#!/bin/blog » u6

Der Mac muht

martin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:08:35 +0000

Oh! Wenn man das Macbook ein paar Wochen lang links hat liegen lassen, merkt man erstmal, wieviel Krach das Ding wirklich macht, kaum daß es mal was leisten muß. Natürlich dreht sich im Asus U6S ununterbrochen der Ventilator, und vielleicht ~~ist das Asus im Leerlauf sogar leiser als das Macbook~~ ist das Macbook im Leerlauf sogar leiser als das Asus (so war’s gemeint). Aber auch bei mehreren CPU-Kernen wird die Arbeit nunmal nicht im Leerlauf gemacht. Rückblickend muß ich wohl sagen, daß der Krach einer der wirklich objektiven Nachteile am Macbook ist.

Asus U6S/U6SG webcam orientation fix on Linux

martin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:53:50 +0000

This nice little patch from ubuntuforums.org (the first one, patch_solution1_mirrored.txt) against the stock uvcvideo driver fixes the upside-down issue with the U6S built-in webcam on Linux.

Don’t bother copy-and-pasting the patch from the forum. It won’t work. Grab a login at bugmenot.com and download the patch file from the bottom of the forum post instead.

In order to get it to work in Skype, I had to edit my ~/.Skype/*/config.xml as follows:

(Are you happy now, G., you crazy fook?)

Status of Linux on the Asus U6S

martin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:26:29 +0000

Here’s the first report about the installation of Linux (Ubuntu “Hardy Heron” 8.04) on my new Asus U6/U6S, which seems to be identical with the Asus U6SG, without the 3G/UMTS Modem:

Working perfectly out of the box:

Installation (Alternate install with full disk encryption)
Graphics after Installation of the Nvidia driver from Ubuntu (Update, 2008/06/15: Dual-Screen magic works as well.)
Ethernet
Wireless LAN with WPA
Sound
Touchpad incl. Scrolling
Fn-Keys for Brightness, Volume, Play, Pause, Skip
USB
Bluetooth (basic browsing for devices)

Tried and not yet working:

Wake-up from stand-by seems to be globally broken in Ubuntu at this time
Bluetooth mouse, even after manual intervention
~~Camera image is upside-down, due to the Linux UVC driver not supporting the vflip Option. (Updated 2008/06/15)~~ (Solved! – 2008/07/08)
SD-Card reader doesn’t show up as mass storage in the output from lsusb and doesn’t work. (Updated 2008/06/28.)

Not tried:

HDMI, I need a DVI-D adapter for this.
(Update, 2008/06/26) I don’t care for TPM.
(Update, 2008/06/26) People who construct laptops with a glossy case and glossy display and believe at the same time that fingerprint security is a good thing, suffer from a major lack of security awareness. Here’s an article about taking fingerprints off glossy surfaces and faking authentication with them. So why bother about the fingerprint reader?

Slightly flawed:

Interaction with the WLAN/bluetooth “switch” on the left side of the case seems to be erratic.
Ocassionally hangs in initrd stage, complaining about failed initialization of some USB device. Could be related to the WLAN-bluetooth switch. (Update, 2008/06/15: Re-installed with only /home encrypted, to reduce the potential impact of problems during initrd.) (Update, 2008/06/26: Unplugging the mouse usually makes the boot process proceed.)

Solved issues:

I seem to notice occasional situations where the display goes to full brightness when it should remain dimmed. (Update 2008/06/26: Resolved by unchecking the brightness options in Gnome’s power management control.)
Webcam. See above.

So far, this is the most complete Linux support I’ve seen in a laptop. All neccessary features are working flawlessly. The one flaw I dislike the most is the missing Standby/Resume functionality.