ASUS Zenbook UX31E

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This page contains instructions, tips, pointers, and links for installing and configuring Arch Linux on the ASUS Zenbook UX31E Ultrabook. (There is probably little/no difference with his 11" little brother, the UX21E)
Installation problems
If you get an error trying to format partitions when installing Arch try adding this line to the kernel parameters
libata.dma=0
Compatibility
Touch Pad
There are different versions of the UX31, some have Sentelic and some have Elantec - Touch pads.
Elantec Touch pads
Touch & Scroll works out of the box. Clickpad functionality does not. (However, using two and three finger touches for right an middle click works fine).
If higher pressure must be applied to your touchpad in order to function properly, tweak the following properties according to your needs
synaptics(4)
$ synclient FingerLow=5
$ synclient FingerHigh=15
Alternatively, edit your
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
       Identifier "touchpad catchall"
       Driver "synaptics"
       MatchIsTouchpad "on"
       MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
       Option "TapButton1" "1"
       Option "TapButton2" "3"
       Option "TapButton3" "2"
       Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
       Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
       Option "FingerLow" "5"
       Option "FingerHigh" "15"
EndSection
Tip
Multifinger taps: Two finger for middle click; three fingers for right click.
Sentelic Touchpads
The Sentelic Touchpad drivers have been added to the 3.2 kernel, so it should work out of the box by now. Since 3.4 this supports scrolling and multi-touch features. (In case of problems with the touchpad after resume see
Suspend to RAM
.) However it seems that
two finger tapping and two finger scrolling are incompatible
. To have both working you must use one of the following two patches.
ReubenBond
ReubenBond has made contact with a sentelic representative who has provided him with official documentation on putting the device into absolute positioning mode. The latter can be accessed here:
https://sourceforge.net/p/fsp-lnxdrv/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/doc/fsp_packet.txt
This looks very promising and ReubenBond is committed to developing a driver in the next few weeks. This is all referenced in the forum
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=125262&p=2
Saaros
Saaros's driver
works well for two finger and side scrolling and is fairly straight forward to apply and build. Unfortunately however, it does slightly impede normal functionality, pointing does not seem quite as accurate, tapping does not seem quite as sensitive and tapping and dragging/selecting can be quite tricky. This code should eventually be accepted into the official kernel:
https://github.com/saaros/sentelic/issues/2
.
Graphics
Works out of the box
HDMI Out
There seems to be a problem whereby having an HDMI device plugged in at boot results in the screens being switched and also the laptop screen not coming on. To make this more bearable you can automate switching HDMI on with the following udev rule and script:
ACTION=="change", SUBSYSTEM=="drm", RUN+="/usr/sbin/hdmi-plugged"
#!/bin/bash

export XAUTHORITY=/home/$USER/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0

/usr/bin/xrandr -display :0 --output eDP1 --auto --output HDMI1 --auto --above eDP1
Colour Profiles
Colour accuracy on the Zenbook is not very good. There is a
UX31E ICC profile
on the
Noteboocheck review
. However, I find that too green using xcalib and so use
the UX21E version
.
Networking
Wireless
The embedded Qualcomm adapter works fine with the ath9k driver included in the kernel.
Unstable Wireless when using Network Manager
NetworkManager
generally fails to work for one reason or another on the UX31E. Consider using an alternative such as
netctl
.
Some users experience connection drops when using wireless. For some users this can be fixed by setting the wireless connection's BSSID (usually the router's MAC address). This only works if your wireless connection only has one access point as the BSSID is unique for each access point.
An alternative solution is to disable the ath9k driver ani feature, to do this use the following :
echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/ieee80211/phy0/ath9k/disable_ani
Ethernet - Asix AX88772 USB Ethernet
The Asix AX887722 USB Ethernet drivers are included in the kernel, so it should work out of the box.
Solid State Drive
Check
Solid State Drives
Power Management
Suspend to RAM
The USB modules must be unloaded or the laptop will not come out of sleep mode.
Put
SUSPEND_MODULES="xhci_hcd ehci_hcd uhci_hcd"
in
/etc/pm/config.d/unload_module
If you have patched the kernel to enable multitouch with the Sentelic touchpad, the touchpad may stop working after resume. In this case add the psmouse module to the list.
SUSPEND_MODULES="xhci_hcd ehci_hcd uhci_hcd psmouse"
PCIe ASPM
Do not add the following option to the kernel line
pcie_aspm=force
if
# dmesg | grep -i "acpi fadt"
outputs
ACPI FADT declares the system does not support PCIe ASPM, so disable it.
i915
Enabling
i915_enable_rc6
will improve battery performance significantly. To enable it, add the following option to your kernel line.
i915.i915_enable_rc6=1
To check the current state of all
i915
parameters execute the following (bash)
# for i in /sys/module/i915/parameters/*;do echo ${i}=`cat $i`;done
Module parameter details
$ modinfo i915
Additional powersavings
Configure
Laptop Mode Tools
and do not forget to check
CPU frequency scaling
Additional resources
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook