Linux Mint 18 on ASUS laptop

[raro]

hi, a couple of issues. 

 

I installed LM 18 on an ASUS K456U laptop. Overall very happy, but some hardware issues:

 

1. Touchpad cannot be configured. It is on and stays on, whatever you do with the settings.
2. External monitor not detected. This worked under LM17.3 which I had on the same machine before.
3. Bluetooth seems to work but it cannot detect any devices and vv other devices cannot detect my laptop. 

 

[doctormann]

Raro, this may not help but could be worth a thought.

 

I have an HP Desktop machine that functioned perfectly with Mint 17.3.  I installed Mint 18 64-bit Cinnamon when that became available and had all sorts of problems - ethernet didn't work and it was a real struggle getting wifi to work as well.  Some applications no longer worked and several had disappeared from the Software Manager and from Synaptic altogether.  It began to seem as though the Mint development guys had shot themselves in the foot!

 

Anyway, what I did was to install Linux Kernel 4.6, which was not the one that came as standard with the Mint 18 installation.  Unless things have changed, you can't find this kernel in the Update Manager.  However, it is one of the kernels that Ubuntu 16.04 uses so it is available.  If you do a Google you will find the files that you need to download and install.

 

Here is a link to the procedure. 

 

https://mintguide.org/system/606-install-linux-kernel-4-6-stable-on-linux-mint.html

 

Once the new kernel was installed,  the ethernet and wifi problems went away.  Didn't help with the missing applications though but, in general, you can always find alternatives.

 

It may do nothing for you but you would lose nothing apart from a bit of time - you can always revert to your current kernel if things screw up.

 

Good luck.

 

DM

 

[manfredtillmann]

my take: same advice as for all the windows people: if it works and does what you want - why 'upgrade'?

running mint 17.3 (i think) on my Toshiba laptop and some years old ubuntu on my office computers.

and everything is just super - smooth.

[doctormann]

48 minutes ago, manfredtillmann said:

my take: same advice as for all the windows people: if it works and does what you want - why 'upgrade'?

running mint 17.3 (i think) on my Toshiba laptop and some years old ubuntu on my office computers.

and everything is just super - smooth.

 

Yes, quite right, I would have been better off sticking with 17.3 which, in my opinion, has been the best Mint distribution to date.  I don't really think that 18 offers any real benefits and it does seem to have lost its way a little bit.  I still have 17.3 on my Lenovo laptop and have no plans to install 18 on there.  Maybe 18.1 will fix some problems but that remains to be seen.

 

DM

 

[manfredtillmann]

11 hours ago, doctormann said:

 

Yes, quite right, I would have been better off sticking with 17.3 which, in my opinion, has been the best Mint distribution to date.  I don't really think that 18 offers any real benefits and it does seem to have lost its way a little bit.  I still have 17.3 on my Lenovo laptop and have no plans to install 18 on there.  Maybe 18.1 will fix some problems but that remains to be seen.

 

DM

 

thank you, your post help me, any i suppose some others here, to decide what to do regarding 18.

have a great weekend

cheers

mft

 

[Gary A]

I had Windows 10 on my under powered HP Mini. It worked but was a little glitchy and quite slow.  A friend of mine bought a new computer with no operating system. His old computer died from a motherboard failure. He had been using Mint 15 and was happy with it  I tried to be tricky and put his old hard drive in the new computer. No luck. It wouldn't boot. I went ahead and put Mint 17.3 on it and he is quite happy. His new computer has 4 GB of RAM and an i3 processor. It is pretty fast with 17.3.

 

Mint 17.3 looked pretty good so I went ahead and installed it on the HP Mini. It seems faster than Windows 10 but is certainly no speed demon. The question is whether I would be happier with one of the Puppy Linux or other light versions? Is it worth the hassle to make the change? I should add that I know very little about Linux systems. My laptop has the latest Ubuntu and it runs pretty well. The laptop is an Acer Aspire 4253 with AMD and an SSD.

