Lafite 13.3 Touchpad
- Thread starter kro55bow
- Start date
Miblo
New member
Hey, kro55bow, I haven't got as far as that but maybe this could help you. I'm still trying to troubleshoot my graphics configuration. Did you have anything like this early on? Also, did you start afresh with your partitions or keep the pre-installed stuff? I'd be heartened to hear you started afresh.
Great to see another Lafité-owning Linux user.
Great to see another Lafité-owning Linux user.
Miblo,
I had no issues with graphics. Everything worked out of the box. Even got some of the native steam games working.
I had a read of your post and no i didnt have any boot time graphics issues either. I can also confirm i am using UEFI boot with secure boot turned on. For reference as i think i posted before, i am using Fedora 21 with KDE Plasma 5.2
In terms of partitions, i blew everything away when i installed and went from a clean start. This was all done in anaconda, which does simplify matters somewhat.
kro55bow
Miblo
New member
This is brilliant news! Thanks so much for letting me know. I'll give the Fedora 21 with KDE live image a spin.
One more question, if you wouldn't mind: when I first booted up, I arrived at a screen asking for a windows activation key which I had to skip, and then the screen after that asking me to accept some sort of microsoft agreement. I didn't accept or read it but did a hard reboot (the only option was to accept…). Did you accept this? I'm still figuring out how UEFI works and don't know whether accepting that agreement has any bearing on the UEFI stuff and what ends up in the NVRAM, but if you didn't accept it then I can be pretty sure we're probably in very similar positions, and that my problem isn't with UEFI after all. A slight concern for me is that you didn't have any of the graphics issues. (i7-5500U here, if that's different.)
Okay, final question: you had any luck with your trackpad? I finally managed to get to a properly rendered X thanks to GParted Live (albeit booted in Legacy mode, if that makes much difference) and its "Forcevideo" script and found that the right hand side of the trackpad button acted as right-click and, like you say, two-finger tapping doing the same. The right hand edge of the pad itself gave me vertical scrolling. Are you missing that? I'll be trying to get horizontal and circular scrolling going when the time comes.
P.S. Tech support has told me that Linux can't be installed because it requires Legacy boot and that this motherboard doesn't have that option, so… yeah.
The Microsoft agreement is to do with the remains of whatever OS was used to do the testing in QC at PCS i suspect. I did the same ass you, it will have no bearing on UEFI. UEFI is a different method of booting, so is distinct from the Microsoft stuff. Using an OS that supports UEFI as Fedora does, and then inspecting the boot partition should give you some ideas as to what is different (there will be a /boot/efi directory with an efi boot image). Fedora supports UEFI so its installer works all that out, I am unsure as to why there would be graphics glitches though. Fedora also supports secure boot, so that's another thing you can turn on if you are so inclined. I have the i5-5200, which used the HD5500 graphics chip.
Trackpad i have had no real 'joy' with. Admittedly it works, and i get vertical scrolling on the right etc, but not having discrete left and right nuttons and having the trackpad sense over the click part is a little irritating. That minor for me, as mostly it will be connected to a KVM.
I have been booting linux on UEFI for some time now, most of the distros have caught up (and i am typing this on the Lafite with Fedora, so clearly it does work). There was some issue with secure boot, in that distros had to get a signed key into the trusted part of the BIOS which cost some money. Of course Microsoft has their keys already pre trusted as part of the Windows logo requirement. The solution is to boot without secure boot, simple. but as you are able to boot an image, either you have sorted that part out, or your OS also supports secure boot.
Happy to help.
KB
I recently bought a Lafite 13.3" too (i7-5500U), but i've opted to put Ubuntu 14.04 on.
Linux (at least Ubuntu) had UEFI support soon after motherboards started using UEFI :s
No issues so far apart from the basic touchpad functionality (v-scrolling on the right and right click with two fingers) you've already mentioned and the occasional graphical bugs where there's artefacts left on the screen. I can imagine these will fixed in a future version of the kernel as we are using very new hardware.
I spent most of my day yesterday googling around and trying various things and it appears to be kernel related, so i've filed a bug report on lauchpad for the touchpad here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-lts-utopic/+bug/1424293
I'd recommend filing bug reports for Fedora as well.
Linux (at least Ubuntu) had UEFI support soon after motherboards started using UEFI :s
No issues so far apart from the basic touchpad functionality (v-scrolling on the right and right click with two fingers) you've already mentioned and the occasional graphical bugs where there's artefacts left on the screen. I can imagine these will fixed in a future version of the kernel as we are using very new hardware.
