Asus X42J new laptop with intel i5

[wayne128]

Here is a new laptop someone bought.
As I am helping out to setup, I took opportunity to see how Linux might work.

This partition is unique.. at least for the first time, I see something that had been setup with both primary and logical partition. Unlike some manufacturer who made its laptops used up four primary (!!)

sda1 is hidden, for recovery.. Just finished burning 4 DVDs.
sda2 is Win7 OS
sda5 in logical partition is data partition.


mint mint # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x98b324f9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 2805 22531131 1c Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 * 2806 18005 122094000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 18006 60802 343759872 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 18006 60802 343758848 7 HPFS/NTFS


mint mint # parted -l
Model: ATA ST9500325AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 23.1GB 23.1GB primary fat32 hidden, lba
2 23.1GB 148GB 125GB primary ntfs boot
3 148GB 500GB 352GB extended lba
5 148GB 500GB 352GB logical ntfs


So here I would be trying out shrink its sda5 to give a bit of space for testing..


mint mint # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 18)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 18)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 06)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 06)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 6760
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Device aa98
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
07:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller (rev 80)
07:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller (rev 80)
07:00.5 Ethernet controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMC250 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
3f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 05)
3f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 05)
3f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 05)
3f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 05)
3f:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05)
3f:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05)

[wayne128]

With Mint10 on USB prepared by unetbootin, using gparted to shrink sda5, create new ext4 partition and swap, now it looks like

wayne-K42JY wayne # parted -l
Model: ATA ST9500325AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 23.1GB 23.1GB primary fat32 hidden, lba
2 23.1GB 148GB 125GB primary ntfs boot
3 148GB 500GB 352GB extended lba
5 148GB 466GB 318GB logical ntfs
6 466GB 496GB 29.3GB logical ext4
7 496GB 500GB 4524MB logical linux-swap(v1)


Run installer, this time I do not install Grub on MBR, but just install on its boot partition sda6. Later on I shall try using EasyBCD to see how easy is the boot loader.

After installation complete, reboot to confirm it starts with Win7, Win7 starts with file checking, when complete, it restarts and run win 7 OS.

SO I download EasyBCD, install , Add Entry for Linux OS, let Win7 be default OS.

Reboot, and see it works for both Win7 and Linux OS..

That means it is quite easy to install EasyBCD and click click, no need for command lines, it helps people who are not used to terminal.

Then, when reboot to Mint10, it run with low resolution, 1024x768. Not nice, it seems default graphic seems not supporting this hardware.

After activating wireless, wait for a while, the proprietary drive installation message and Icon appears, so go ahead to install ATI driver.

to be continued...

[wayne128]

After ATI driver installation, reboot to Mint 10

This time, display is default at 1366x768, nice looking graphic on 14 in screen.

Mint10 works!

Repeat key points

1. Asus hard disk partition scheme is 'friendly' to Linux OS installation.
compare that to those manufacturer that used 4 primary partitions!

2. EasyBCD is easy to install in win7, requires no command line, easy for many people to handle dual boot or multiboot.

3.. this laptop is very fast with i5 and 4G RAM
pae kernel is set up by default

wayne-K42JY wayne # uname -r
2.6.35-22-generic-pae

Here I just paste some more information. May be this can help people who might consider Asus X42J laptop with intel i5 CPU

wayne-K42JY wayne # lscpu
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
CPU(s): 4
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 2
CPU socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 37
Stepping: 5
CPU MHz: 1199.000
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 256K
L3 cache: 3072K



running for about one hour.. sensor checking :

wayne-K42JY wayne # sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +47.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)

[wayne128]

just to continue some test on this new laptop.

so I create one more partition to test out Mint 11

installation goes well. graphic works well out of the box with max resolution, no need to install driver.

during installation , one not too good thing is, laptop is very hot, sensors reaches 60+ degC.. bad especially when running Mint 10 for hour with 47 deg c.

now, reboot to Mint10, update-grub to get Mint11 into grub menu, reboot to run mint 11.

all is well, but then it is just too hot, with running only firefox to post on this topic.

wayne@wayne ~ $ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +58.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)

radeon-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1: +63.5°C

this is almost the end of Mint 11 test, not wanting to cook and compromise reliability.