This is a compatibility guide to running Linux with the Asus UX32VD laptop.

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For instructions on how to replace the SO-DIMM or the HDD, please have a look at http://techfunbln.blogspot.de/2012/06/asus-zenbook-ux32vd-mit-ssd-und-10gb.html

The power consumption when idle is ~ 5.8 W - with WLAN and Bluetooth switched off, after optimizing using PowerTop, using “xbacklight =1”, keyboard backlight switched off, plus using the additional kernel parameters “pcie_aspm=force drm.vblankoffdelay=1 i915.semaphores=1”. This results in an “always idle run time” of ~ 7:10h on battery.

More realistic scenarios that you should think about: With “backlight set to 20%”, WLAN on and doing some lazy WWW browsing using Firefox, you'll experience a run time of ~ 4:30h on battery.

Another scenario: WLAN switched off, backlight set to 50%, watching a H.264 encoded 1080p24 movie using hardware accellerated video decoding (via mplayer with vaapi patches), you can expect ~ 4:00h on battery.

Note that powering off the nVidia card (via bumblebee or directly with bbswitch) lets you gain about 1 extra hour. Considering this, the power consumption is very similar to Windows 7.

This notebook can boot both via EFI and legacy BIOS.

The built-in iSSD (which is used only as a cache under Windows) is just an ordinary SATA device, I installed my OS on it.

Installing CentOS 6.2 failed due to lack of XHCI support for the external drive with the installation media.

I then first tried to install Fedora Core 17 from the ordinary installation DVDs, this failed with some obscure error message regarding a loop0 device not containing the expected filesystem.

But the Fedora Core 17 live CD did boot fine, and installing from there succeeded.

There is a web page dedicated to Ubuntu Linux on the Asus Zenbook series: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime

There is a web page dedicated to ArchLinux on Asus Zenbooks: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ASUS_Zenbook_Prime_UX31A

The Asus UX32VD BIOS allows to choose different drives for booting when pressing “ESC” during startup. Notice that you can use the Microsoft product key that is patched on the AC adapter to activate an ordinary “Windows7 Home Premium” installation, so you can e.g. use the 2.5” HDD/SSD to install Linux, install Windows7 on the on-board SanDisk i100, and choose between the two using the Asus BIOS.

Find a guide on how to install Windows7 (without using the awful Asus Recovery mechanism) here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/672616-guide-ux32vd-how-install-windows-7-integrated-32gb-ssd.html

NOTE: If you're on Ubuntu 12.04/12.10, you can make it work following these instructions: http://webent.altervista.org/2012/08/30/how-to-get-the-nvidia-optimus-working-on-zenbook-ux32vd-ubuntu-12-04/

If you're not on Ubuntu 12.04/12.10, while the nVidia GT 620M GPU can be switched on and off using the “bbswitch” kernel module from the Bumblebee project, offloading 3D rendering to this GPU fails for one of the following reasons:

The nouveau kernel driver loads successfully (as of linux-3.4.2), but the Xorg nouveau module does not seem to know the chip:

[  1153.508] (II) Module nouveau: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  1153.508]    compiled for 1.12.2, module version = 0.0.16
[  1153.508]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  1153.508]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0
[  1153.508] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[  1153.508]    RIVA TNT        (NV04)
[  1153.508]    RIVA TNT2       (NV05)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 256     (NV10)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 2       (NV11, NV15)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 4MX     (NV17, NV18)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 3       (NV20)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 4Ti     (NV25, NV28)
[  1153.508]    GeForce FX      (NV3x)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 6       (NV4x)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 7       (G7x)
[  1153.508]    GeForce 8       (G8x)
[  1153.508]    GeForce GTX 200 (NVA0)
[  1153.508]    GeForce GTX 400 (NVC0)
[  1153.508] (--) using VT number 1
[  1153.508] (EE) No devices detected.

The closed-source, binary only nVidia driver, as of 302.17, simply crashes when loaded:

[ 2405.188123] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[ 2405.188128] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[ 2405.188214] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  302.17  Tue Jun 12 16:03:22 PDT 2012
[ 2468.831102] BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000000000020
[ 2468.832189] IP: [<ffffffffa0ac7a75>] _nv001084rm+0x1d7/0x7a2 [nvidia]
[ 2468.833351] PGD 29a17d067 PUD 29ad7b067 PMD 0 

Other people seem to have seen similar issues with nVidia Optimus configurations, some discussion threads seem to indicate that nVidias blob driver does not support EFI booted systems at all: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=179755

USB 3.0 generally works, but after using and disconnecting a USB 3.0 device, messages like “xhci_hcd setting latency timer to …” are spilled into the “dmesg” log every other second, and the power consumption stays some watts higher than necessary. “rmmod xhci_hcd” solves this, but only until the module is loaded again.

