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Last active August 13, 2019 17:59
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Zenbook UX550GE Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Installing Ubuntu LTS 18.04 on Zenbook UX550GE

Installing Ubuntu on this laptop is quite simple.
However there are few things to remember.


  • Instalation along Windows Boot Manager

    To proceed the instalation you have to prepare bootable USB drive with Ubuntu on it. There are plenty of tutorials about it along with official Ubuntu tutorial, so I will skip this step.\

    After choosing USB boot option in yours UEFI menu you will see GRUB screen with options where for now two most important are: "Try Ubuntu without installing" and "Install Ubuntu".


Encountered Problem: After choosing one of mentioned above options laptop freezes on loading screen.

This problem is caused by graphical driver. Beeing more precise by lack of appropriate graphical driver for NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti (default one is not working properly).

  1. You have to run istallation or live session with additional parameter called: nomodeset (simply saying it instructs the kernel to not load video drivers). To do that when you marked right option press "e" and at the end of the line after "quiet splash" type "nomodeset" and press F10 to continue with additional parameter.

After doing that the inastlation and live session should work fine but with low resolution.

  1. During istalation it's good to choose the option of installing proprietary drivers and configure Secure Boot option (official NVIDIA drivers packages are proprietary). Configuration of Secure Boot requires to input some password- it will be used later. After instalation, during computer restart you will see additional window of MOK Manager (this program allows you to enroll additional system key which will sign Linux kernel). You have to choose option "Enrol Key" and confrim with password given during installation.

After doing that you will see GRUB menu with Ubuntu, Windows Boot Manager and other options. Choose Ubuntu and repeat Step 1.

  1. The system should run fine but still with poor resolution. To change that you have to install appropriate driver. Open terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and type:
ubuntu-devices drivers

After a while you will see the list of devices (in this case probably only graphic card) and name of recommender driver in field "driver:". For me it was: nvidia-driver-390.

To instal the driver you need to use apt Type in terminal:

sudo apt-get install <driver_name>

Additionaly after doing that you can also update all installed packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Then type:

reboot

To restart computer. After running Ubuntu normally without nomodeset parameter graphics should work. You should have installed additional program called 'NVIDIA X Server Settings'. You can check if the installed drivers is used in "Software & Updates" in bookmark "Additional Drivers".

  1. Three simple command conected with driver.

You can check if you are using Intel or NVIDIA graphics card by typing command:

sudo prime-select query

Change between Intel/NVIDIA graphics:

sudo prime-select intel

or

sudo prime-select nvidia

You can also do that via UI in NVIDIA X Server Settings.


  • Other problems/not working features after instalation:
  1. Keyboard shortcut for keyboard backlight not working. (For now partially solved- see here)
  2. Keyboard shortcut for screen change not working. (Not solved yet.)
  3. Fingerprint scanner not working. (As far as I know it's Elan Microelectronics sensor and currently it isn't supported in Linux.)
  4. Smaller power efficency than in Windows (Improved).
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