[doctormann]

6 minutes ago, Gary A said:

I had Windows 10 on my under powered HP Mini. It worked but was a little glitchy and quite slow.  A friend of mine bought a new computer with no operating system. His old computer died from a motherboard failure. He had been using Mint 15 and was happy with it  I tried to be tricky and put his old hard drive in the new computer. No luck. It wouldn't boot. I went ahead and put Mint 17.3 on it and he is quite happy. His new computer has 4 GB of RAM and an i3 processor. It is pretty fast with 17.3.

 

Mint 17.3 looked pretty good so I went ahead and installed it on the HP Mini. It seems faster than Windows 10 but is certainly no speed demon. The question is whether I would be happier with one of the Puppy Linux or other light versions? Is it worth the hassle to make the change? I should add that I know very little about Linux systems. My laptop has the latest Ubuntu and it runs pretty well. The laptop is an Acer Aspire 4253 with AMD and an SSD.

 

Actually very little hassle to try some other distributions from 'live' USB sticks - nothing gets changed on the hard drive unless you decide to go ahead and install the OS on the drive.  That is pretty painless - you can install as a dual or multi-boot system if you want.  If you use something like the 'Multiboot' USB tool you can even have several distributions on one stick.

 

CAVEAT:  you will not get a true representation of the speed of a Linux OS by running it off a USB stick.  An installed system will run much faster.  What you can check though is if you like the look and feel of a distribution and, of course, you can check its compatibility with your particular hardware.

 

DM

 

 

 

 

[RKASA]

If you want faster running tests of distributions install virtualbox and install the OS as a .vdi (virtual hard drive) file and it will run almost at full speed.  You also don't have to burn a disk or install to a flash drive - it will install to a virtual drive which is just a file (does not change your HD) and installs directly from the downloaded ISO file as it also has a virtual CD drive to install from (no media needed) to install.  Helps if you have 8gb of ram as you can assign 4 to the virtual PC and keep 4 for the host, but have run most linux with just a split of 4gb also.  If you don't like the distro, then just delete the virtual machine and try another.  In many cases depending on what your using it (linux) for - there is no reason to run it other then in virtualbox anyway as it will be more then fast enough for general internet use no matter which browser or p2p etc you use.

[Gary A]

I was able to put Puppy on a memory stick and while it may be fast, I just don't like it. Lubuntu is a pretty big download but I think I'll give it a try.

[raro]

thanks for all the advise. 

 

Under LM 17.3 the touchpad didn't work at all, now it works but I cannot configure it. Bluetooth didn't work under 17.3 either, so I hoped that the upgrade would sort those issues. 

 

Laptop also developed a hardware problem (backlight for the screen stopped working), so this needs to be fixed first. Will try the other Kernel then....

 

 

[Gary A]

I made the mistake of removing Mint 17.3 and installing Lubuntu  on my netbook. I had a difficult time connecting to WiFi but was finally able to get it working. Now I am not able to update or install new programs. 

 

My search for a light fast Linux system continues.

[JSixpack]

On Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 10:53 AM, Gary A said:

I made the mistake of removing Mint 17.3 and installing Lubuntu  on my netbook. I had a difficult time connecting to WiFi but was finally able to get it working. Now I am not able to update or install new programs. 

 

My search for a light fast Linux system continues.

 

I've got antiX running on my netbook and I like it a lot, really fast. It can be loaded into memory like Puppy:

 

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=antix

 

Same people have an Xfce version, among the fastest using Xfce, which does take up 360MB or so:

 

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mx

 

Bodhi is also pretty fast once it gets booted up; Englightment desktop, light & beautiful.

 

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bodhi

 

I put an old SSD in my netbook when I upgraded my desktop and that really helps. I also have 2GB of RAM, but it didn't help all that much because the netbook is CPU-bound by the Atom. Hence Chrome is better for it than Firefox, but Palemoon, in the Atom compile, is probably the all-round best. Midori, super light browser, has issues with some distributions unfortunately and antiX, based on Debian, is one of them.

 

[Gary A]

I had no luck with Lubuntu. I saw no improvement in speed and had a lot of other problems. I have re-installed Mint 17.3 on the netbook and although a little slow, everything works.  My laptop still has the latest Ubuntu and it works OK but I think Mint is better.

[raro]

Bluetooth problem solved. Found in the depth of the internet some patch that was easy to install and solved it.

 

Still pending is a patch for the touchpad...