I spent most of my day yesterday googling around and trying various things and it appears to be kernel related, so i've filed a bug report on lauchpad for the touchpad here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-lts-utopic/+bug/1424293
I'd recommend filing bug reports for Fedora as well.
wittyusername
Member
Hi!
My PCS Lafite arrived today, and I'm running linux.
Two things:
- Does anyone else's touchpad wobble? Mine seems a bit loose, there's about 1mm of play in it, particularly on the side furthest from the keyboard.
- Thanks for filing the bug report VJftw. I had a similar issue with my previous laptop (which had an ALPS touchpad), I assume the problem is that there's no kernel driver, so it defaults to behaving like a PS/2 mouse. The fix is basically for someone with this touchpad to write a driver for it...
My PCS Lafite arrived today, and I'm running linux.
Two things:
- Does anyone else's touchpad wobble? Mine seems a bit loose, there's about 1mm of play in it, particularly on the side furthest from the keyboard.
- Thanks for filing the bug report VJftw. I had a similar issue with my previous laptop (which had an ALPS touchpad), I assume the problem is that there's no kernel driver, so it defaults to behaving like a PS/2 mouse. The fix is basically for someone with this touchpad to write a driver for it...
wittyusername
Member
I tried ubuntu 14.10 live on mine.
Everything runs smoothly, touchpad works with 2 finger right click and edge scrolling.
Graphics seem to be fine and 1080p youtube is silky smooth.
Thinking of ditching win 8.1 and going full ubuntu on mine.
Best part is, that display scaling works and doesn't blur text.
Edit: I have Intel 3160 wifi, works out of the box)
Everything runs smoothly, touchpad works with 2 finger right click and edge scrolling.
Graphics seem to be fine and 1080p youtube is silky smooth.
Thinking of ditching win 8.1 and going full ubuntu on mine.
Best part is, that display scaling works and doesn't blur text.
Edit: I have Intel 3160 wifi, works out of the box)
I don't think PCS can do anything about it, its the design that's at fault. I took the laptop apart just to check what the issue is, there are 2 plastic springs that push the trackpad up and they just push too hard creating room between the clickthing and the pad. You can try pushing the pad down hard for a few seconds, in my case this fixes the issue for about 5 minutes..
wittyusername
Member
I put about a thin bit of plastic between the battery and the touchpad. It pushes the plastic backing (but not the springs) up just enough to stop the wobble. I used 3 layers of phone screen protector glued together, an old credit card or similar would probably do the trick too.
Cant thank you enough dude! It's like magic, there's no more play between the layers. Whats more is the touch pad's now flush with the rest of the body and 110% better.
wittyusername
Member
Cant thank you enough dude! It's like magic, there's no more play between the layers. Whats more is the touch pad's now flush with the rest of the body and 110% better.
Nice! Glad it worked. I wasn't brave enough to put tape in there though, I'm hoping that the battery will hold it in place so I can remove it if necessary.
Thanks! It seems to work, I hope it holds. It seems that the plastic and the touchpad were glued together and mine came loose everytime I pressed the left button. I used a credit card and placed it somewhat to the left side in order to prevent it from letting loose again. I used some tape too as it seemed there was more than enough space. As a result the right side still has some room left but its not as wobbly anymore. Thanks again!
Weird. I've tried multiple flavours of Linux (live usb and install) and I still have an issue with the graphics display. It flickers / slow to respond - didn't seem to have the problem with the pre-installed version of Windows for validating the build.
Anyone have any ideas as to what the cause is? Anything that needs to be tweaked in the BIOS? I really don't want to have to resort to using Windows.
13.3" Lafite, i5 5200U, 8GB, INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 5500, 250GB 850 Samsung
Anyone have any ideas as to what the cause is? Anything that needs to be tweaked in the BIOS? I really don't want to have to resort to using Windows.
13.3" Lafite, i5 5200U, 8GB, INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 5500, 250GB 850 Samsung
Just want to add my two cents. Just installed openSUSE 13.2 and everything works flawlessly. No graphical gitches, no wifi issues (using ACL), no issues whatsoever. This is actually pretty surprising as getting the MBA 5,2 to work with it was a nightmare (particularly the wireless). If you're having some graphical glitches, maybe try out a distribution with a later kernel, or upgrade your kernel in ubuntu? I'm on 3.16.6-2 and it's working really well.