Asus K52J and Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

[one2many]

Installed Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 without anything unusual to report.
After installation there 122 updates waiting. - Applied the updates and restarted as prompted to do so.
So far so good.
Had Kubuntu 11.04 previously installed and I was able to install the 'Experimental 3D Nividia accelerated graphics driver', so I decided to check additional drivers to install Nvidia support.
I selected the Nvidia binaries so I could have 3D acceleration. Compilation of the driver failed. (I'll confess that I did not bother to look at the error log).
Restarted the laptop and things went weird.
I had installed Audacious music player, and it would not respond. Force quit and it would not restart after.

No internet access.

Muon would crash upon closing.

I did what any unadventurous noob would do, I reinstalled Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2.
This time, I stayed away from additional drivers.

Not a single weirdness to report.

Love Muon,
So far, 11.10 is even more polished than 11.04
Great work guys.

Below, my lspci...

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 18)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 18)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce 310M] (rev a2)
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
04:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller (rev 80)
04:00.5 Ethernet controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMC250 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 05)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 05)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 05)

[attila_66]

Re: Asus K52J and Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

For Nvidia you can try the drivers from nvidia web site.
I also had problems with drivers (cant run a game) downloaded driver from nvidia site installed and now system works ok.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Asus K52J and Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

Below, my lspci...

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18)
- - -
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce 310M] (rev a2)

You have two video controllers. At some point, this page on hybrid graphics will probably come in handy.

[one2many]

Re: Asus K52J and Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

Thanks for the suggestions above. I'll give the vga switcheroo a try, because it may give me the chance to turn off the nvidia gpu, because it is on all the time and the laptop gets very hot.

Will let you know how it went.

[one2many]

Re: Asus K52J and Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

My attempts with nvidia -
Tried additional drivers again.
The nvidia binaries was again available. Once more I tried the binaries. Compilation/installation was aborted with the same error. This time I looked in the /var/log/jockey.log. From what I gathered from the log, the problem was that nvidia-current was not found.
I activated the (version current), rebooted.
I tried sudo nvidia-xconfig. This generated an xorg.conf. Looked at the xorg.conf and all seemed ok to me. Rebooted and got stuck at removing system V init incompatibles.
sudo rm /etc/X11/Xorg/xorg.conf and rebooted.
Querying Kinfocenter Graphics, got the message that OpenGL could not be initialized. However Checking desktop effects, OpenGL is activated.

I did not install the NVIDIA proprietary driver, because as NVIDIA stated, for my laptop, because asus did not provide hardware mechanism to switch GPUs, it would not work.

The choices of additional drivers:
NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) {This driver is not activated}
NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current) [Recommended] {Activated and currently in use}
nvidia_current {activated but not currently in use}

Guess that with this laptop I should consider myself lucky to have graphics at all.

Below my xorg.conf (renamed as backup)
# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 280.13 (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-03.nvidia.com) Wed Jul 27 17:15:58 PDT 2011

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection


Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

[one2many]

Re: Asus K52J and Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

Update
Finally removed all nvidia drivers.
Just using the intel GPU.
My display is way more responsive.
Will wait a while to see improvements for nvidia optimus in linux.
Tried bumblebee before, worked for a little while then after an update, laptop would hang at checking battery state.

None of what has transpired here is a reflection on Kubuntu 11.10 beta 2. Works a charm.