[GTALUG] great boxing week ultrabook deal

[Giles Orr]

On 5 January 2016 at 10:37, Tim Tisdall <tisdall at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone else buy this laptop and is installing Ubuntu 15.10 on it?
>
> I've found that the touchpad doesn't work, but the touch screen does.
> I read that the touchpad should work with the latest 4.4-RC but I
> haven't had time to try upgrading the kernel.  I'm also having the
> same issue with the light being on for the "airplane mode" and that
> button does nothing (so can't turn off wifi/bluetooth with it).  I
> managed to get the screen ratio to a reasonable setting (it defaults
> to tiny-tiny everything).

Hi Tim.

Yup, same laptop, same OS, same problems.  I've mostly kept the screen
at the native resolution and found ways to increase the font sizes in
Firefox and xterm.  But I keep arandr available for when my eyes get
tired of "tiny-tiny."  I'm probably going to wait a couple weeks more
to see if Ubuntu ships a new kernel that supports the touchpad.
If/when I get tired of waiting, I'll look at this link again:

https://florisvanvugt.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/making-asus-ux305ca-touchpad-work-in-ubuntu/

How to compile a custom kernel with a bit of a hack to fix the
touchpad.  Specific to our laptop and OS.

I recommend reading the reddit thread Hugh cited at the beginning of
this discussion and following the suggestions there to increase the
battery life: it made a massive difference (+100% or so).  Do a little
homework though: I found his settings a bit aggressive and have
probably improved battery life by letting the laptop be "sluggish" as
he puts it.  What he considers "sluggish" I consider "just fine"
because I'm mostly using a text editor in a terminal.  :-)

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com