After replacing the 2.5” HDD drive with a SSD I was baffled to find that waking up from a “suspend to RAM” took 10 seconds instead of 2. Looking at the “dmesg” output I found that the kernel was waiting about 10 seconds while re-negotiating the SATA connection parameters with the drive.

The solution was to add the parameter “libata.force=nohrst” to the kernel parameter command line, this causes the libata code in the kernel to no longer issue “hard resets” to the SSD when waking up, which seems totally unnecessary, anyway. (Even the “soft reset” would not be required, but that does not take a significant time.)

I am now back to 1.7 seconds for waking up from “suspend to RAM”, which is very nice

By default, the Synaptics Touchpad is configured to only emulate left and right mouse buttons, if you also want to use the “middle” mouse button, you may create a file like ”/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-middle-mouse-button.conf” with the following content:

  Section "InputClass"
   Identifier "My Synaptics options"
   MatchDriver "synaptics"
   Option "ClickPad"         "true"
   Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "0"
   Option "SoftButtonAreas"  "66% 0 82% 0 33% 65% 82% 0"
  EndSection

This adds a middle mouse button between left and right mouse buttons on the touchpad. All the buttons occupy equal space of 33%. If you want the middle button to only occupy 20%, then change SoftButtonAreas line to:

   Option "SoftButtonAreas"  "61% 0 82% 0 41% 60% 82% 0"

(See also: “man synaptics”)

To control the keyboard backlight, linux/drivers/platform/x86/asus-wmi.c needs a patch, see bug report and preliminary fix at http://dev.iksaif.net/issues/234 for details.

The ASIX USB-to-EtherNet driver from plain vanilla linux kernel 3.4.2 will cause about 0.6% of all packets to get dropped with the following error message:

asix 3-2:1.0: eth0: asix_rx_fixup() Bad RX Length 1042
asix 3-2:1.0: eth0: asix_rx_fixup() Bad Header Length

This decreases the interfaces performance a little, and causes annoying messages in the syslog. To get rid of them, you can use the Linux driver from the manufacturer, instead. You can download it from http://www.asix.com.tw/FrootAttach/driver/AX88772B_772A_760_772_178_LINUX_Driver_v4.2.0_Source.zip

Notice that this driver does not compile unchanged from some kernel version onwards, to make it compile with linux-3.4.2 I had to apply the following patch:

 --- AX88772B_772A_760_772_178_LINUX_Driver_v4.2.0_Source/asix.c.orig    2012-07-01 20:00:06.043149110 +0200
 +++ AX88772B_772A_760_772_178_LINUX_Driver_v4.2.0_Source/asix.c 2012-07-01 20:08:38.410162763 +0200
 @@ -336,6 +336,7 @@
         }
  }
  
 +#if 0
  static void ax8817x_set_multicast(struct net_device *net)
  {
         struct usbnet *dev = netdev_priv(net);
 @@ -394,7 +395,9 @@
  
         ax8817x_write_cmd_async(dev, AX_CMD_WRITE_RX_CTL, rx_ctl, 0, 0, NULL);
  }
 +#endif
  
 +#if 0
  static void ax88772b_set_multicast(struct net_device *net)
  {
         struct usbnet *dev = netdev_priv(net);
 @@ -454,6 +457,7 @@
  
         ax8817x_write_cmd_async(dev, AX_CMD_WRITE_RX_CTL, rx_ctl, 0, 0, NULL);
  }
 +#endif 
  
  static int ax8817x_mdio_read(struct net_device *netdev, int phy_id, int loc)
  {
 @@ -837,7 +841,7 @@
         .ndo_do_ioctl           = ax8817x_ioctl,
         .ndo_set_mac_address            = ax8817x_set_mac_addr,
         .ndo_validate_addr              = eth_validate_addr,
 -       .ndo_set_multicast_list = ax8817x_set_multicast,
 +//     .ndo_set_multicast_list = ax8817x_set_multicast,
  };
  #endif
  
