Installing linux on Ultranote III 14

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slashinsoulz

New member
I'm looking to buy an ultranote III 14 and installing linux on it. Will I have any problems with it? I heard some laptops are not very compatible with linux.
Is the ultranote compatible, will i have any problems with it?

Specs:
Chassis & Display
UltraNote: 14" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Dual Core Processor i7-6500U (2.50GHz, 3.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB HyperX IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 520 - 1.7GB Max DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Memory - Hard Disk
500GB SEAGATE HYBRID 2.5" SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)

Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Sound Card
Realtek 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
UltraNote III Series 32WH Lithium Ion Battery
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 40W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language
14" ULTRANOTE III SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Quantity
1
 
H

hamamelisuk

Member
I bought an 14" Ultranote III to run Linux and it has surpassed my expectations. Have a look here for my review: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...t-Ultranote-III-Review-and-success-with-Linux
I disabled UEFI & Secure Boot which I have read are a security risk. I believe that using UEFI can make booting almost instantaneous.

Here are some additional points about 14" Unltranote III in addition to the review above. I have been running the Ultranote as described with LinuxMint17.3 for two months now and I am perfectly happy with it. It takes a little longer to boot than I would like. I removed most of KDE except Dolphin file manager, Kate text editor and Klipper clipboard manager and the boot speeded up a bit. I use these 3 KDE applications without the rest of KDE because they are the many in depth features which I like for my data analysis work.

Setup . Started comp and it attempted to boot Windows, I think, PCSpecialist data entry appeared. I think this is a front end to a trial version of some MS Windows, maybe 10, which I do not want as I believe it is a security risk. I investigated UEFI and Secure Boot at http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/principles.html and decided that UEFI was a route down which I did not wish to go.

So, I disabled UEFI and then booted from a USB stick linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso which I had installed on the stick using another computer. There are several install options and eventually I decided to overwrite all the paritions on the disk. These were various large NTFL partitions. So I allowed the installation using the entire M2 480Gb disk with Grub2 as the boot loader. The Untranote rebooted perfectly.
On reboot I installed gparted (kde partition manager is buggy) shrank LinuxMint17.3KDE partition to 30Gb & created 2 more primary partitions and an extended partition which contained several more logical partitions. All were ext4. I did consider encrypting the disk or using LVM but I stuck with conventional separate system (/), home and data partitions. I encrypt data using Truecrypt and Cryptkeeper, an implementation of encfs.

I have been using LinuxMint17.2 on a Samsung Q210 for a number of years and have found that the easiest way of installing all my /, home and data is just to copy these partitions to the new SSD and run grub to detect the operating system. This worked perfectly with the Ultranote. I used a sata to esata connector along with an esata to USB3 convertor.

Next I copied my 3 partitions which I had been using on Samsung Q210 laptop (7 years old): /, home, and data partitions.
Then I installed the latest kernel 4.4.0-18-generic, did grub-update founf LinuxMint17.3KDE partition.
I rebooted and linux looked just like it did on my old laptop with HDMI & VGA monitors. Everything worked as expected. I install KDE but then log into XFCE.

The laptop was about 4 times or more fast than on my Samsung Q210. Virtual box was much faster because previously the processor would not handle hardware virtualisation.

I first installed kernel 3.19 and everything I tried worked, but here is a complete list using 4.4.0-18-generic. PLEASE NOTE that the method described here of just copying the system disk without properly installing the new operating system is not a good idea really. After I have done this I make sure that I reinstall many of the packages in particular anything that will be related to the new drivers that may be required, for example for touchpad, Intel graphics. Some of this will be taken care of by installing the latest kernel. I upgraded to LinuxMint17.3 successfully.

The weight is less than I expected. 1.66kg with battery, M2 and no 2.5” HDD/SSD.
To access the HDD, M2 you need to remove 18 screws. PCS says in their FAQ that this will not invalidate the warranty although the User Manual supplied on disk says that it may. The memory is accessed by lifting the keyboard, 3 screws. You can get a Service Manual on web – the machine is Clevo N240NJ – it is marked on a sticker on back.

What works:
LAN & WiFi – perfectly out of the box.
Webcam works as expected with Cheese.
Touchpad - SynPS/2 Synaptics. Vertical edge scroll works. 2 finger vertical & horizontal scroll work. Not sure about circular scroll or horizontal edge.

Playback sound works fine.

Keyboard:
There are no indicator lights for Caps Lock etc lights so you have to use other means to check if the Caps/Num Lock in on when you log in.

