Installing Linux Mint 19.2 Tina on ASUS FX504GE laptop
After
almost one year of using Linux on my ASUS FX504 laptop in dual boot
mode with Windows 10, I decided to give Mint 19.2 a try. My
experiments with different Linux versions on this laptop have not
been much successful.
I
have tried the following in last 1 year or so:
1.
Good Old UBuntu GNOME3
2.
PopOS
3.
Manjaro Linux
4.
ZorinOS
5.
Deepin
6.
Linux Mint Cinnamon
7.
Maybe one or two more, but I forgot😀
In
addition I also tried some of the desktop environments like XFCE with
XUbuntu, LXDE with LUbuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, KDE with KUBuntu.
Each
of the linux distribution or desktop environment gave different
feeling of stability, ease of use, overall look and feel, convenience
etc. But somehow I was not satisfied and always would go back to
GNOME3 on UBuntu.
Around
1 month back I stumbled upon a news article which mentioned that
Linux Mint 19.2 is coming out of Beta and is being released in early
August 2019. I quickly read about the release notes, looked at some
of the Youtube videos talking about Min 19.2 release and decided to
give it a try.
I
am not unfamiliar with Linux Mint as such. I have used it on an Old
PC during 2011-2012 for several years and it worked absolutly fine on
the old PC with a Intel Core 2 Duo Chip and less than 1GB RAM. At
that time I decided to remove Windows XP from the PC as it was
becoming too slow with Windows and decided to put Linux. Mint was the
most beginner friendly Linux distribution out there so decided to
give it a try and it worked really good for several years. After that
I bought a Lenovo laptop with an Intel I3 processor and again put
Linux in dual boot mode with Windows 8. Only problem I faced was with
Wifi driver becasue the Lenovo laptop had a Broadcom wifi card and
there were not enough good drivers for that.
With ASUS FX504 laptop so far the major problem has been with NVidia graphics driver. Almost all of the Linux distributions I tried had the problem of system freezing or screen going blank during installation or after rebooting after installation. The culprit is Nouveau driver which gets picked up as default during installation.
With ASUS FX504 laptop so far the major problem has been with NVidia graphics driver. Almost all of the Linux distributions I tried had the problem of system freezing or screen going blank during installation or after rebooting after installation. The culprit is Nouveau driver which gets picked up as default during installation.
Of
course you have the way to tell the installer to not install Nouveau
driver by setting parameter nouveau.modeset=0 during installation and
then installing nvidia proprietary driver via Additional Drivers.But
this method did not work at all for Manjaro Linux. In UBuntu and
other Debian based Linux distributions it worked.
With
Mint 19.2 the installation process is simplified a lot. The installer
will mostly pick up automatically the appropriate Nvidia driver. If
the system freezes during installation then you can use nomodeset
parameter during installation and it should install fine.
Apart
from this the rest of installation process is simple, just follow it
and Linux Mint 19.2 should install without any problems.
Second problem while using Linux on this ASUS FX504GE laptop is the touchpad. The touchpad is an Elantech touchpad. Try what you may but this touchpad will not behave properly at all on any flavour of Linux. The problem is in the Linux kernel which did not have support for this Elantech touchpad.
With Linux kernel version 5.2.4 the problems with the touchpad have reduced. The system is able to identify the touchpad and it works also. But still there are occasional freezes and mouse pointer movement is not that smooth. This also can be attributed to the touchpad itself. Even on Windows this touchpad does not behave properly. Asus and other laptop manufacturers should stop using such cheap components in their laptops.With Linux Min19.2 I did not run into the Nvidia driver problem. And after installation of Mint I installed UKUU kernel upgrade utility. With this I installed kernel version 5.2.4 and the problem with Elantech touchpad is also gone.
Second problem while using Linux on this ASUS FX504GE laptop is the touchpad. The touchpad is an Elantech touchpad. Try what you may but this touchpad will not behave properly at all on any flavour of Linux. The problem is in the Linux kernel which did not have support for this Elantech touchpad.
With Linux kernel version 5.2.4 the problems with the touchpad have reduced. The system is able to identify the touchpad and it works also. But still there are occasional freezes and mouse pointer movement is not that smooth. This also can be attributed to the touchpad itself. Even on Windows this touchpad does not behave properly. Asus and other laptop manufacturers should stop using such cheap components in their laptops.With Linux Min19.2 I did not run into the Nvidia driver problem. And after installation of Mint I installed UKUU kernel upgrade utility. With this I installed kernel version 5.2.4 and the problem with Elantech touchpad is also gone.
Overall
I am happy with the Mint 19.2 distribution. I use the Cinnamon
flavour of it. But you can also use others like Mate and XFCE. Just
head over to Linux Mint website for details :
https://www.linuxmint.com/
Few
additional points:
-
I am not using Nvidia graphics card and am using the Intel graphics card since it consumes less energy. But this can be switched easily.
-
You need to install POWERTOP to tune the power consumption. Otherwise you will get just an hour and half of battery backup.
- I am using Roboto font.
Screenshots from my installation. There are two panels. One on top
and one on the left side.
