As I have been labeled as an impulsive, irrational individual, here comes another irrational and impulsive thing I have managed over the course of the last days. I came to a conclusion, that I need a new computer (understand laptop) that should be capable of some pretty advanced stuff, be portable and MUST be good looking – we all know that is the most important one. Also, it cannot be an apple…

On a normal day, I would research the compatibility of such a device with Linux, which is the OS that I prefer to use. On this day, however, I just jumped into a purchase of the first reasonably looking notebook / laptop which came into my eye. Actually, was suggested by a colleague as “looking god damn great”. I just bought it.

The size is just under a foot

I wanted it to be close to a foot, so…

Enough with the chat, let’s get onto the roller coaster of despair and frustration, seemingly with a happy end.

The specs:

  • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz
  • 16GB RAM
  • Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 (Whiskey Lake)
  • NVIDIA Corporation GP108M [GeForce MX150]
  • 512 GB NvME SSD
  • FHD IPS screen 1920×180 14″
  • 4200mAh battery
  • supposed ~6hrs of on-the-battery-time
  • Price paid: 31990 CZK (~1200 EUR)

Part 1: The build and overall impression

Took it out of the box and what do you know – it was a piece of crap – I thought to myself. The keyboard is spongy, the whole thing flexes, opening and closing felles like jerking of in a frozen Jacuzzi with 32 electric eels stuck to your balls… (numbers picked randomly).

Single row enter – no comment, this is just bad.

A questionable on/off button, that is placed in the exact spot, where most of the other keybaords have their DELETE key. If you delete a letter, you might end up deleting the whole thing by switching it off.

a mixed bag of HOME, END, PGUP, PGDN as FN+F* mappings. WHY? Honestly, Why?! would you have non-dedicated buttons for these and dedicated buttons for – say – PRINSTCREEN? (INS and DEL are dedicated as well, but that is definitely fine, especially for copy and paste on linux)

The whole thing just feels like a piece of plastic, but hey, it will only set you back some $1300 or so. 🙂

Durable? Maybe.

It’s got ports on all sides, you can imagine. No THUNDERBOLT charging support. Not a biggie for me.

2 and a half USB, HDMI, charger, microSD slot, headphone / mic jack and a couple leds.

Ports, yes..

A pleasant surprise were the speakers. Actually quite good, if you can say that about a piece of garbage small crap with big name.

Speakers on the front, facing under

The whole surface is a fingerprint magnet. If you want to keep it clean, don’t touch it.

Fingers off

Part 2: Windows 10 setup – really?

Now this is what convinced me to not even attempt to upgrade win10 to PRO (yes it only came with HOME edition) to then try to install the Linux subsystem, a.k.a Ubuntu

This setup tries to talk you through the process, yes TALK you through. It is not a matter of clicking next, you hear alexa, siri or whatever other shit win is running right now, saying what you need to do. The screen reads “Set up user account” and that absolutely irritating voice is telling you in all the possible flowery and intricate way to “set up your user account”. The voice keeps blabbering for good minute and yes, you guessed it, you CANNOT TURN THE VOICE OFF.

I don’t have any examples of that, as I was busy shouting at the damn thing to finally shut up.

Part 3: Linux install, at least it shuts up

To be honest, getting a few thing out of the way first: You won’t get all the functionality on Linux. Some things just won’t be working.

Not working on linux:

  • IR cams to scan your beautiful neck decoration (head) to log in. I don’t need them, so I did not even check. The windows hello login features are obviously not working here
  • Touchpad numpad. Just forget it.
  • automatic dual-graphics, but we’ll get to that. It can work in a semi-auto mode 🙂

Working out of the box:

  • CPU with all the tweaks / all PCI stuff
  • Sound
  • Screen diming
  • power control / apm
  • Keyboard backlight
  • All FN related keys and bindings
  • WiFi
  • BT and USB

Needs tweaking but works afterwards

  • Intel Graphics (low power)
  • NVIDIA graphics (MX150 – the turbo charged GPU)
  • even better apm / i7z features
  • OpenCL
  • Hybrid graphics setup

milestone A: preparation)

