C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 11:04:10 -0300

For some time I have been looking for a smaller, less valuable computer to
take travelling.  I thought a tablet might work, and bought a Nexus 7, but the
experience was awful for anything other than looking at web pages (and the way
Google tries to get in on everything is creepy - I guess an Apple device would
just drive me crazy).

So I decided to buy a netbook, only to find that they no longer exist.

So I eventually ended up buying this ASUS -
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-1015E-DS03-10-1-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00COQK8QY

It looks like (slightly overweight?) netbook, and it comes with Ubuntu
pre-installed, suggesting that the hardware has decent support for Linux.
Unlike a netbook, it has a "real" processor (and i3 or celeron or something -
not an Atom or ARM).  But it only has 2GB of memory and the word on the
streets (dude) is that it needs an SSD to be usable.

So I bought one, plus a cheap 60GB Kingston SSD (which is way more than the
disk in my first laptop that ran OpenSuse...).  They don't deliver to CHile,
but Pauli was vitising the USA and brought them home for me (Amazon de deliver
to hotels, thankfully).

To save you reading the rest - it IS better than a tablet, but it's obviously
built to a price.  I guess I am spoilt using a ThinkPad every day.  What I
miss most are the pointing nub and a keyboard light.

Anyway, the rest of this post is info on how to install the SSD and OpenSuse.
My experience seems to differ from some other comments on the Amazon web page.
I don't uderstand why - perhaps the hardware inside changes with time?


To install the SSD you need to follow the instructions at
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=asus+1015+disassembly
- there are a bunch of videos, of slightly different models, and they are
enugh to guide you through what needs to be done.

Note that, although I did this fine, it was not easy.  A fair amount of force
is needed in some moments, and it would have been pretty easy to crack the
casing / keyboard at times.

Also, be very careful with the ribbon cables.  The first time I took a
notebook apart I really messed up a cable connection.  This time I was very
careful to watch the videos closely and see how they work.  In particular, the
keyboard cable has a different socket (the clamp slides out) from others
(where the clamp hinges up).


Next, I installed OpenSuse 12.3 from DVD via a USB player.  That worked fine.
In particular, the suggested disk partition scheme included a Grub EFI (or
simila rnamed - can't remember exactly) boot partition, which is needed
because of secure boot crappiness.


However, once the install finished, I realised that I had no network.

The devices are reported as:

  netbook:/home/andrew # lspci | grep -i net
  02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n 
  Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
  03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8162 Fast 
  Ethernet (rev 10)

The ethernet controller (AR8162) seems to require alx from
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/alx
but I haven't bothered with that yet.

The wifi controller (BCM4313) seemed to auto-detect the b43 module, which
requires firmware.  So I spent some time getting the firmware.  But NO - that
is a red herring.  In fact, that is the wrong driver.  So I blacklisted it in
/etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf and then the brcmsmac module was attempted
(you can see all this in dmesg).

That also needed firmware, which you can get by cloning a git repo as
described http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211 - use a
machine that is connected to the net to clone that and then copy across the
correct directory on a pendrive.

That got wifi working.


Later in the day I realised that the screen brightness was not working - the
screen was at maximum brightness, and the Fn+F5 anf Fn+F6 keys did not change
it.

I cannot get those exact keys to work, but adding
  acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2012\" acpi_backlight=vendor
to the boot parameters (try this at boot time by pressing "e" at the menu and
then add permanently via Yast) got the file 
/sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness working (as root you can "echo" a
value to that file and change the brightness).

With that I wrote these two small scripts:

l7 bin: ls
light-higher  light-lower
l7 bin: cat light-higher
#!/bin/bash
b=`cat /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness`
b=`expr $b + 1`
sudo sh -c "echo $b > /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness"
l7 bin: cat light-lower
#!/bin/bash
b=`cat /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness`
b=`expr $b - 1`
sudo sh -c "echo $b > /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness"

and bound Ctrl-F5 and Ctrl-F6 to those via KDE (system settings).  That lets
me control brightness by pressing those keys.


Andrew