Arch linux on the Asus Zenbook
If you're familiar with Linux distributions, you've probably heard of Arch Linux. Now I won't explain what Arch Linux is but in short, Arch Linux is a fairly minimal distro where the user has the freedom to customise it to their liking. This can lead to a very lightweight system which may improve performance and battery life, both points being very relevant to the UX305CA.
Bootloader
If you've already installed Arch linux, you can skip over this section. Otherwise, bootloader selection is really important and is a must-have requirement. I'll keep this as simple as possible. For automatic configuration of kernels and other OSes, use grub. Meanwhile, if you want a simple (manual) configuration and if you use UEFI mode, use systemd-boot/gummiboot. Which one is officially recommended for UEFI? systemd-boot/gummiboot, but you can use grub or other supported bootloaders.
Touchpad
No additional configuration needed for touchpad if you are using libinput. synaptics is depreciated and lacks palm detection. libinput just requires tap to click to be enabled on first start of your system. Three-finger tap works out of the box. For the best gesture experience, I highly recommend using a wayland supported DE like GNOME.
TLP
For installation, I just followed the Arch Linux beginners guide. While more experienced users may feel that this is the wrong guide to follow, it does the job and I haven't had any issues with it.
Precaution: Follow at your own risk. Never run copy-paste commands into a terminal blindly without knowing exactly what it is doing. Just because someone knows what they are doing, doesn't mean you don't have to know!
Precaution: Follow at your own risk. Never run copy-paste commands into a terminal blindly without knowing exactly what it is doing. Just because someone knows what they are doing, doesn't mean you don't have to know!
Now if you are following my guide simply for UX305CA-specific tweaks, here are some I have:
Bootloader
If you've already installed Arch linux, you can skip over this section. Otherwise, bootloader selection is really important and is a must-have requirement. I'll keep this as simple as possible. For automatic configuration of kernels and other OSes, use grub. Meanwhile, if you want a simple (manual) configuration and if you use UEFI mode, use systemd-boot/gummiboot. Which one is officially recommended for UEFI? systemd-boot/gummiboot, but you can use grub or other supported bootloaders.
Touchpad
No additional configuration needed for touchpad if you are using libinput. synaptics is depreciated and lacks palm detection. libinput just requires tap to click to be enabled on first start of your system. Three-finger tap works out of the box. For the best gesture experience, I highly recommend using a wayland supported DE like GNOME.
TLP
One of the first packages to install after you have the basic system running. Just run sudo pacman -S tlp tlp-rdw to install it. Then you may want to configure it right after. I personally disable audio power save which is enabled by default in TLP. TLP also enables Bluetooth suspend and USB suspend by default which can be black listed if you like
libva-intel-driver
Another very important package, especially if you play a lot of local or network videos on applications like VLC or mpv. This is not installed by default unlike Ubuntu and as a result, video players will use software decoding which will eat up your battery life and make performance bad.
chromium-vaapi
The problem with Linux distributions is lacking support in hardware acceleration. Where the main problem exists is in the web browsers because of complications such as stability issues, therefore developers must rely on software decoding. Fortunately, the intel vaapi driver is relatively stable and so there have been work done to support hardware video decoding. Run yaourt chromium-vaapi-bin to install the binary package from AUR, and yaourt chromium-vaapi if you want to compile it yourself. Note: Compiling it yourself may take a while, but you should get updates faster.
GNOME desktop environment
There are many desktop environments to choose from in the Linux world, but they all have their own caveats. Through my experience, I've found that GNOME should work fine in most workflows, it is the only usable DE for HiDPI and touchscreen devices. Now on the matter of touchscreens, it's not perfect. The on-screen keyboard has issues such as appearing on-screen too aggressively. Wayland provides support for mixed-DPI displays which makes it easier for me to switch between laptop-only mode and external+laptop display mode.
mpv
Back again with video players, I personally recommend mpv. It is very simple, probably even too simple but for a good reason. It is highly configurable, much more than VLC for example. One significant advantage is support for hardware video decoding on wayland, but this requires some tweaks.
Tweaks required (enter these in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:
libva-intel-driver
Another very important package, especially if you play a lot of local or network videos on applications like VLC or mpv. This is not installed by default unlike Ubuntu and as a result, video players will use software decoding which will eat up your battery life and make performance bad.
chromium-vaapi
The problem with Linux distributions is lacking support in hardware acceleration. Where the main problem exists is in the web browsers because of complications such as stability issues, therefore developers must rely on software decoding. Fortunately, the intel vaapi driver is relatively stable and so there have been work done to support hardware video decoding. Run yaourt chromium-vaapi-bin to install the binary package from AUR, and yaourt chromium-vaapi if you want to compile it yourself. Note: Compiling it yourself may take a while, but you should get updates faster.
GNOME desktop environment
There are many desktop environments to choose from in the Linux world, but they all have their own caveats. Through my experience, I've found that GNOME should work fine in most workflows, it is the only usable DE for HiDPI and touchscreen devices. Now on the matter of touchscreens, it's not perfect. The on-screen keyboard has issues such as appearing on-screen too aggressively. Wayland provides support for mixed-DPI displays which makes it easier for me to switch between laptop-only mode and external+laptop display mode.
mpv
Back again with video players, I personally recommend mpv. It is very simple, probably even too simple but for a good reason. It is highly configurable, much more than VLC for example. One significant advantage is support for hardware video decoding on wayland, but this requires some tweaks.
Tweaks required (enter these in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:
- hwdec=yes # For video hardware accel
- opengl-backend=wayland # For wayland support (but removes window decorations)
- profile=opengl-hq # Enable high quality opengl profile for better video interpolation
Intel microcode
Important, but not absolutely necessary to have. I recommend most people to install the latest intel microcode on their system just to prevent any issues (can be extremely rare but exists) under certain complex workloads. Visit the Arch wiki for instructions on how to install.
This is all very good info, why not contribute to Arch wiki? Well in-fact, I've already updated the wiki on the UX305!
This is all very good info, why not contribute to Arch wiki? Well in-fact, I've already updated the wiki on the UX305!
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