Running Linux on the EZBook 2?

[Michael]

Hi all,

I’ve ordered the EZBook 2. I’m curious: how does Linux run on it? It uses a Broadcom chip so that might cause issues. I’m curious how the battery life is on Linux too.

Once I get my unit, I’ll update this post with information on how well it runs under Linux.

[Franxoois]

Great ! I will looking forward your updates !

[Michael]

You’ll have to bear with me since it’ll probably be a week before I get my unit. It just shipped today: http://www.dhl.com/en/express/tracking.html?AWB=2811540642&brand=DHL

[Dominik]

Could you tell me what is the reason you buy? What are you going to use it for?

[Michael]

It’s a laptop for school work mainly. I’m going to type out word documents, browse the internet, view PDFs, run circuit simulations, do light programming in C/C#/C++/Java, read my digital textbooks, etc.

[Chris G]

Drives will be the main hurdle, I installed Remix OS for PC on the C drive and have it as a dual boot test. Remix boots and works fine, but no drivers for WIFI, sound, and the touchpad. So can’t do much with it, I don’t have time to mess about with drivers so will wait until someone that does come with fixes.

Please let me know if your unit has the USB port power issue like mine (Can’t power USB hard drivers)

Despite my so-so review, I’m enjoying it. Nice screen, good battery life and one of the more fluid Z8300’s I’ve used to dated and I’ve seen a few!

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[Dominik]

Michael wrote:

It’s a laptop for school work mainly. I’m going to type out word documents, browse the internet, view PDFs, run circuit simulations, do light programming in C/C#/C++/Java, read my digital textbooks, etc.

Perfect, as this is exactly the same reason I would use it in case I purchase. As you recieve it, could you please tell me how it operates in those areas, and in some real-life scenarios?

Cheers 🙂

[Michael]

Chris G wrote:

Drives will be the main hurdle, I installed Remix OS for PC on the C drive and have it as a dual boot test. Remix boots and works fine, but no drivers for WIFI, sound, and the touchpad. So can’t do much with it, I don’t have time to mess about with drivers so will wait until someone that does come with fixes. Please let me know if your unit has the USB port power issue like mine (Can’t power USB hard drivers) Despite my so-so review, I’m enjoying it. Nice screen, good battery life and one of the more fluid Z8300’s I’ve used to dated and I’ve seen a few!

Fair enough you don’t want to mess with drivers on Linux. Worst-case scenario for me: I’ll just run Windows on this laptop.

Remix OS in particular is a closed-source x86 port of Android which uses an ARM port of an ancient Linux kernel so not ideal for driver support. Wifi will probably require drivers from the repos since Broadcom is not ideal for Linux but I’m fairly confident it will work (there’s also ndiswrapper if it doesn’t work). Touchpad I believe just uses the ps/2 mouse drivers so that’s probably a configuration issue (I should be able to at least get basic cursor movement, left and right click working). No idea about the speakers. Not sure what audio chipset it uses so I’ll find out when it arrives. A little irritating how secretive Chinese manufacturers are about the detailed specs.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an external hard drive to test with. I keep all my files on my home file server (with a decent upload connection) so I don’t use much storage. Normally, I’d just upgrade the SSD but in this case it uses eMMC so if I am hard-pressed on storage, I’ll buy a sd card or an external SSD.

[Michael]

Welp, I got my unit today. I installed Manjaro (Arch derivative) and tried Linux kernels 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6. 4.6 was freezing (GPU hangs) but 4.4 and 4.5 were fine. As Chris G said, there’s no wifi, no touchpad and no audio drivers. For Wifi, I tried ndiswrapper (dumped Windows driver), b43, brcm80211, and broadcom-wl drivers and none worked. lspci returns no results (except for the Intel processor). It looks like the PCI is implemented by the CPU instead of the mobo and is non-standard so lspci isn’t picking it up. The wifi chip is a BCM4343SD (obtained from driver dump).

This is a deal-breaker for me to run Linux. I’m just going to run Windows on it. It’s a shame because Linux seemed to run so smooth on it and looked beautiful.

EDIT: Actually, I might just buy this $2 wireless dongle: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/150Mbps-Mini-USB-WiFi-Wireless-Adapter-Dongle-Network-LAN-Card-802-11n-g-b-PC-/272255792708?hash=item3f63b5b644:g:z~4AAOSwO~hXICxO and use a wireless laptop mouse… Hmm…

EDIT2: Also, I should mention that mine came with a Toshiba eMMC and there’s not as much keyboard flex. I will have to try out the performance in the next few days.

[Dominik]

I would say it is such a shame. I also wanted to run some Linux distro, as I would guess it should perform better than Windows.

Could you tell me who is the vendor of touchpad, and what the model is?

Also, I would love to know what kind of experience it gives you while working. I am particularly interested in using IDEs by JetBrains (IntelliJ, clion). And some overall impressions over multitasking.

Thanks for any answers, cheers 🙂

[Michael]

I haven’t quite used it yet. I’m still doing reformats and fiddling with drivers. So far, it performs well in Linux for basic stuff. It performed well in Windows until I connected to the internet (the updates must’ve slowed it down).

I can’t find the touchpad model so I’ve uploaded pictures from device manager and a hardware info dump from “System Information” tool.

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[Michael]

Good news: the multi-touch on the touchpad is working. I’m currently busy though so I can’t really work on this laptop at the moment.

[Dominik]

I am very happy to hear that 🙂 hopefully audio and wifi are also easy to fix…

However, this is very strange that you got a toshiba emmc 😉

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Have you made any progress on making Linux works on this laptop? I got one with a Toshiba eMMC, and although VirtualBox is working, Windows is a real pain… I hope I could someday install Linux on it!

[Anonymous]

No one? Windows is a pain… Linux on it would be awesome!

[Author]

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