Ubuntu for ezbook 3 rpo?

Ubuntu for ezbook 3 rpo?

TechTablets Forums Jumper Discussion EZBook series Ubuntu for ezbook 3 rpo?

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
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  • #150111
    DD
    Participant
    • Posts: 28

    Anyone using it? or there are other better linux choices?

    Finding replacement for softwares seems not that diffuclt, libre office for ms office, native chrome and vlc, plenty of pdf viewers, gimp for photoshop etc…. the drivers are my concern, though.

    I am new to linux, do windows drivers which I can backup from  win 10 work for linux as well?

    please advise, thanks

     

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    #150112
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    I tested several of the major linux distros. Ubuntu, Solus – just run out of the box, everything works, no tweaking neccessarry. However the touchpad is a tad bit imprecise and jittery (e.g. using Chrome). Only slightly better than under Windows. So you don’t gain much compared to Windows. More or less same performance, same battery, similar user experience. Maybe a bit less hassle with the updates. And also better software choices, depending on what you prefer.

    You get a better touchpad precision and responsiveness using ChomeOS (“Cloudready”) which you can download from neverware, free version. Seems to be the only Linux distro that has an advanced touchpad implementation. Feels like a different machine. After investigating a bit, it is because Google has dumped the windows manager and replaced it with their own (Freon), which more or less does nothing (so it is faster) an leaves the windowing work for Chrome, which has its own window manager, and efficiently implements smooth pixel precise scrolling.

    Cloudready cannot be installed parallel to Windows though. So you would need to buy a SSD for the M.2 Slot and install it there. You can run it from USB just for testing purpose.

    So I would recommend Cloudready+SSD. It also does support full blown Linux applications if you wish (but then touchpad scrolling becomes an issue again, didn’t investigate that further).
    Solus would be my second choice. But there are only minor differences between all the other distros.

    However, none of the distros I tested did activate customizeable multitouch gestures. So you would need to manually configure that (via libinput-gestures), which requires different software stack and elaborated knowledge to get it working properly.

    #150113
    DD
    Participant
    • Posts: 28

    Oh thank you so much for your detail reply, really appreciate indeed!

    I am still on the fence, though. The biggest con of this laptop for me is actually the CPU, 100% workload “bottleneck” happens quite often, I did already disable quite a few unnncessary services already but still it can be laggy sometimes, alway the CPU.

    This is the only reason why I was wondering whether or not a Linux OS would help a bit.

    Based on your valuable experience, Cloudready is the best bet I have for smoother experience, does it use LESS CPU as well?

    my ezbook 3 pro comes with a ssd, and I hate the touchpad on it, usually I use my own wireless mouse instead.

    I will do a bit more researchon cloudready OS first, thanks again!

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    #150122
    Furkan
    Participant
    • Posts: 32

    you can install ubuntu 18.10 easily and it works out of the box. I tried to install ubuntu 18.04 and elementary os but they gave me hard time with grub and for some reason i couldnt able to use it as dual boot or boot into ubuntu after the installation. Grub minimal bash like line editing error comes. But in ubuntu 18.10 i think they fixed something and i works directly.

    #150172
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    If you tweak Windows services a bit it runs quite similar efficient as Linux (only that it utilizes much more RAM). Applications also run pretty much similar. But that depends on what you are using.
    Most of the CPU load comes from the touchpad implementation. It uses almost all the CPU for polling the touchpad. I have investigated that extensively. If you want smooth and precise scrolling the only solution so far I found is going to ChromeOS. It is much more responsive in this regard than anything else.

    #150201
    DD
    Participant
    • Posts: 28

    after hearing what you have said, I decided to stuck with Win 10 for now.

    Does it mean if I disable touchpad , the chance of having CPU loading issue will reduce significantly?

    It’s hard to imagine how this touch pad can affect so much in this laptop. I will test it later.

    thanks a lot.

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    #150328
    Furkan
    Participant
    • Posts: 32

    If you tweak Windows services a bit it runs quite similar efficient as Linux (only that it utilizes much more RAM). Applications also run pretty much similar. But that depends on what you are using. Most of the CPU load comes from the touchpad implementation. It uses almost all the CPU for polling the touchpad. I have investigated that extensively. If you want smooth and precise scrolling the only solution so far I found is going to ChromeOS. It is much more responsive in this regard than anything else.

     

    how can you managed to install chromeOS? are you using neverware? are you using dual boot? i installed neverware some time ago but it had weak performance and issues. How is your performance?

    #150329
    Furkan
    Participant
    • Posts: 32

    after hearing what you have said, I decided to stuck with Win 10 for now. Does it mean if I disable touchpad , the chance of having CPU loading issue will reduce significantly? It’s hard to imagine how this touch pad can affect so much in this laptop. I will test it later. thanks a lot.

