Saturday, June 18, 2016

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Review on ASUS Zenbook UX303UB




ASUS Zenbook UX303UB is a beautiful, thin, light ultrabook. Its beautiful and colorful. It comes in three different colors, Smoky Brown, Icicle Gold and Rose Gold. It has a QHD+(3200 x 1800) display which has a pixel density of 275 pixels per inch. It comes in 6th generation  Intel® Core™ i5 6200U Processor and Intel® Core™ i7 6500U processor. You may check it's specification at asus.com.

I've personally used this laptop since December, 2015. I really like it's beauty and mostly the battery life. The battery life of this laptop is great. It has a 50Whrs 3 Cell polymer battery. I get around 6 hrs to 8hrs of backup. It also charges really fast. For me it takes 2 hrs to complete a full charge.

I installed Ubuntu in this labtop as soon as I bought it. Back then I installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It wasn't usable at all. Then I tried Ubuntu 15.10. It hanged on me a lot. My laptop would hang if I closed the lid.

But in April, 2016 just after the release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. My linux experience with this laptop has changed. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS runs great in this laptop. Really great!!! I get around 6-7 Hrs runtime on a single charge. My laptop don't get hot anymore. I can even close the lid of my laptop while it's running and open up the lid without worrying. :-) Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my Zenbook UX303UB didn't hang on me ever since. I am really happy and lucky that I bought this laptop(Although I regreted buying this before the release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS)..
This laptop has an integrated NVIDIA 940M 2GB DDR3 Graphics Card, HD Webcam, Integrated 802.11 a/g/n or 802.11 ac, BT 4.0 support (on WLAN+ BT 4.0 combo card). They all work out of the box on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. You have to install the NVIDIA drivers and its easy to do so.

Some of the function keys such as f3(backlit brightness decrease), f4(backlit brightness increase), f9(touchpad enable/disable), f10(mute/unmute), f11(volume up), f12(volume down) works out of the box.
The screen brightness keys (f5 and f7) works with some tweak. Still the others function keys don't work. I hope in future it will be fixed.

 The ambient light sensor don't work out of the box. I didn't try to make it work though. Just because I don't need this functionality.

You can check my video on youtube to see Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on ASUS UX303UB in action.

If your laptop gets hot after installing the nvidia drivers, install 'thermald'. thermald is created by intel for monitoring an controlling temperatures of their processors.

 You can also install 'powertop' to further increase battery life.

Thats all you have to do to get it up and running with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
If you guys are looking for a great laptop to run Ubuntu or any other Linux distro, I would recommend ASUS Zenbook UX303UB. 

 Official Link:  
ASUS Zenbook UX303UB Homepage


Buy from Amazon: 

Buy ASUS ZenBook UX303UB
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , ,

20 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 27, 2016 at 2:24 AM

    WiDi support out of the box? Really? Where can you tell me please?
    No ambient sensor, no some fn keys, many ui bugs (including bluetooth indicator disappears after bt is switched off) - it is all great work?

    ReplyDelete
  2. JokerChrOctober 30, 2016 at 2:32 PM

    how much battery life do you get with ubuntu ? and about the heat, i read that you got a descrease in how hot can be this laptop, but how much? i play league of legends some times and i want to know if the laptop still heat a lot while play in ubuntu

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownNovember 1, 2016 at 4:55 AM

      5-6 hrs on normal use. I don't play games on it. But The most CPU intensive work I do is virtualization. I run several VMs on it at the same time. Still It doesn't get that hot.

      Delete
    2. JokerChrNovember 6, 2016 at 3:43 PM

      can you help me with the nvidia graphics ? i cannot install correctly, this is my nvidia setting i don't have all the option that you have
      http://tinyimg.io/i/FbxdsOE.png

      Delete
    3. JokerChrNovember 7, 2016 at 4:12 AM

      Other thing, your laptop remember the configuration of brightness level for your screen and keyboard????