Fn Keys:
Fn + ¬ Play Pause - works with VLC
Fn + ! Fan control – toggles full speed fan - works
Fn + F1 Thouchpad toggle - does not work
Fn + F2 Turn LCD backlight on/off - works
Fn + F3 Mute toggle - works
Fn + F4 No function
Fn + F5/6 Vol increase/decrease - works
Fn + F7 Display toggle - calls display manager
Fn + F8/9 Brightness increase/decrease - works
Fn + F10 PC Camera Power - turns off while in Cheese. Restart Cheese to start camera.
Fn + F11 Airplane Mode toggle - does not seem to work – light does not change
Fn + F12 Sleep toggle - works and HDMI, VGA & laptop screens all come alive after resumeing.
Fn + NumLock - Works as expected
Fn + ScrollLock - I'm not sure what this does.
Fn + Esc Control Center Toggle - Appears to do nothing

Graphics.
VLC & Gnome MPlayer work fine. To get full screen zoom to work on VLC change Tools>Preferences>Video>Output to X11. Automatic or OpenGl does not work and the menus are hidden by the movie image. Same for Gnome MPlayer. KDE DragonPlayer does not seem to allow video output to be choosen. Gnome Media Player did not work at all.

Intel HD Graphics 520 driver - BEWARE if using distrbution based on 14.04LTS in my case LinuxMint17.3:
I use the default Nouveau default graphics driver which works perfectly with ARandR to control 2 monitors, one VGA and the other HDMI, and the laptop display at 1920x1080 all simultaneously with the desktop stretching over all three. I understand that there may be issues with some games which I do not play.
There is no Intel 520 driver that is compatible with 14.04LTS see the explanation https://01.org/comment/2141#comment-2141 or https://01.org/linuxgraphics/forum/graphics-installer-discussions/do-not-use-ubuntu-14.04

Keyboard
I found the spacebar keystrokes dropped I think the key was not bedded in properly because after some very firm pressure on it it started working fine.

Power & Battery.
The charger is a simple centre connector. So any 19V laptop adapter is likely to work. The power connector appears to be 4.75mm with 1.7mm centre +ve pin, length 10.5mm rated at 2.1A, 40W. This should have a yellow tip with a tiny spring contact for the centre pin. However, a regular black tip of the 4.8mm 1.7mm length 9mm is too loose.
The powerpack is fine with the battery removed from the laptop.
Power consumption on battery can be easily reduced in two ways. 1. Temporarily with powertop or 2. on each boot by using tlp.
1. powertop
Run 'sudo powertop' and you will be able to see the device consumption. It you run 'sudo powertop --auto-tune' all the power saving features which it can find till be applied: 'Bad' becomes 'Good'. In my case this reduced the power consumption dramatically by over about 40%. However if I ran KDE fully installed, even with Xfce as the desktop, the screen starte to flicker and I tracked this down to 'Enable SATA link power management for host0'. If this is selected and set back to 'Bad' the flickering stopped. This increased the power consumption by a small amount. The same may apply to host1 & host2 on your machine but on mine setting them to Bad had no effect on display flickering but did increase the power consumption farther.
Every time that you boot you will have to repeat the above procedure which can get tiresome. So I found I could use TLP instead.
2. TLP
When TLP is installed it sets itself up to minimise power consumption on the next boot. This worked fine out of the box without KDE installed. However, the consumption can be reduced by switching off networking, wifi and bluetooth all of which is explained in the user configuration manual of TLP.
With KDE only the screen started to flicker as described above. So edited config file '/etc/default/tlp' and commenting '#SATA_LINKPWR_ON_BAT=min_power'. The above parameter can be set to 'medium_power' which uses less power than 'max_performance'.
The file /etc/default/tlp is filled with helpful comments which will tell you how to use it. NB Make a backup first before you change anything.
TLP is called automatically on each boot - check it was works as by calling powertop from the terminal.

Bluetooth
I found that bluetooth used about 1W of power. However, under MintLinux or Ubuntu apparently there is a bug and disabling bluetooth in powertop or TLP will not be successful. In Xfce I found it necessary to install bluemon and to add 'rfkill block bluetooth' to /etc/rc.local. I understand that this may not be ideal way of solving this problem but it was the only solution that I could find. It appeared to have no unwantedconsequences. See http://itsfoss.com/turn-off-bluetooth-by-default-in-ubuntu-14-04/

Ethernet & WiFi.
These use about 1W each and I turn them off using the applet Disable Networking. NB Disable WiFi first then Networking, otherwise the WiFi continues to be powered and cannot be seen because networking is disabled.

Display Brightness
On maximum brightness the screen consumes 7W and on minimum which I find easily usable, powertop reports using about 10% of that.
 
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