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Asus N53Jn
Introduction
OS: Linux Mint 10 (Julia) 64bit
The laptop came with a 500GB HDD, with OS, recovery and some other
small partitions plus a huge DATA partition. I shrinked this DATA partition
to its half to make space for Mint. For making changes I used Gparted
from the Mint install CD. Installation using burned media
(linuxmint-10-gnome-cd-amd64.iso)works out of the box. Grub takes
over smoothly as bootloader.
This page is just for discussing using Linux on the Asus N53Jn. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the Asus N53Jn page on LapWik.
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Specifications
For full specifications see the Asus N53Jn specifications page.
| Name | Asus N53Jn |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i5 Processor 540M/520M/450M : 2.53 GHz - 2.4 GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 3.06/2.93/2.66 GHz ; Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 370M : 2.4 GHz |
| Screen | 15.6” (1366×768 or 1920×1080) Widescreen |
| RAM | Up to 8GB |
| HDD | 250GB to 640GB |
| Optical Drive | DVD+-RW Blu-ray |
| Graphics | NVIDIA® GeForce® GT335M / NVIDIA® GeForce® GT425M |
| Network | 10/100/1000 Ethernet 802.11 b/g/n or 802.11b/g |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | |
| Screen | Yes | |
| HDD | Yes | |
| Optical Drive | Yes | BluRay not tested |
| Graphics | Yes | Intel only |
| Sound | Yes | alsa.conf needs edit |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | |
| Bluetooth | N/A | |
| Modem | Yes | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Card Reader | Yes | |
| Webcam | Yes |
Notes
Some changes I had to make:
Audio
Needs the following line added to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf
“options snd-hda-intel model=auto position_fix=0”
Speakers and built in mic works fine after this. Jack works with acceptable latency, Audacity, LMMS, Ardour works out of the box. (These applications were somewhat painful to get in working conditions on my previous laptops.)
Suspend
it order to get directions toward a fully functional suspend option follow this link:
http://thecodecentral.com/2011/01/18/fix-ubuntu-10-10-suspendhibernate-not-working-bug
Video
The Nvidia driver offered by the Mint updater is no good - unless you are an expert, perhaps.
You can experiment with Switcheroo:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Vga_switcheroo
http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~shuber/misc-t400.php
These solutions are for the intel/ati combination, not for Optimus, so be careful have no high hopes.
I decided to stay away from these since the Intel GPU is powerful enough to do all I wish to
do in terms of graphics. Compiz works, Movies play fine, Blender renders fast enough for me :P
A good tutorial on making Optimus work on N53J would be welcome here, though.
Presentation
Recalibrating resolution for a projector (and back) is fast and automatic, it requires no maintenance.
Function keys
All function keys work fine(!), except the one in between the fn and leftAlt keys :)
Built in camera
Works without a touch
Wireless
Wireless works out of the box. You have to fiddle a little with setting it up for secured network, but this is true with all OS.
Things I have not tried yet:
BluRay player (it works with CDs and DVDs), SATA connector, HDMI connector
Summary
Running linux on Asus N53J gave me a lot less headache than I expected using a relatively new hardware.
Discussion