      Delete
    4. UnknownNovember 7, 2016 at 6:39 AM

      Hi! You did everything correctly. You didn't install nvidia-prime I think. That's why Prime settings are not visible.
      Install nvidia-prime with this command, "sudo apt-get install nvidia-prime"


      I don't use backlit keyboard that much. So it wasn't on all the time when I made the video.
      Sorry I don't remember the brightness level. But I do keep the brightness level low.

      Delete
    5. JokerChrNovember 7, 2016 at 9:21 AM

      but you have a lot of option in nvidia settings i don't, and about the keyboard, the backlight keep always on, if i turn then off and use Ctrl + Alt + L and enter to my user again the backlight turn on again(even when enter in inactivity), the OS don't remember the last setting that i put (backlight keyboard and brightness screen)

      Delete
    6. UnknownNovember 7, 2016 at 9:31 AM

      Which version of Ubuntu are you using? I used to have that problem on 14.04 LTS. But in 16.04 LTS, I no longer have this problem.

      Did you install nvidia-prime?

      Delete
    7. JokerChrNovember 7, 2016 at 9:36 AM

      i install Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS i don't know if is a problem of the distro or just ubuntu in general, how much resource consume with ubuntu Lts ? with mate just 1 GB Ram and almost 6% CPU in normal use

      Delete
    8. JokerChrNovember 7, 2016 at 9:52 AM

      did you upgrade the BIOS ?

      Delete
    9. UnknownNovember 7, 2016 at 10:33 AM

      It might be a problem of Ubuntu MATE, I use Ubuntu(Unity) and it works fine.

      Same as MATE.

      I did upgrade BIOS.

      Delete
    10. JokerChrNovember 7, 2016 at 10:46 AM

      Ok, first i'm going to upgrade the bios, and if doesn't work i will move to Ubuntu LTS 16.04.1

      Thanks :)

      Delete
    11. UnknownNovember 7, 2016 at 11:08 AM

      Good luck :-)

      You're welcome :-)

      Delete
  3. UnknownDecember 11, 2016 at 6:52 AM

    This article alone prompted us to buy one, and we are very glad we did it.

    We comment about this notebook in our blog:

    https://sourceforge.net/p/escuelaslinux/blog/2016/12/how-to-install-escuelas-linux-50-on-the-asus-zenbook-ux303ub/

    and in the Spanish language version of the post are additional instructions to tweak the English language keyboard of this notebook

    https://sourceforge.net/p/escuelaslinux/blog/2016/12/c%C3%B3mo-instalar-escuelas-linux-en-la-asus-zenbook-ux303ub/

    Best Regards and thanks for making us aware.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 2, 2017 at 7:13 AM

    Shahriar, had you been able to switch to the nvidia gpu (sudo prime-select nvidia)? If so, what version of the proprietary driver are you using? In our zenbook trying to do so causes a black screen with a blinking cursor...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownJanuary 2, 2017 at 9:49 AM

      I am using 'nvidia-367'. According to apt-cache, the version is '367.57-0ubuntu0.16.04.1'. It's available in the official repository of Ubuntu.

      I had similar problems. Removing(purging) the nvidia drivers and reinstalling it solved the problem.

      Delete
  5. UnknownJanuary 2, 2017 at 1:22 PM

    Very sadly, your recommended procedure does not work in Escuelas Linux / Bodhi Linux.
    After ´apt-get purge nvidia-367´, ´apt-get install nvidia-367´, the nvidia GPU sets itself as the temporarily working one, but it does not have GLX support, so no working 3D games nor even test programs such as glxgears. After closing session or reboot, the nvidia GPU is back with its black screen. Only the intel one is working.
    After digging on Internet, it seems to be an unsolved issue on Nvidia Optimus. The only way we were able to make it work was installing Bumblebee, but it is awfully complex and tedious to setup.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownJanuary 3, 2017 at 1:22 PM

    I see. That's very unfortunate. Great that you found a way to get it to work. :-)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)