Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

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gogolink
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Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by gogolink »

I recently bought an ASUS x205ta in the hope of replacing Windows with Mint 17.1 Cinnamon, but as I'm looking around on the web, the task now seems more daunting to me than I had thought, and I'm considering returning the machine. But perhaps I can get some good advice here?

Has anyone had success setting up the ASUS x205ta with Linux Mint?

The problem apparently is that the computer requires a UEFI 32 bit boot loader. (There is a thread on the 32 bit boot option here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=184140)

A second problem is hardware support, in particular the wireless driver.

It seems that a bunch of people have managed to install Ubuntu 14.10 on the machine, mostly following these instructions: https://github.com/lopaka/instructions/ ... -x205ta.md. I think that in those instructions, only the step "Prepare the USB flashdrive to be used as the install media" is specific to Ubuntu, and I could create a Mint live USB instead, and otherwise follow the instructions; is that correct?

Has anyone been able to get wireless working on this machine?
There is a discussion of the hardware problems under Ubuntu 14.10 here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... st13175009

I'd appreciate any help or advice. Before I start trying out things myself (I'm not a techie, and fear that I could get into a big mess and then may find it hard to return the machine should I decide to do so), I'd like to have a better sense of my chances of success.
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Andreasx250

Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by Andreasx250 »

How does your plan works? I will get my x250 device next week and also want to use the mint 17.1 any more.
AndreasPy

Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by AndreasPy »

I was able to install Mint-Linux 17 on my ASUS x205ta, and the instructions on

https://github.com/lopaka/instructions/ ... -x205ta.md

were very helpful for this. However, with some obstacles to overcome:

1) generate the Linux-Mint boot USB stick with a bootia32.efi file
in a 'efi/boot' directory on that stick
(disable secure boot in the BIOS)
2) in the Mint Live environment, install Mint Linux as usual. When remembering
correctly, Mint Linux correctly detects the UEFI partition and that should not
be modified, of course. What I did, however, was to remove completely
Windows8.1...
3) Unfortunately, the installation does not finish. I do not remember what the error
message was, but I am relatively sure that it was simply that Mint required
an additional package form the net, namely grub-efi-ia32. So that needs to be
installed by hand.
4) At this stage, grub is not correctly installed and a reboot leads one to the grub>
prompt (follow the steps in the above given web page to load the kernel, etc.).
What needs to be done then is to run 'grub-mkconfig' and copy the result 'grub.cfg'
to the /boot/grub directory.
5) With this, the Linux-Mint17 can be booted. The problem(s) that remains is the
hardware support (sound, power control, Wifi, MicroSD card reader). To solve at least
most of the problems, the following instructions (for DebianLinux) are very helpful:
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA
6) Before following these steps, however, I first installed the newest LinuxKernel
from www.kernel.org (some 4.0.0... version, certainly the newest stable release
4.03 will do, too). By this step, already the power control problem could be solved.
For the other hard ware problems, except audio, the recipes from the above web page
can be used.

So after 1)-6) everything works, except sound.
Leuchtenberger

Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by Leuchtenberger »

Could you fix the sound? Windows 10 runs on my device :(
Berg

Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by Berg »

I just installed the latest Mint on a x205ta. The previous posts (here and elsewhere on Ubuntu forums) were very helpful. The thing that really saved me from disaster was to have ethernet on the box via a USB docking station, otherwise I don't quite see how I could have managed to make the new grub conf and to update the kernel (which I did after having installed the KernelUpdate tool) which is necessary to get the wifi working. Also, be careful with the new installed kernels, there are a few marked as "low latency" or something, so don't boot into those because they make the laptop impossibly slow.
linxmintq
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Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by linxmintq »

gogolink wrote:I recently bought an ASUS x205ta in the hope of replacing Windows with Mint 17.1 Cinnamon, but as I'm looking around on the web, the task now seems more daunting to me than I had thought, and I'm considering returning the machine. But perhaps I can get some good advice here?

Has anyone had success setting up the ASUS x205ta with Linux Mint?
Linux Mint, install successfully without complications in 64-bit architecture with UEFI secure boot enabled, the system recognized all the hardware and I did not have to do anything. If you are interested, read this link and take their precautions and risks.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=201068
Brn

Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by Brn »

Disable secure boot in the BIOS (F2), prepare the USB flashdrive and install Linux Mint 18.1 in 32-bit architecture with UEFI.

The system recognized all the hardware except sound card (I don't attempt experimental kernel changes) :
https://github.com/lopaka/instructions/ ... -x205ta.md

Warning : replace /mnt destination by /mnt/sdb1 if others disks are mounted on /mnt/...

Code: Select all

++  [ -d /mnt/sdb1 ] || mkdir /mnt/sdb1

--  mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt
++  mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

--  7z x ubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso -o/mnt/
++  7z x linuxmint-18.1-mate-32bit.iso -o/mnt/sdb1

--  apt -y install git bison libopts25 libselinux1-dev autogen m4 autoconf help2man libopts25-dev flex libfont-freetype-perl automake autotools-dev libfreetype6-dev texinfo
++  apt-get -y install git bison libopts25 libselinux1-dev autogen m4 autoconf help2man libopts25-dev flex libfont-freetype-perl automake autotools-dev libfreetype6-dev texinfo

Code: Select all

--  cp bootia32.efi /mnt/EFI/BOOT/
++  cp bootia32.efi /mnt/sdb1/EFI/BOOT/

--  umount /mnt
--  umount /mnt/sdb1
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JerryF
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Re: Installing Mint 17.1 on an ASUS x205ta?

Post by JerryF »

Just a note:

This is an old post.
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