released 10/18) on their f3sv yet?
Do you think they have fixed the video, wireless and other driver problems mentioned here?

 

im currently downloading it, will test it out for you guaranteed by saturday/sunday depending on how much time i have.

the betas had support for the wireless card out of the box, so im assuming the full release will continue to have support, and the video you can just download the nvidia driver for linux. So, im pretty sure this version will support everything except the fingerprint reader, some of the special buttons, and possibly the webcam.