I got Asus N53J laptop from my employer, and I want to share experience about setting various small things up in Linux.

1. Installation - what could possibly go wrong with intact CPU, RAM and HDD? OK, working screen, DVD-RW drive and keyboard were useful, too.

A catch here is that sometimes Linux believes BIOS about recommended HDD power saving mode, which leads to frequent spindowns and, eventually, HDD failure.
helps.
output contains line like
The last number should grow by one per reboot, and if it grows more than by one per hour, you should probably take measures.

2. Networking.
- WiFi, ath9k driver
- wired Ethernet, atl1c driver

3. Video.
This notebook has a nice 1920x1080 screen. It also has dual video card - something integrated and less power hungry from Intel and Nvidia GeForce for providing better performance when needed. I only use Intel - I find 10 FPS as the lowest value for Menger Sponge screensaver with 300+K polygons (4th level) acceptable, and TORCS and Extreme TuxRacer work fine with Intel card. So I need to configure Intel card and switch off power to Nvidia one.
i915 module handles both framebuffer and X11, thanks to Kernel Mode Setting (KMS). High resolution makes some larger console font, like iso01-12x22 desirable (using setfont). Of course, when I want full UTF-8 output in the framebuffer console along with configurable TrueType/OpenType font I use fbterm. MPlayer in framebuffer and "links -g" work fine, too; sometimes you may need to check that /dev/fb0 and /dev/tty1 are accessible to current user. XRandR works without any effort for VGA output.

For turning off Nvidia power, I use acpi_call module from https://github.com/mkottman/acpi_call . \_SB.PCI0.PEG1.GFX0.DOFF method from the test script works; notice that \_SB.PCI0.PEG1.GFX0._OFF reports success but power is still drawn.

4. Sound
It may be that only headphones work (no sound from the speaker). To fix that, execute the following on boot:
5. Touchpad
xf86-input-synaptics driver works.
(or equivalent settings in xorg.conf) is recommended - default settings are for smaller resolution.

6. USB 3.0
xhci-hcd driver reports success and lsusb reports USB 3.0 controller afterwards. If only I had a USB 3.0 device to test.


This entry is listed at http://tuxmobil.org/asus.html

Hi Raskin,

I have the same laptop and have the same problem with the sound. It doesn't work.

I tried to execute the next command:

rmmod snd-hda-intel; modprobe snd-hda-intel model=auto position_fix=0

But I obtain an error:

ERROR: Module snd_hda_intel is in use

Where and when should I execute the command above?

Thanks for all.

Well, I do ensure that I execute the command when no program has had a chance to open sound device. I heard Ubuntu uses PulseAudio by default, so most most of the time audio output is "in use" by the idling PA daemon. You could ask in Ubuntu subforum how to pass the parameters to kernel modules when they are loaded - I assume there is a configuration file, but I have no idea how it is called.

The only thing you care about is that snd-hda-intel module gets
parameters last time it is loaded.

Maybe you could create some upstart job that runs before pulseaudio and reloads the module with correct parameters.

How do I know the nvidia Card is actually off?

I typed:
"echo '\_SB.PCI0.PEG1.GFX0.DOFF' > /proc/acpi/call"

without any errors but I don't know if it worked.

Monitor power consumption attentively. You will notice the change

Fedora 14 with Asus N53JQ-XR1

create a configuration file in /etc/modprobe.d, I called mine /etc/modprobe.d/asus.conf, with this line of code

Those options will be in effect after every boot. I believe that this will work with Ubuntu, too.

Thanks Raskin, this fixed my headphone works, but no speaker output problem.

Also, thanks for the hint about the Load_Cycle_Count. Mine was up to 107908!

The speaker/headphone/microphone problems seems very kernel-version-dependent. With 2.6.38 I fail to have speaker and microphone working at once, but I don't care about that usecase too much and I hope it will work better with 2.6.39... Load_Cycle_Count is a widespread problem and it is the duty of each of us to spread the word whenever we talk about configuring hardware in Linux...

Well, with 2.6.39 it doesn't work out of the box, either. If you specify model=auto, you get your speaker working, if you do not - you get your microphone working, and headphones work fine either way. I don't have a use case where it would be a real problem, though.

How do I "only use" intel graphics? first of all, how do I know which one is currently working? I know I could turn off nvidia graphics with with the acpi_call link, but I think it hasn't worked for me..

I do not load nVidia drivers and I watch power consumption before and after acpi_call: the correct call reduces it noticeably

Does your mic works, haven't been able to make it work, if so, how did you do it?

Currently I have two states, unfortunately.

If I do apply the fix for snd_hda_intel that I described, I get working speaker but no microphone. If I don't I get microphone working but only hedaphones. I am not sure what to do with that.

Could that work too with Debian?

I don't know if it happens the same with you, but my speakers and headphone works, the mic is what does not...

As I said, if (with 2.6.39) you simply reload snd and snd-pcm and and-hda-intel without parameters to modules, microphone will work but speaker won't. I failed (so far) to find parameter set that would fix it. On the other hand, I usually don't use microphone and speaker together, so I gave up quite quickly.

Linux kernel 3.0.1. Finally I have speaker and microphone simultaneously.