    When i was using ubuntu 18.10 i never noticed any strange overload on cpu and the touchpad was working quite fine.

    #150332
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    Does it mean if I disable touchpad , the chance of having CPU loading issue will reduce significantly? It’s hard to imagine how this touch pad can affect so much in this laptop. I will test it later. thanks a lot.

    You first have to check what loads your CPU. If you aren’t scrolling then it is something else.
    Pixel precise scrolling does not work well yet, neither in Windows nor in Linux. Only ChromeOS has it running.

    See this thread: https://techtablets.com/forum/topic/touchpad-improvements-for-ezbook-3-pro/

    #150333
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    When i was using ubuntu 18.10 i never noticed any strange overload on cpu and the touchpad was working quite fine.

    There’s nothing “strange”. Just pixel precise scrolling heavily loads the CPU. Just watch the load (task manager) when you scroll.

    That’s why scrolling in Windows/Linux has some lag on slow CPUs. Probably you only recognize the difference when you come from ChromeOS or OSX.

    #150335
    Peter
    Participant
    • Posts: 38

    how can you managed to install chromeOS? are you using neverware? are you using dual boot? i installed neverware some time ago but it had weak performance and issues. How is your performance?

    Yes, Cloudready from Neverware, that’s a free ChromeOS variant. You don’t need to tweak anything, just download the image, burn it on USB stick, and boot it – runs fine, everything works out of the box.

    Application performance is more or less the same and does not depend much on the OS. ChromeOS just implements the scrolling better (freon window manager) so everything is much smoother and without that lag, uses less RAM, isn’t as wasteful with background services, and also boots much faster (of course the USB stick sets some limitations).
    I was using it from USB stick. Unfortunately you cannot install it parallel to Windows. So it does need a dedicated SSD to be installed (didn’t go that route yet).
    Main problem I see with ChromeOS is the missing custom multitouch gestures. You can of course configure all that in Linux, but that would need some deeper investigation.

    #150342
    Furkan
    Participant
    • Posts: 32

    how can you managed to install chromeOS? are you using neverware? are you using dual boot? i installed neverware some time ago but it had weak performance and issues. How is your performance?

    Yes, Cloudready from Neverware, that’s a free ChromeOS variant. You don’t need to tweak anything, just download the image, burn it on USB stick, and boot it – runs fine, everything works out of the box. Application performance is more or less the same and does not depend much on the OS. ChromeOS just implements the scrolling better (freon window manager) so everything is much smoother and without that lag, uses less RAM, isn’t as wasteful with background services, and also boots much faster (of course the USB stick sets some limitations). I was using it from USB stick. Unfortunately you cannot install it parallel to Windows. So it does need a dedicated SSD to be installed (didn’t go that route yet). Main problem I see with ChromeOS is the missing custom multitouch gestures. You can of course configure all that in Linux, but that would need some deeper investigation.

     

    I used to install it on my ssd which works fine. But with stock neverware is useless for me. You can not install android apps so the only ones you can use that are stock and i cant live like this 🙂

    #150343
    DD
    Participant
    • Posts: 28

    May I ask how did you install android app on this laptop? linux OS or windows 10?

    thanks a lot

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    #150349
    DD
    Participant
    • Posts: 28

    I am very ignorant about Linux OS but I just “accidentally” wiped my win 10 drive and installed Cloudready OS… I tried to test it on USB or install it on my empty eMMc drive, so when I saw install, I clicked… I thought it would let me choose which drive I want to install the OS but it just didn’t… windows 10 drive gone!

    well… since there was nothing much I could do at that point, I decided to try it out. It’s running smoothly but trackpad is not working at all, I have to use my wireless mouse but scolling is SLOW while browsing website…

    Regarding the functionality of the OS, it is severally lacking, I installed VLC as an extension and downloaded the media codec pack in setting, and I cannot play the mp4 videos in my hdd.

    I turned on Linux beta and managed to updated some files… sudo apt-get.. upgrade…etc….

    up until now, I have yet figured out whether or not I can install some linux apps on this laptop….

    UPDATE: the laptop just turned into sleep more while I am typing here and the screen is not blank, i cannot wake it up again…..

    Shxt…. not so good so far…

    might give Ubuntu 18.10 a shot….

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    #150357
    DD
    Participant
    • Posts: 28

    I installed ubuntu 18.10 in minimal installation setting, everything seems to be working straight out of the box.

    there is some delay when I open the app menu and I have yet figured out whether or not all drivers are properly installed, I am completely new to ubuntu and I need a bit more exploration before I can make further comment.

    Trackpad is work but no gesture, wifi is working.

    typing is smoother, it was terrible in window 10.

    Playing videos in youtube is smooth, it was very slow in chrome to change the video to full screen mode, now is quicker

    UPDATE: Intel wifi driver disconnection issue still exist in Ubuntu….

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