Ubuntu on Touch Screen Laptop: Setting up Linux on Asus Vivobook F200CA / X202E / X200LA / S200E /X200CA

I am a big fan of Asus laptops and rely on them much more than any other Windows PC brand. With my Asus 1101HA (2008 model, 1.33 Ghz Intel Atom processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD) almost giving up after 6 years of decent service, I decided this is the time to buy another portable laptop. I have a powerful machine, Asus K55VM laptop with 2.3 Ghz 3rd Gen. Core i7 3610QM processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce 630M graphics and 1 TB HDD. But, unfortunately, it is not very portable and I can't take it on my office trips along with the Lenovo T430, my office laptop and another heavy machine. So, this time I wanted a small, lightweight but a powerful laptop (no Intel Atom/Pentium/Celeron, etc. low powered ones) within $500.

While browsing through e-commerce sites, I came across this Asus product which fits exactly my requirement. Also, it comes with touchscreen. It is branded as Asus Vivobook F200CA in India and X202E, X200LA, S200E, etc. in other countries. It ships with 1.8 Ghz Core i3 3217U processor, 4 GB DDR3 RAM (non-expandable), 500 GB 5400 rpm SATA HDD and 11.6" screen. It is very lightweight at 3 pounds and burns less holes on the pocket than comparable machines. It has about 230 GB dedicated to Windows 8, which I didn't tamper with and I installed Ubuntu on a 270 GB separate partition.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Installing Linux in Secureboot machine
It ships with Windows 8 (it got upgraded to Win 8.1) with it's mindless interface and tiles. This is the first time I am handling Windows 8 and it's Secureboot UEFI, the rest of the machines I have are WinXP or Win7. I realized within a day that I miss Linux and hence, had to install any of my favorite Linux distros in it. So, I followed this approach:

• Step 1: In Windows 8.1, go to the power off button and while holding SHIFT key, press Restart.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

• Step 2: It will take to another Window, Click on "Troubleshoot" or "Advanced" options. Advanced options will show UEFI firmware Settings which took me to the BIOS on reboot.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

• Step 3: There I selected disable Secureboot. Asus laptop didn't have any option to disable UEFI.
• Step 4: First I checked with 64-bit Ubuntu live USB (created using Mint Image Writer). Post change in Secureboot option in BIOS, Ubuntu  14.04 LTS booted up nicely on Asus F200CA.

I checked a few of my favorite distros like Linux Mint, LMDE, Manjaro, Voyager, etc. but none of these distros booted on this machine. Of the 7-8 distros I checked, only distros from Ubuntu family (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome) worked on it properly with touch support. However, on the small screen KDE didn't look good at all and it didn't offer as good a touch support as Ubuntu or Ubuntu GNOME. Finally, after all checks, I installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with Unity interface.

Once installed, the laptop started with grub asking me whether I would like to continue with Ubuntu or boot windows. Ubuntu interface looked pretty good on this machine at 1366x768 resolution. However, the strip appeared a bit thick and hence, I reduced it to 38 points from 44 to increase the screen size along with auto-hide mode.

Everything worked fine on the laptop except laptop heat. Even in Windows 8.1, the heat was quite a bit. I checked for the graphic card configuration and it was simple Intel Ivybridge mobile. So, the heat was not due to hybrid graphics but because of the laptop itself. At idle state, the CPU temperature was well above 60 degree Celsius.

I took the following steps to reduce heat:

Install Thermald
The thermald daemon prevents machines from overheating and was introduced in the 14.04 Ubuntu Trusty LTS release. It monitors thermal sensors and will modify cooling controls to keep the hardware cool. Thermald uses the available CPU temperature sensors and will keep the CPU from overheating. If hardware supplies a skin temperature sensor then by default thermald will endevor to keep the skin temperature under 45 degrees C.

To install Thermald, run the following command at the terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install thermald

Install CPU Frequency Indicator
It helps to monitor CPU frequency and adjust it according to need. I installed CPU frequency indicator by running the following command at the terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

Adjusting CPU frequency to powersave helped me to reduce heat significantly. At idle state, the CPU temp is now 40-45 degree C which is more in the normal range. With applications running, the CPU temp hovered around 60 degrees. You can get more help on power management in Ubuntu here.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I tried tlp as well but it didn't work for me.

Installation of Utility Packages
Once laptop heat is taken care of, now I wanted to make Ubuntu more functional such that I don't get stuck to an antiquated system after one year or so. I added the following launchpad ppa's in the terminal, did a system update followed by system upgrade.

• LibreOffice ppa: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
• GIMP ppa: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
• VLC daily build ppa: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
• Variety wallpaper changer: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peterlevi/ppa
• Calendar and power button: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
• Webup8: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
• Wine: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Once added, I did a system update & upgrade: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The LibreOffice installation got upgraded to 4.2.4.2. Then I installed Calendar Indicator, VLC player, Pipelight, Wine, PlayonLinux, etc. to make my installation more usable.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Further, I added a few utility programs like Dropbox, Google-Chrome, Google-talkplugin, etc. to make my installation more usable.

#Dropbox
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 5044912E
$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu/ trusty main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dropbox.list'
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install dropbox

#PlayonLinux
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E0F72778C4676186
$ sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_trusty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install playonlinux

#Google-Chrome

$ wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

#Google-talk

$ wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install google-talkplugin

#Silvelight/Pipelight
To install Pipelight, add the PPA and install Pipelight using the commands below:

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:pipelight/stable
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install pipelight-multi

Then, install the Silverlight plugin using the following command:
$ sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

To install the Widevine plugin, use the command below:
$ sudo pipelight-plugin --enable widevin

#Linux Mint and USB Image writer / USB stick formatter

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list'

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring

$ sudo apt-get install mintstick

#To create and read .rar archived files
$ sudo apt-get install rar urar

With all these additions, my installation is now ready to rock. Ubuntu works damn smooth on this machine with pretty good touch support and is quite compatible to the machine hardware. I wanted to own a portable laptop with decent specs and Asus F200CA fits my bill quite well with touch, 11.6" decent screen, big touchpad and good keyboard. If you also happen to have bought this machine and thinking of installing Linux, I guess my blog can be of help to you. Have fun!

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in