{"id":318,"date":"2011-11-12T09:41:17","date_gmt":"2011-11-12T14:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/djcp\/?p=318"},"modified":"2011-11-15T09:38:07","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T14:38:07","slug":"kubuntu-11-10-on-the-acer-aspire-timelinex-4830tg-6450","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/2011\/11\/kubuntu-11-10-on-the-acer-aspire-timelinex-4830tg-6450\/","title":{"rendered":"Kubuntu 11.10 on the Acer Aspire Timelinex AS4830tg-6450"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Synopsis:<\/strong> The info below should tell you most of what you need to get <a href=\"http:\/\/kubuntu.org\">kubuntu 11.10<\/a>\u00a0working on the <a href=\"http:\/\/us.acer.com\/ac\/en\/US\/content\/model\/LX.RGL02.119\">Acer Aspire Timelinex AS4830-tg 6450<\/a>, which currently has an MSRP of $729 USD but can be found cheaper through some retailers.\u00a0It&#8217;s working great! I don&#8217;t see why they wouldn&#8217;t work for a normal <a href=\"http:\/\/ubuntu.com\">ubuntu 11.10<\/a>\u00a0install. \u00a0These instructions should be valid for similarly kitted Acer Timelinex laptops too, like the\u00a0<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;\">AS3830TG-6424, the\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;\">AS5830TG-6402 and other models with optimus switchable graphics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Fear not! It is easier to get this machine working than the length of my instructions would imply.<\/p>\n<h2>Details<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;ve gotten <a href=\"http:\/\/kubuntu.org\">Kubuntu 11.10<\/a> working with pretty much everything that I care about, including the full power-saving capabilities of the hardware. I get more than 7 hours on the battery. Notes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Download and write kubuntu 11.10 to a usb stick, instructions elsewhere. I&#8217;m using the 64bit flavor and it&#8217;s wonderful.<\/li>\n<li><strong>HDD:<\/strong> Make some room on the hard drive for your linux install by shrinking the largest windows partition. I did this through windows, but whatever makes you happy. Leave the space unallocated, you&#8217;ll partition it through the kubuntu install process.<\/li>\n<li><strong>BIOS updates:<\/strong> Reboot, going into the BIOS by pressing <strong>f2<\/strong>\u00a0during the POST. Change the boot priority to use the USB device, or enable the &#8220;boot menu via <strong>f12<\/strong>&#8221;\u00a0option that&#8217;s in there.While you&#8217;re in the BIOS, switch the graphics to &#8220;integrated.&#8221; This will power down the nvidia GPU and lead to some pretty major power savings.Yeah, this kinda sucks, but switchable graphics through ironhide is just not there yet. I was able to get it working (for some values of &#8220;working&#8221;) but it was VERY quirky to the point of being unusable. \u00a0Don&#8217;t get me wrong, the ironhide\/bumblebee folks have done some great work and I&#8217;m looking forward to full optimus support in the near future.This BIOS change means if you want to use the nvidia GPU under windows that you&#8217;ll need to go into the BIOS during a reboot and change back to &#8220;switchable.&#8221; That&#8217;s a fine compromise as far as I&#8217;m concerned (98% of my time is in linux, I only use windows for games), and the fact that Acer makes this a BIOS option is great &#8211; my Asus 1215n didn&#8217;t have this option so the nvidia GPU was always on.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Install!<\/strong>\u00a0Boot to your USB stick. Your wifi and ethernet cards should be recognized without a problem. You should probably leave the 18gb and 100mb recovery partitions alone so you can factory-reset the machine easily should you decide to sell it later on.\u00a0I created a 35gb\u00a0<strong>\/<\/strong>\u00a0partition, 5 gb swap and 240gb\u00a0<strong>\/home<\/strong>,\u00a0but go with what you like. After the installation is complete, you have a few more linux-level tweaks to implement.<\/li>\n<li><strong>kernel boot options: <\/strong>edit <strong>\/etc\/default\/grub,<\/strong>\u00a0and change\u00a0GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT to be:<br \/>\n<strong>GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=&#8221;quiet splash pcie_aspm=force acpi_osi=Linux i915.i915_enable_rc6=1&#8243;<\/strong><br \/>\nThis will light up a bunch of hotkeys and power management features. Update grub after making this change, via &#8220;sudo update-grub&#8221;. Reboot. Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linlap.com\/wiki\/acer+aspire+4830tg+timelinex\">this page<\/a>\u00a0for the boot options.