Re: [gentoo-user] advice on a new laptop

[Stefano Crocco]

On Saturday, 4 February 2017 12:20:06 CET Stefano Crocco wrote:
> On Thursday, 2 February 2017 09:28:05 CET Stefano Crocco wrote:
> > Hello to everyone,
> > I need to buy a new laptop and I'd like some advice. Currently, I'm
> > thinking of buying an ASUS UX310UA-GL547T. Has anyone tried running
> > Gentoo on it? If so, how did it go? A Google search only lead me to a
> > page hinting it should work with linux, but didn't give any detail.
> >
> > Alternatively, which other model would you suggest with similar
> > specifications? The ASUS UX310UA-GL547T has the following characteristics:
> >
> > Screen: 13.3" - 1920x1080 Pixel - Full HD, LED, No Glare
> > CPU: Intel® CoreTM i3-7100U (2.4 GHZ)
> > RAM: 4 GB DDR4
> > Max RAM: 16 GB
> > Video Card: Intel® HD Graphics 620
> > Video OUT: HDMI
> > Hard Disk: 500 GB SATA 5400 rpm
> > Wireless: WiFi 802.11n (a/c)
> > Intel® Wireless Display (WiDi)
> > Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1
> > USB slots: 2x USB 2.0 - 1x USB 3.0 - 1x USB 3.1
> > Card Reader: SD/MMC
> > Size and weight: 32.3x22.3x1.84~1.90 cm / 1.45 Kg
> >
> > The price should be less than 800€/$.
> >
> > Thanks in advance
> >
> > Stefano
>
> Thanks to everyone who answered. I've ordered the laptop and it should
> arrive next week. I'll let you know how it goes.
>
> Stefano

All right. The laptop has arrived last Thursday (with memory expanded to 8GB) 
and, after a bit of work during the week-end I succeeded in installing a fully 
working ~amd64 Gentoo on it, with everything I need working perfectly (as far 
as I can tell). Unless some something unexpected come out in the future, I'm 
quite happy with this laptop.

In case anybody is interested, here are some details on what works and what 
doesn't or I haven't tested. I'll also include a copy of my .config if someone 
finds it useful (it may contain unneeded stuff, but it works).

What works:
* video card: works flawlessly with Plasma 5 and the default effects enabled. 
I had some trouble in finding out which firmware and use flags enabled. In the 
end, I enabled the i965 and intel VIDEO_CARDS and everything seems to work (I 
didn't try anything graphics intensive, however)
* wireless: this is the first wireless card which worked without problems from 
the installation medium: I created a wpa_supplicant.conf file with the network 
settings, run /etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant restart and the connection was there. 
After that, I only needed to find out the correct driver and firmware and 
insert them in the kernel
* touchpad: this gave me some problems because I couldn't find out the correct 
options to insert in the kernel. However, after a lot of attempts, checking 
everything related to 12C which seemed even remotely connected with a 
touchpad, it started working. Most likely, currently my kernel contains some 
unneeded options, but I don't have the time to find out which they are
* sound card: this too required a bit of work because I didn't know which 
codec I should use. At last, trying everyone, I found out the correct one was 
SND_HDA_CODEC_HDMI
* suspend and hibernate: both work correctly (regarding hibernate, I have set 
up a swap partition of 16GB: I don't know whether it's too much, but as I have 
space to spare, I don't care)

What doesn't work so well:
* bluetooth: the adapter is recognized. However, following the instructions in 
the Gentoo wiki [1] I couldn't connect with my smartphone: everything went 
well up to the "connect" command, then I got a "can't connect" error. I tried 
doing the same from Bluedevil (the KDE bluetooth manager), with the same 
result: however, I could send files between laptop and smartphone. I don't 
know whether this behavior is expected with such a device, since I almost 
never use bluetooth.

What I haven't tested:
* card reader
* wireless display. 

One of the issues which worried me more was setting up correctly an UEFI 
system. I don't have much experience with such systems so, among the various 
options I found online, I chose Refind as it seemed the easiest one. I 
proceeded this way:
* from the UEFI screen, I disabled Secure Boot and UEFI boot (I wasn't sure 
the Gentoo installation stick would boot from UEFI)
* I booted from the Gentoo installation stick and setup everything according 
to the installation handbook, except for the Grub2 part. According to the 
Refind instructions [2], I enabled the EFI stub in the kernel
* I copied the kernel to the usual /boot partition (with ext2 filesystem; 
ext3, ext4 or other filesystems supported by Refind would have worked as well)
* from Windows, I installed Refind [3], following to the letter the 
instructions given in [4]. Here, the author warns about issues with Windows 
10, but, luckily, I didn't have any
* I installed the kernel in the boot partition as usual
* I created a custom stanza in refind.conf, as described in [5] (I could have 
done without it if I had given the kernel a standard name, instead of 
linux-4.9.9). The custom stanza is simply:
  menuentry Gentoo {
    volume "Linux boot"
    loader "linux-4.9.9"
    ostype "Linux"
    options "root=/dev/sda7 ro"
}

This produces a menu with two entries: windows (detected automatically) and 
Gentoo.

Thanks again to everyone who offered advice

Stefano

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Bluetooth
[2] http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/linux.html#easiest
[3] http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
[4] http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#windows
[5] http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html#stanzas