Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

awale · 2016-06-23 00:09:54

Hi there,

I have been a (silent) crunchbang user for a few years, and now a (silent) bunsenlab user. This is indeed my first post in the forum, and it comes out of necessity: I hope I am placing the post where it belongs -- excuse me otherwise.

I have recently acquired an asus E200AH, and after researching widely in the internet, its hardware is poorly supported at the moment in linux (specially debian). In spite of my best efforts, I failed to install debian or bl-hydrogen, as the installer does not even recognize the keyboard or the trackpad. I tried with a live Mint usb, and managed to boot the distro. I could confirm that there are several important hardware issues at the moment which severely affect it:

- wifi does not work. Solvable with some workaround: see e.g. https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic. … 3&t=218377
- trackpack behaves weird. Hard to navigate the mouse with it. Scrolling does not work
- Keyboard works, but not all FN + F# key combinations work (e.g. to dim the screen)
- sound is not working. No solution found at the moment

It could be that other hardware issues have not yet become apparent to me. However, those above seem very critical to me as they limit enormously the usability of this great machine under linux.

Since cheap laptops like this are becoming increasingly popular (and would be a great tool under linux), I wonder if there is any plans to support them fully within the project any time soon. Ideally, any required drivers or fixes would be added to a next version of linux kernel. Any ideas or rumors? maybe from debian side or elsewhere? I don't mind running Mint for a while, but I have come to love bl and would rather stick with it.

If I can run any commands on the laptop to provide better information on the problem, please let me know which (I am not very familiar with hardware-y commands, sorry).

Thanks a lot,

awale

Eraph · 2016-06-23 01:07:42

I had an awful lot of trouble trying to get Linux working on a similar Atom-based Lenovo laptop recently. Troublesome to the point that I gave up and continue to use Windows on it.
To get started I would suggest plugging in a USB mouse and keyboard if you have handy. Once you get going, try updating the kernel; check out this thread for help on how to do that. Let us know how you get on, I'm keen to see if you have any more success with this than I did.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-06-23 06:46:34

awale wrote:

Hi there

Hello

Since cheap laptops like this are becoming increasingly popular (and would be a great tool under linux), I wonder if there is any plans to support them fully within the project any time soon.

Support for such hardware will be added for the BunsenLabs Helium release, which should run kernel 4.10 as standard.

Hopefully, we might be able to try some Helium testing systems once Debian stretch is frozen shortly after the release of that kernel version.

Until then, better support for your hardware should be available from the backported kernel image (and any newer firmware that is required) that can be found in the jessie-backports repositories.
https://backports.debian.org/

Eraph · 2016-06-23 22:05:37

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Support for such hardware will be added for the BunsenLabs Helium release, which should run kernel 4.10 as standard.
Hopefully, we might be able to try some Helium testing systems once Debian stretch is frozen shortly after the release of that kernel version.

Is this the kernel expected to be used by stretch when it becomes the new stable version of Debian?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-06-24 06:17:02

^ Yes.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-a … 00000.html

awale · 2016-06-24 11:53:27

Update: following the input from Head_on_a_Stick above, I checked again with debian testing netinstall image, and at least now the keyboard and touchpad are recognized during the installation. I did not install yet, however, planning to do that this weekend.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-06-24 18:02:15

awale wrote:

debian testing [...] install [...] this weekend.

If your computer is to be used for anything important, I do not recommend using Debian testing/unstable.

They are development versions and are liable to break at any time with no warning.

awale · 2016-06-24 18:09:28

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

If your computer is to be used for anything important, I do not recommend using Debian testing/unstable.
They are development versions and are liable to break at any time with no warning.

Thanks for the warning I am however used to upgrading my bunsenlabs install to `testing' in my other computer. Debian stable is usually too old for my needs. So far, I've encountered no major issues with it (at least, no more than what I usually found with stable releases).

