Scott Walsh (scott.walsh@snet.net)
I have set up two of these very nice laptops using Mint 12 64 bit. There are a couple of required tweeks needed to get the touchpad working as a touchpad instead of a mouse and wireless setup. Once done with that, everything works great.
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| Name | ASUS U56E |
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz × 4 |
| Screen | 1366 x 768 running Intel® Sandybridge Mobile |
| RAM | 6 Meg |
| HDD | 650 Gigabyte |
| Optical Drive | description: DVD-RAM writer product: DVD-RAM UJ8A2ASW vendor: MATSHITA |
| Graphics | VGA compatible controller 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Card |
| Network | Card-1 Atheros AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet driver Card-2 Intel Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150 driver iwlagn |
| Device | Compatibility | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | No Problems | |
| Screen | Yes | No Problems | |
| HDD | Yes | No Problems | |
| Optical Drive | Yes | No Problems | |
| Graphics | Yes | Smooth video. Google Earth works nicely | |
| Sound | Yes | No Problems | |
| Ethernet | Yes | Connected instantly with no problems | |
| Touchpad | Yes, with a tweek | See Notes, below | |
| Wireless | Yes, but with a little work | See Notes, below | |
| Bluetooth | Not Tested | ||
| 56K Modem | No | No 56K modem | |
| USB | Yes | No Problems | |
| Firewire | No | No Firewire | |
| Card Reader | Yes | No Problems | |
| ExpressCard Slot | Yes | ||
| Camera | Yes | Mint 12 takes your picture during installation | |
Suspend and Hibernate do not work well, but I think this is a Mint issue rather than a laptop issue
Touchpad:
Initially, the touchpad works like a mouse.In system settings, there is no touchpad tab in the mouse applet to give you the typical touchpad options. To correct this, I installed version 0.10 of the psmouse-alps-dkms package. It is available at
http://people.canonical.com/~sforshee/alps-touchpad/psmouse-alps-0.10/psmouse-alps-dkms_0.10_all.deb
Double click to install and reboot. Your touchpad is now a touchpad.
Wireless:
The new 3.0.X kernel broke wireless for some laptops. The effect is constant request for authentication even if you know you are typing the right password. More description here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1862484 but the bottom line, for now, is this:
The *temporary* solution involves installing an older kernel, it seems we have to go back to kernel 2.6.38 to get it to work. The most recent version of that kernel can be downloaded from:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.38.8-natty/
According to the helpful person from that thread you will need three files:
linux-headers…all.deb
and either:
linux-headers….amd64.deb
linux-image…amd64.deb
or:
linux-headers….i386.deb
linux-image…i386.deb
… depending on your architecture (32-bit or 64-bit). Once you have the three files just double click them to install using the Software Center and restart the system remembering to select the older kernel in Grub.
If you do not have a boot menu displayed when you start up, install startupmanager which will let you set the default to the older kernel.
~$ sudo apt-get install startupmanager
You can run it from the menu after installation
I'm very happy with the ASUS U56E laptop.
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