 @@ -1457,7 +1461,7 @@
  
         return 0;
  }
 -
 +#if 0
  static u32 ax88772b_get_tx_csum(struct net_device *netdev)
  {
         struct usbnet *dev = netdev_priv(netdev);
 @@ -1501,6 +1505,7 @@
  
         return ax88772b_set_csums(dev);
  }
 +#endif
  
  static struct ethtool_ops ax88772b_ethtool_ops = {
         .get_drvinfo            = ax8817x_get_drvinfo,
 @@ -1513,10 +1518,10 @@
         .get_eeprom             = ax8817x_get_eeprom,
         .get_settings           = ax8817x_get_settings,
         .set_settings           = ax8817x_set_settings,
 -       .set_tx_csum            = ax88772b_set_tx_csum,
 -       .get_tx_csum            = ax88772b_get_tx_csum,
 -       .get_rx_csum            = ax88772b_get_rx_csum,
 -       .set_rx_csum            = ax88772b_set_rx_csum,
 +//     .set_tx_csum            = ax88772b_set_tx_csum,
 +//     .get_tx_csum            = ax88772b_get_tx_csum,
 +//     .get_rx_csum            = ax88772b_get_rx_csum,
 +//     .set_rx_csum            = ax88772b_set_rx_csum,
  };
  
  #if LINUX_VERSION_CODE > KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,29)
 @@ -1530,7 +1535,7 @@
         .ndo_get_stats          = axusbnet_get_stats,
         .ndo_set_mac_address    = ax8817x_set_mac_addr,
         .ndo_validate_addr              = eth_validate_addr,
 -       .ndo_set_multicast_list = ax88772b_set_multicast,
 +//     .ndo_set_multicast_list = ax88772b_set_multicast,
  };
  #endif

The keyboard backlight brightness can be adjusted from 0 (off) to 3 (brightest) by issuing a command like the following (which turns off the keyboard backlight)

echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight/brightness

The LCD brightness can be adjusted from 0 (off) to 4296 (brightest). This can be useful if you find the minimum 10% brightness too bright. Set brightness by issuing a command like the following (sets screen brightness to 5%)

echo 214 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

Both of the fans are controlled by the Embedded Controller firmware (unconfirmed) and ACPI has no fan control logic (temperature points, etc). However, it is possible to control the fan speed using certain methods in the ACPI. For more information please see http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/705656-fan-control-asus-prime-ux31-ux31a-ux32a-ux32vd.html

Here is a very hacky program that can set the maximum allowed fan speed (as proof of concept): http://pastebin.com/Hp2pWeyL

Now that fan control methods are known, the next step would be to write a proper kernel module for it! Here is an excellent start, very similar to how it should work on UX32VD: http://www.mail-archive.com/acpi4asus-user@lists.sourceforge.net/msg00065.html

On the whole this laptop works perfectly with Linux - but you need a *very* recent kernel.

Output of “lspci -v”:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?>
 Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])

 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
 I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000efff
 Memory behind bridge: f6000000-f70fffff
 Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000e0000000-00000000f1ffffff
 Capabilities: [88] Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 3
 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
 Capabilities: [a0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00
 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
 Capabilities: [140] Root Complex Link
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0166 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
 Memory at f7400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 I/O ports at f000 [size=64]
 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
 Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [a4] PCI Advanced Features
 Kernel driver in use: i915

00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Device 0153 (rev 09)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
 Memory at cfe08000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
 Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
 Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 3
 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?>

00:14.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04) (prog-if 30 [XHCI])

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 45
 Memory at f7900000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
 Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+
 Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd

00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
 Memory at f7922000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
 Capabilities: [8c] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
 Memory at f7920000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0
 Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features
 Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
 Memory at f7918000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
 Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
 Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link
 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])

 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0
 Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00
 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
 Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])

 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
 Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=0
 Memory behind bridge: f7800000-f78fffff
 Capabilities: [40] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00
 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
 Capabilities: [90] Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 2
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 23
 Memory at f791f000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [58] Debug port: BAR=1 offset=00a0
 Capabilities: [98] PCI Advanced Features
 Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
 Capabilities: [e0] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?>

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 43
 I/O ports at f0b0 [size=8]
 I/O ports at f0a0 [size=4]
 I/O ports at f090 [size=8]
 I/O ports at f080 [size=4]
 I/O ports at f060 [size=32]
 Memory at f791e000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
 Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
 Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 3
 Capabilities: [a8] SATA HBA v1.0
 Capabilities: [b0] PCI Advanced Features
 Kernel driver in use: ahci

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 18
 Memory at f791d000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
 I/O ports at f040 [size=32]

00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point Thermal Management Controller (rev 04)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10
 Memory at f791c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
 Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3

01:00.0 3D controller: nVidia Corporation Device 1140 (rev a1)

 Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1507
 Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16
 Memory at f6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
 I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
 Expansion ROM at f7000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
 Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
 Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
 Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?>
 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
 Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?>
 Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?>

03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 088e (rev 24)

 Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 4060
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47
 Memory at f7800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
 Capabilities: [c8] Power Management version 3
 Capabilities: [d0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
 Capabilities: [e0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
 Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi

Output of “lsusb”:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0b95:7e2b ASIX Electronics Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0139 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f2:b330 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd 
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 8087:07da Intel Corp.