Best linux for ASUS ZenBook UX306UA

I am pre-purchasing ASUS ZenBook UX306UA, which comes with win 10. I intend to delete all partitions on the SSD and then install Linux on "clear" SDD. What would be the best distrubition of Linux for it? Ubuntu or Mint maybe?

 

Ubuntu or Mint would both be decent choices if you're new to the Linux world. If you're a bit more seasoned, you could go with whatever you want to go with.

I'd put your distro of choice on a live USB drive and boot into it to check how well it works with the system before you go wiping Windows and going over to said distro first, though.

 

I've also found PcLinuxOS to have really good hardware support.

that being said, just know that your battery life is really going to take a hit using linux on a laptop. I haven't found one distro that can fully match the battery life compared to running windows.

 

Yes, words to live by. Live USB drive first, make sure your hardware works, you like the desktop, and other niceties.

 

Yes, battery life is pretty miserable in Linux for me too. Anyone know why that is?

 

Power management seems to be best on the native OS, and this is not just Windows. MacBooks do best on their battery life running Mac OSX, to name another major example. And the MacBook lines have inferior battery life on Windows as do Windows laptops on Linux distros. Likely a native OS driver related situation.

 

Windows runs on a gazillion different hardware configurations and so does Linux. Poor battery life in Linux is a Linux issue, not a driver issue because it's consistent behavior on all the laptops that I have tried it on.

 

Windows gets pretty good battery life out of the box. Linux takes some tinkering to do so. Look up ways to increase battery life.

 

Indeed. Linux requires some configuration to get better battery life.

 

Like what for example? I would like to have better battery life in Linux.

 

Adjusting your power management plan in your Linux distribution. And your screen brightness may need to be dimmed some. Setting when your OS goes to sleep, which is adjustable also is necessary. You can do better.

 

Already tried those. Nothing seems to make a difference.

 

WattOS used to have a bunch of tweaks to extend battery life. I think it really comes down to how much the kernel is tweaked and designed for a specific machine.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management

Any post-Nehalem Intel platform should have marginally better idle power draw with a modern Linux kernel than with Win8/10 if you don't mind living with power saving behavior.

 

You need to dig deep to get the best battery life in Linux. Adjusting the screen brightness and when the computer goes to sleep doesn't cut. This is why people think Linux gives poor battery life. Spend some time to really look up power saving in Linux and you will find all sorts of real things that you can do to make the battery last longer than it does with Windows.

 

Where did you pre-purchase the UX306UA?

 

Did you use powertop to monitor what's drawing the most power?

Did you try TLP? http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html

The link Mr.Koala shared is pretty useful and pretty comprehensive.