<\/li>\n<li><strong>cpufreqd<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; install it. This will clock down your CPU according to different profiles and lead to <strong>major\u00a0<\/strong>power savings.The default cpufreqd config needs tweaking, as it&#8217;s really not optimized well for the full capabilities of the linux kernel\/i5 hardware combo. I really, really like the &#8220;ondemand&#8221; governor as it means a cooler running system that&#8217;ll use the full capabilities of your CPU when needed. I suggest changing every <strong>&#8220;policy=&#8221;<\/strong> in <strong>\/etc\/cpufreqd.conf<\/strong>\u00a0to &#8220;ondemand&#8221; and every <strong>&#8220;minfreq=&#8221; <\/strong>and <strong>&#8220;maxfreq=&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0setting to 0% and 100% respectively.You can tweak cpufreqd.conf endlessly, but these minor changes make a HUGE difference with no noticeable impact on performance. Reboot the cpufreqd daemon after changing the config file, of course.<\/li>\n<li><strong>KDE changes:<br \/>\nEffects:<\/strong>Go into &#8220;System Settings -&gt; Desktop Effects -&gt; Advanced&#8221; and switch the compositing type to &#8220;XRender&#8221;. This will give you access to a significant number of effects that work pretty well under the intel integrated gpu.<strong>Nepomuk:<\/strong>\u00a0Go into &#8220;System Settings -&gt; Desktop Search&#8221; and disable Nepomuk (boo!). You may not need to do this, but I&#8217;ve found it&#8217;s just too large a resource hog for me to keep it enabled. This is probably because I have a huge $HOME directory with a bajillion text files for my development projects along with three very large email accounts. Nepomuk just never seems to stop indexing and I definitely notice the load. Additionally, shutting down Nepomuk means that pulseaudio works better &#8211; I&#8217;m guessing because pulse isn&#8217;t getting CPU\/io starved because of nepomuk&#8217;s endless indexing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it! You&#8217;ll have a blazingly fast linux laptop that&#8217;ll run over 7 hours on the battery and that weighs less than 5 lbs. I bought mine for $729 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\">newegg.com<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; this is a great value for a laptop that just oozes quality. If \/ when I start to feel performance constrained I plan on getting an intel 320 series SSD drive to replace the 5400rpm western digital it comes with.<\/p>\n<h2>What&#8217;s working<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Most hotkeys<\/li>\n<li>Powersaving: &gt; 7 hours(!)<\/li>\n<li>Sound, including speakers (some folks reported that as a problem). I have had sound lockups that&#8217;re fixed by just suspending \/ awakening the laptop &#8211; but since I disabled nepomuk they&#8217;ve mostly gone away.<\/li>\n<li>Card reader<\/li>\n<li>DVD drive<\/li>\n<li>Networking &#8211; wifi and ethernet<\/li>\n<li>Suspend<\/li>\n<li>Multitouch on the pointing device.<\/li>\n<li>Fan speed &#8211; others reported that as a problem, I&#8217;ve not seen it.<\/li>\n<li>Dual boot<\/li>\n<li>webcam (trying opening the \/dev\/video0 capture device via vlc)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What isn&#8217;t<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Widi<\/li>\n<li>Nvidia GPU acceleration under linux.<\/li>\n<li>The windows key (probably just need to map it to something)<\/li>\n<li>Hibernate &#8211; but who cares with working suspend and a pretty fast boot time?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What&#8217;s not been tested<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>USB power-off charging<\/li>\n<li>Microphone &#8211; internal or external<\/li>\n<li>HDMI out (probably won&#8217;t work, if it&#8217;s like other optimus devices)<\/li>\n<li><del>VGA out (probably will work, if it&#8217;s like other optimus laptops)<\/del><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>** UPDATE **<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>VGA out works perfectly under the intel video drivers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Synopsis: The info below should tell you most of what you need to get kubuntu 11.10\u00a0working on the Acer Aspire Timelinex AS4830-tg 6450, which currently has an MSRP of $729 USD but can be found cheaper through some retailers.\u00a0It&#8217;s working &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/2011\/11\/kubuntu-11-10-on-the-acer-aspire-timelinex-4830tg-6450\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1984,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17319,17297,17318,1100,17320,1835],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acer","tag-debian","tag-kubuntu","tag-linux","tag-timelinex","tag-ubuntu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1984"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/djcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}