[Partially Solved] Asus 1215B

[manmath]

I just bought an Asus 1215B mini notebook (AMD Fusion C-50 APU). I'd like to know if Mint Katya will work flawlessly on it. As of now on ExpressGate sits on the notebook.

Just being curious I visited Ubuntu forums and came to know Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) has several bad issues from it ranging from suspend problem to non-working hot keys and driver problems. Will Katya resolve the issues when the final hits the doors?

[richyrich]

sure sounds like you are volunteering to share with us your complete hardware info, everything you have tried , and . . . . have you tried turning off your xpressgate ?

or are you just blowing against the wind ?

[manmath]

I disabled expressgate on bios. But on booting expressgate still comes alive. However, after some tinkering I got it boot from mint 10 usb stick. It came up but to my surprise i could find it take proper graphics, resolution and sound.
My question did anybody try Mint Katya RC on Asus 1215B? If so, did it detect and configure all the devices? What I see is Ubuntu 11.04 does not actually work perfectly on it.

[richyrich]

My question did anybody try Mint Katya RC on Asus 1215B? If so, did it detect and configure all the devices? What I see is Ubuntu 11.04 does not actually work perfectly on it.

good luck . . richy

[manmath]

Tried Mint Katya 64-bit. The liveUSB booted just fine, but there were no sounds. Also the video was choppy. Suspend did not work. Jockey prompted for broadcom wl firmware. Hardinfo threw some weird info on this ontario dualcore: one 1Ghz and other 800Mhz (whereas Win 7 shows 2 cores - 1Ghz each).

Sadly, the installation crashed thrice. And I gave up.

Should I try 32-bit edition?

Anybody, with any experience of installing Mint Katya on this device?

Thanks in advance.

PS: This is first time I had failure with Mint. My bad luck.

[nunol]

You are running very recent hardware and the support isn't great but is improving:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... sion&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... ixed&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... _drm&num=1

[manmath]

Did any body try Katya 32-bit on this ( or similar) hardware? If so, what's the experience?

[manmath]

Well, this time I put Mint Katya 32-bit on Asus 1215B. LiveCD booted fine; installation was smooth; no ugly surprises. It detected all the devices including bluetooth, wireless, sound and graphics. Hotkeys for Volume, Brightness and Touchpad work, but wireless/bluetooth and lcd off/on hotkeys don't work. However, there are three major problems:

1. It becomes too hot, also the fan becomes very noisy. Whereas Windows 7 on next partition is quite cool and silent.
2. Graphic performance is very poor on the opensource galium drivers compared to their catalyst counterparts on Windows.
3. Battery drains quite early. Win 7 runs for approx. 7 hours on single charge, but Katya dries up touching 5 hours only.

Otherwise, I am pleased to see the well-thought enhancements and package updates bundled into Katya.
Please help me how to fix those above 3 problems.

[nunol]

1. It becomes too hot, also the fan becomes very noisy. Whereas Windows 7 on next partition is quite cool and silent.

Isn't that the famous kernel bug?
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15943

2. Graphic performance is very poor on the opensource galium drivers compared to their catalyst counterparts on Windows.

Yes it is...
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 2011&num=1

3. Battery drains quite early. Win 7 runs for approx. 7 hours on single charge, but Katya dries up touching 5 hours only.

Isn't that the famous kernel bug again?
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15943

Please help me how to fix those above 3 problems.

You have to go into the Gallium3D code and make it faster then fix the kernel power regression. If you can't do it yourself pay someone to do it for you. If you don't want to or can't pay someone try to help the teams involved in some way. Buying the hardware and talking about it is already something but you still have to wait for better kernel/Gallium3D support and that can take a long time, specially the Gallium3D performance.

[manmath]

Some relief.

I don't know why but after using 3 days the fan has become bit quieter also the heat is tolerable (but hotter than win7).

But other two problems still persist.

[manmath]

After installing fglrx package the graphics performance is somewhat better. but sometimes the screen display is little weird, similar to that of dots blinking on the old analog tv. Also sometimes black strips appear on the panel (here is the screenshot

black strips on panel

Screenshot.png (3.86 KiB) Viewed 5808 times

). Well, i am hoping for some later kernels. Anybody any idea about amd fusion support in the upcoming kernel 3.0? If so, how to compile that on Katya?

[nunol]

The only information I have about the future kernels with AMD drivers is: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=OTU0MA

[manmath]

Well, I am living with those problems. But today I noticed another weird info. My processor is AMD C-50 dual core - each core 1GHz. However, hardinfo (as well as /proc/cpuinfo) displays two cores with different clockrate: 1GHz and the other 800MHz.

Screenshot-Processor - System Information.png (67.47 KiB) Viewed 5785 times

Is the present 2.6.38 kernel unable to detect and utilize AMD Fusion APU well? Or do I need to do something to get the lost 200MHz?

[nunol]

If your CPU doesn't need to work at full throttle it slows down to save energy. That is what you see.

[manmath]

As much as I know hardinfo and /proc/cpuinfo display the number of cores and their clockrate. Not how much cpu is being used at any given time. Am I right?

[nunol]

As much as I know hardinfo and /proc/cpuinfo display the number of cores and their clockrate. Not how much cpu is being used at any given time. Am I right?

Use the cpu frequency scaling monitor to modify your CPU speed and check it. You can also use

Code: Select all

inxi -Cx

[manmath]

I reinstalled Katya again. Then installed fglrx drivers.

Now graphics performance is OK. Though the power usage and heat issues are there, the biggest problems this time is some hotkeys not working. Screen on/off using Fn+F7, and turning on/off Superhybrid using Fn+space are not working.

Anybody, any fix regarding those hotkeys?

[nunol]

I had a similar problem with the Fn keys in my Eee 1001P and was solved with a BIOS update. Do you have the latest BIOS?

[manmath]

Yes I am using the latest BIOS.

[manmath]

Ok. Seems there's no easy fix with the current stack of packages. But I would like to know if Katya will get major updates anytime soon like major kernel updates that will fix the heat, graphics and hotkey problems related to AMD APUs.