I will try and report here how it goes

awale · 2016-06-27 22:23:02

Hi again,

After much playing around with a Mint liveUSB and the debian testing netinstall, I found that while not impossible to install, there are more issues than initially reported with the ASUS vivobook E200HA that prevent it from being useful with linux at the moment. Here's a complete list of the aspects that to the best of my knowledge do not work (I checked the internet in depth to confirm that other users are also having trouble with them):

Audio does not work (sound, mic): no sound is recognized at all
Wifi does not work (no recognized). However, workaround exist installing the right drivers (see my first post))
microSD card reader is not recognized. It's a pity, as I had bought a 128 GB card already. It does not depend on the card, it also fails with 2GB cards---the reader is not identified
Most keyboard combinations (FN + something) do not work. There's something weird with the keyboard, since debian installer wouldn't allow me to change to es-ES keyboard (only en-US, accessing the menu to choose kb layout failed).
trackpad does not work well. It does not recognize basic gestures like scroll. Hitting left and right buttons will anoyingly displace the pointer away from its position. Managed to deactivate it and use an USB mouse with xinput set-prop 13 "Device Enabled" 0

So for now, dissapointedly I am seriously considering the possibility of sticking with windows10 that came installed until the major issues are solved. I tremendously dislike windows10 at this point (it has app advertisements in the start menu? seriously?), but having microSD card support and sound are a must for me (well, I guess I could do without sound). I guess I can remotely connect to my bl install in my other computer, clench my teeth, and pretend that windows is not running underneath. I was going to use remote operation as much as possible anyways (this small laptop doesn't pack much power).

If anyone is willing to know more on the problem, I would be willing to try again and provide output to any hardware-probing commands that are suggested.

Best,
Awale

paxmark1 · 2016-06-28 03:55:27

If you used the debian testing net-install with the non-free firmware and you got a basic install on - and it has multiple problems - well maybe windows is the thing to use for awhile. You are going to be getting fairly new kernels and the all the newest non-free firmware - it is your best shot imho.

The debian testing net-install is hit or miss at getting an install up, they really do only make it to test for the next stable, but when it works, it works. It did work for me on a new computer fairly standard computer. Keep an eye out on the search engines once in awhile, maybe someone else will do the heavy lifting or some non-free firmware will be reverse-engineered. The trackpad issues are mentioned here and there - probably via the d/c of synaptics to systemd based.

peace out.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-06-28 06:28:19

Have you tried Arch?

It is the least obsolete of all the distributions (apart from Fedora Rawhide which is targeted specifically at developers and is not considered generally usable).

I have been running Arch [Testing] for over a year now with no problems

EDIT: Apart from steam which suffered from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/St … ime_issues but this caused me to switch to the native runtime libraries and increase the performance of my Steam games

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-06-28 06:31:34)

awale · 2016-06-28 18:53:41

Thanks for the suggestion; I tried arch some time ago in my previous laptop. But I have my limits: I do not want to need to configure every tiny hardware bit in the computer; in my brief arch experience, every small step forward required lots of reading in the internet. So maybe in another life, when I have more time

brown1994 · 2016-10-22 13:13:36

Hi to all,

i'm a new user here in the forum

I wish to ask, as i didn't find news on the internet, if is there a sort of Release Date for
Helium because i'm interested too in speed up this poor E200Ha born with the wrong OS.

thank you so much.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-22 13:17:57

brown1994 wrote:

I wish to ask, as i didn't find news on the internet, if is there a sort of Release Date for Helium

No earlier than late 2017.

Helium will be based on Debian 9 (codenamed stretch) and that is slated to be released sometime thereabouts.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-a … 00002.html

stevep · 2016-10-22 19:16:16

My new laptop has the same Atheros wifi chip, and I can confirm it works fine with the current 4.7 kernel and firmware-atheros from jessie-backports. The newer kernel also gets keyboard hotkeys, sound, brightness control, and suspend2ram working, where they didn't with a 3.16.

#1 2016-06-23 00:09:54

Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#2 2016-06-23 01:07:42

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#3 2016-06-23 06:46:34

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#4 2016-06-23 22:05:37

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#5 2016-06-24 06:17:02

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#6 2016-06-24 11:53:27

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#7 2016-06-24 18:02:15

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#8 2016-06-24 18:09:28

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#9 2016-06-27 22:23:02

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#10 2016-06-28 03:55:27

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#11 2016-06-28 06:28:19

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#12 2016-06-28 18:53:41

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#13 2016-10-22 13:13:36

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#14 2016-10-22 13:17:57

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

#15 2016-10-22 19:16:16

Re: Asus vivobook E200HA badly supported: sound, trackpack, keyboard, wifi

Board footer