Download Manjaro Linux, as that is the one I used. Version 18.0.2, the XFCE4 edition: https://osdn.net/dl/manjaro/manjaro-xfce-18.0.2-stable-x86_64.iso

Burn, or better said DD this onto a USB drive as this ISO is a hybrid version so you can directly put it to the USB drive by (assuming sdb is your USB device):

dd if=./manjaro18.0.2.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress

milestone B: boot and install)

  1. <F2> – > disable Secure Boot
  2. Plug in the USB
  3. reboot
  4. <F2> or <ESC> and select the proper booting option
  5. In the grub menu, navigate to line saying Manjaro… press ‘e’ for edit and replace the line saying driver=free with driver=non-free. Also, delete all the parts which say i915, radeon, nuveau.modeset=1.
  6. <F10> to boot the edited shit
  7. Wipe the whole damn thing clean, no dual-boots, this Lilliput gets confused then
  8. Enjoy the install. If it stops and freezes at 93%, you were not paying attention at point 5.

milestone C: Init 3, please)

After removing the USB and booting from the freshly installed top notch Linux open source shit, we need to get it to be less free.

Hit <ESC> as fuck to ge to the grub menu. The safest way is to hit it repeatedly right after booting. This key is also tied to boot device selection, so select the proper hdd partition and continue juicing the <ESC> key.

GRUB menu shoud appear. Navigate to “Manjaro” entry, ‘e’ for edit and on the line saying “linux…” add a “3” at the end of the line. That should get you to the command line, instead of the graphics mode.

milestone d: getting the damn graphics card to work, at least one of them two)

This, fortunately is even simpler than it seems, as Manjaro has a nifty little thing called the Manjaro HardWare (D)utility :-). Now…

[ventil@radon Desktop]$ mhwd
   0000:02:00.0 (0302:10de:1d12) Display controller nVidia Corporation:
                     NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE
   video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-bumblebee            2018.08.09               false            PCI
   video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-390xx-bumblebee            2018.08.09               false            PCI
             video-nvidia            2018.08.09               false            PCI
       video-nvidia-390xx            2018.08.09               false            PCI
              video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI
   0000:00:02.0 (0300:8086:3ea0) Display controller Intel Corporation:
                     NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE
   video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-bumblebee            2018.08.09               false            PCI
   video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-390xx-bumblebee            2018.08.09               false            PCI
              video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI
               video-vesa            2017.03.12                true            PCI

At least all the hardware is detected, right? Now all we need to do is select the proper drivers. This was a little bit of hit and miss, but after some time, I reckoned, you need the “video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-390xx-bumblebee”. So you do it!

sudo mhwd -i pci video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-390xx-bumblebee

Oh, your network is not connected, let’s fix that…

nmcli d wifi connect 'wifiSSID' password 'password'

Now, where were we…

sudo mhwd -i pci video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-390xx-bumblebee
pacman -Ss opencl # check what opencl stuff is available
sudo pacman -S opencl-nvidia-390xx
sudo pacman -S mesa
sudo pacman -S clinfo
sudo usermod -aG bumblebee <user>
reboot

Congratulations, you should be the proud owner of a Manjaro distribution. May the power of pacman be with you.

milestone e: OPENCL – the final one?

This is a little tricky here. The bumblebee drivers let you choose (so semi-auto) the card you want to use. Simply by typing optirun <command>, it will run the application with the dedicated GPU. Try it out:

[ventil@radon Desktop]$ clinfo
 Number of platforms                               0
 [ventil@radon Desktop]$ optirun clinfo
 Number of platforms                               1
   Platform Name                                   NVIDIA CUDA
   Platform Vendor                                 NVIDIA Corporation
   Platform Version                                OpenCL 1.2 CUDA 9.1.84
   Platform Profile                                FULL_PROFILE
   Platform Extensions                             cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_fp64 cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_icd cl_khr_gl_sharing cl_nv_compiler_options cl_nv_device_attribute_query cl_nv_pragma_unroll cl_nv_copy_opts cl_nv_create_buffer
   Platform Extensions function suffix             NV
 Platform Name                                   NVIDIA CUDA
 Number of devices                                 1
   Device Name                                     GeForce MX150
   Device Vendor                                   NVIDIA Corporation
   Device Vendor ID                                0x10de
   Device Version                                  OpenCL 1.2 CUDA
   Driver Version                                  390.87
   Device OpenCL C Version                         OpenCL C 1.2 
   Device Type                                     GPU
   Device Topology (NV)                            PCI-E, 02:00.0
   Device Profile                                  FULL_PROFILE
   Device Available                                Yes
   Compiler Available                              Yes
   Linker Available                                Yes
   Max compute units                               3
   Max clock frequency                             1037MHz
   Compute Capability (NV)                         6.1
   Device Partition                                (core)
     Max number of sub-devices                     1
     Supported partition types                     None
     Supported affinity domains                    (n/a)
   Max work item dimensions                        3
   Max work item sizes                             1024x1024x64
   Max work group size                             1024
   Preferred work group size multiple              32
   Warp size (NV)                                  32
   Preferred / native vector sizes                 
     char                                                 1 / 1       
     short                                                1 / 1       
     int                                                  1 / 1       
     long                                                 1 / 1       
     half                                                 0 / 0        (n/a)
     float                                                1 / 1       
     double                                               1 / 1        (cl_khr_fp64)
   Half-precision Floating-point support           (n/a)
   Single-precision Floating-point support         (core)
     Denormals                                     Yes
     Infinity and NANs                             Yes
     Round to nearest                              Yes
     Round to zero                                 Yes
     Round to infinity                             Yes
     IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add               Yes
     Support is emulated in software               No
     Correctly-rounded divide and sqrt operations  Yes
   Double-precision Floating-point support         (cl_khr_fp64)
     Denormals                                     Yes
     Infinity and NANs                             Yes
     Round to nearest                              Yes
     Round to zero                                 Yes
     Round to infinity                             Yes
     IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add               Yes
     Support is emulated in software               No
   Address bits                                    64, Little-Endian
   Global memory size                              2099904512 (1.956GiB)
   Error Correction support                        No
   Max memory allocation                           524976128 (500.7MiB)
   Unified memory for Host and Device              No
   Integrated memory (NV)                          No
   Minimum alignment for any data type             128 bytes
   Alignment of base address                       4096 bits (512 bytes)
   Global Memory cache type                        Read/Write
   Global Memory cache size                        49152 (48KiB)
   Global Memory cache line size                   128 bytes
   Image support                                   Yes
     Max number of samplers per kernel             32
     Max size for 1D images from buffer            134217728 pixels
     Max 1D or 2D image array size                 2048 images
     Max 2D image size                             16384x32768 pixels
     Max 3D image size                             16384x16384x16384 pixels
     Max number of read image args                 256
     Max number of write image args                16
   Local memory type                               Local
   Local memory size                               49152 (48KiB)
   Registers per block (NV)                        65536
   Max number of constant args                     9
   Max constant buffer size                        65536 (64KiB)
   Max size of kernel argument                     4352 (4.25KiB)
   Queue properties                                
     Out-of-order execution                        Yes
     Profiling                                     Yes
   Prefer user sync for interop                    No
   Profiling timer resolution                      1000ns
   Execution capabilities                          
     Run OpenCL kernels                            Yes
     Run native kernels                            No
     Kernel execution timeout (NV)                 Yes
   Concurrent copy and kernel execution (NV)       Yes
     Number of async copy engines                  2
   printf() buffer size                            1048576 (1024KiB)
   Built-in kernels                                (n/a)
   Device Extensions                               cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_fp64 cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_icd cl_khr_gl_sharing cl_nv_compiler_options cl_nv_device_attribute_query cl_nv_pragma_unroll cl_nv_copy_opts cl_nv_create_buffer
 NULL platform behavior
   clGetPlatformInfo(NULL, CL_PLATFORM_NAME, …)  NVIDIA CUDA
   clGetDeviceIDs(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ALL, …)   Success [NV]
   clCreateContext(NULL, …) [default]            Success [NV]
   clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_DEFAULT)  No platform
   clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU)  No devices found in platform
   clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU)  No platform
   clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ACCELERATOR)  No devices found in platform
   clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CUSTOM)  Invalid device type for platform
   clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ALL)  No platform
 ICD loader properties
   ICD loader Name                                 OpenCL ICD Loader
   ICD loader Vendor                               OCL Icd free software
   ICD loader Version                              2.2.12
   ICD loader Profile                              OpenCL 2.2

So for example, for darktable to utilize the power of the GPU, you should run it as 

optirun darktable

The problematic suspend

As one can only assume, there are some quirks and problems. Most of them lurk in the dark and jump out the moment you expect them the very least.

This is the case with the suspend state. Manjaro linux handles it as it only can, giving you the impression that everything is OK and the computer is going down to suspend state. I think these were normally labeled as C3 state.

Somehow, the darn thing just goes into blinking sleeping doing mode as it should, BUT consumes the same amount of power as under normal operation. This way, your battery is gone before you’re able to return from the toilet – provided your toilet time was around 10 hours.

This problem is one of those which I have currently no answer to and irritates me beyond possible. For now, the workaround is to enable hibernate at lid close. The hibernate procedure takes around 1-2 minutes, as it needs to write the whole 16G dump of RAM. Well, the startup is not the fastest either, but you can always switch it off, right? Wrong! But for now, this is how it is.

Cheers,

… maybe to be continued.

2019/05/15 And alas, here wo go again.

Brag 1,

The keyboard is great. I miss the PgUp and PgDn buttons, I really do!

Brag2,

What the F****!? is with the power supplies. I wanted to buy another one and I have a plethora of 6 or 7 types at my disposal. Without marking, type specification, or anything. If I apply the precise voltage I am asked for, via a LAB power supply, it does not do anything – a vendor lockin probably. All in all, It is very cumbersome to buy another powe supply, unable to use a generic one and does not support USB charging. Fail.

Rapairability

Let’s look at how and what it is. When I first opened it, there was one big thing which struck me. I got a lemon here. Well, nevermind…

A little mishap with the heat transfer paste here. The most of it oozed out, just some 2mm on the side remained to trasnfer the heat

But first things first. How to get it open? There are 9 visible torx screws on the bottom. Don’t let that fool you into opening it with a screwdriver though.

There are two hidden screws beneath the two damping pads glued to the bottom. The ones closer to the LCD.

Then, finally, you can VERY carefully pry it open. No nasty surprises though. It just opens. Great!

Left side houses the camera / USB / sound out module. Down, battery and NVMe, which are semi-replacable. Fan is easy to clean out, connectors are accessible. Not bad at all. Not bad.

Special care needs to be taken when fiddling with the built-in speakers. They pack quite a punch, considering the size and are quite delicate to handle. Resonations are kept at a minimum, as the mounting of the speakers is flexible.

I hoped to find the LCD hindge force adjustment screws in there as well, but I was not successful. I know, there is something that looks like it, but it is not.

Update on repairability and warranty

Warning: If you do one of these things, you loose your warranty

  • Open the chassis
  • Replace / upgrade / backup your SSD.
  • Reflow thermal paste
  • possibly, if you wipe your drive (remove windows). In this case, make sure there is nothing left of any data. If linux found, ASUS will try to deny the warranty. This has not happened to me, but a friend of mine had it denied because of that. The issues were in lagging R/W operations, possibly a faulty SSD.

Repair da f*** out of it

OK, that said, I have fried my NB because of fucking with the electronics. I assume reversed polarity from a non-original charger destroyed the MOSFET(s). I’ll be ordering a bunch and replacing them. Just hoping to not blow the damn things away.

Wish me luck.

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