Barrys News

Installing Linux Mint on Asus Zenbook S 13

January 19, 2025 — BarryK

This is the 2024 Zenbook with Intel Ultra 7 CPU. I posted yesterday about installing Manjaro:

Installing Linux on Asus Zenbook S 13 — January 17, 2025

...what I didn't mention in that post is that booting from Limine, only get to the commandline, cannot start X. This is the XFCE version of Manjaro. I tried the usual methods of starting XFCE, but all I can get is an empty panel across top of screen. Type CTRL-ALT-DEL creates a shutdown window, and mouse suddenly starts working.

Today downloaded Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon, booted it on a USB-stick and installed to an ext4 partition in the Zenbook. I love the installer, lots of choices. Could not disable installing the bootloader; I had previously created a vfat esp partition, in which had installed Limine. No problem, Mint installed Grub in there as well. The UEFI setup now offers a choice of both.

Mint desktop works, sound works ...until the third bootup, then got a black screen. Thereafter a black screen, but booting in "compatibility mode" works -- that is using the vesa driver only.

This is what I now have in 'limine.cfg' file:

VERBOSE=no
TIMEOUT=10
DEFAULT_ENTRY=1
INTERFACE_BRANDING=EasyOS Limine Boot Manager
INTERFACE_RESOLUTION=800x600

:EasyOS Scarthgap test1 (/dev/nvme0n1p9 easyos/test1)
    COMMENT=EasyOS Scarthgap bootup
    RESOLUTION=1440x900
    PROTOCOL=linux
    KERNEL_PATH=boot://9/easyos/test1/vmlinuz
    MODULE_PATH=boot://9/easyos/test1/initrd
    KERNEL_CMDLINE=rw nomodeset
wkg_uuid=79ac733a-5f33-4875-bbdc-65d333bbd15f wkg_dir=easyos/test1/

:Linux Mint 22.1 (/dev/nvme0n1p8)
    COMMENT=Linux Mint bootup
    RESOLUTION=1440x900
    PROTOCOL=linux
    KERNEL_PATH=boot://8/boot/vmlinuz
    MODULE_PATH=boot://8/boot/initrd.img
    KERNEL_CMDLINE=rw nomodeset root=/dev/nvme0n1p8

...etc...

...notice the "nomodeset". The Zenbook screen is 2880x1800. Setting half that, 1440x900, in limine.cfg is just right on the 13" screen. Both distros run the desktop at that resolution. They both work real nice, except of course no GPU acceleration.

Tags: easy

Installing Linux on Asus Zenbook S 13

January 17, 2025 — BarryK

I posted recently about purchasing the Zenbook:

Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED UX5304MA laptop — January 10, 2025

Running Windows (Windows 11 Home), I used its partition manager to shrink the C: drive partition from circa-850GB to 128GB. Also turned off "fast startup" and disabled BitLocker partition encryption. All of these operations were done within Windows, by reference to some YouTube videos.

Booted Manjaro from USB-stick (to which the ISO had been written), and ran Gparted to create partitions in the empty space of the drive. A 64MB vfat esp boot partition, and three ext4 partititons (62GB, 62GB, last one to fill remaining space). The good thing was that Gparted was already builtin.

Whenever I use one of the mainstream Linux distributions, I become very frustrated; Manjaro is no exception. I should have made notes of the frustrations as encountered.

I ran "sudo thunar" in a terminal, as was surprised how many error messages. Things were missing, such as the 'gvfs' package. I wanted to mount the newly-created partitions, but no way could I find how to do it. Not via any GUI anyway; I resorted to doing it in a terminal, then could access them in Thunar.

Went ahead and installed Manjaro in one of the new ext4 partitions. It was taking awhile, so I went outside to water the garden. Came back in, and found the screen had locked, and it wanted a password to unlock. The default user is "manjaro" and from online docs the default password is "manjaro" -- but it just said "incorrect password". So I unlocked as the root user, and low-and-behold, it accepted "manjaro" password. However, the install had aborted.

Examining the ext4 partition, however, it looks like everything has installed.

Is it just me? Why are there so many hassles with using a mainstream distro, when one should be expecting very streamlined and refined experience? Anyway, moving on...

I booted EasyOS from USB-stick, and able to get low-resolution 800x600 vesa desktop. Workable, ok to use.

Installed Limine into the new vfat esp partition, and created an entry for Manjaro. Used this as reference:

Install Limine to PC with mainline Linux distros — July 25, 2022

...however, there was no 'initramfs-6.12-x86_64-fallback.img' in /boot folder. I had to bootup Manjaro from USB-stick again and create it:

> sudo mkinitcpio -P

Was then able to boot the Zenbook with Limine, to installed Manjaro.

Also installed EasyOS, into another ext4 partition. Which of course is super-easy, just copy 'vmlinuz', 'initrd' and 'easy.sfs'. Then create an entry in 'limine.cfg'

With Easy, still only have low-resolution vesa, also no sound.

Next up, examined the configuration of the kernel in EasyOS versus in Manjaro. I did this by running "lsmod" in both, then determining what extra modules Manjaro loads. I then worked backwards and determined what "CONFIG_*" settings need to be enabled. This website helped greatly:

https://www.kernelconfig.io/index.html

Then created a script that modified my kernel ".config" file:

#!/bin/sh
MODS='8250_dw|CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_DW
ac97_bus|CONFIG_AC97_BUS
acpi_tad|CONFIG_ACPI_TAD
 ...etc...
x_tables|CONFIG_NETFILTER_XTABLES'

cp -a -f DOTconfig DOTconfigNEW
echo -n '' > changes.log
sync

for aM in $MODS
do
 [ -z "$aM" ] && continue
 echo -n '.'
 aC="${aM/*|/}"
 if [ -z "$aC" ];then continue; fi
 grep -q -F "${aC}=" DOTconfig
 if [ $? -eq 0 ];then continue; fi
 grep -q -F "${aC} " DOTconfig
 if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
  echo -n " ${aC} "
  echo "modify ${aC}" >> changes.log
  sed -i -e "s%^# ${aC} .*%${aC}=m%" DOTconfigNEW
  continue
 fi
 echo -n " append ${aC} "
  echo "append ${aC}" >> changes.log
 echo "${aC}=m" >> DOTconfigNEW
done
echo
sync

It is possible to determine the CONFIG_* from module-name from the kernel source. I found this online:

 aC="$(find linux-6.12.9  -name "Makefile" -exec grep " += ${aM}.o" {} \; | grep -o 'CONFIG_[^)]*')"

...where $aM is the module-name. However, it only works sometimes.

The script is crude, as some modules require prerequisites that might not be enabled. Anyway, I used the generated "DOTconfigNEW" as the new '.config' and kernel 6.12.9 is compiling right now.

Tags: easy

EasyOS Daedalus-series version 6.5.5 released

January 16, 2025 — BarryK

If you are new to EasyOS, I recommend that you read the version 6.5 release announcement for further information:

EasyOS Scarthgap-series version 6.5 released — December 03, 2024
EasyOS Daedalus-series version 6.5 released — December 03, 2024

To find out what has changed since 6.5, read the 6.5.5 release notes:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2025/6.5.5/release-notes.htm

Some introductory notes are here:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2025/6.5.5/readme.htm

Download 6.5.5:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2025/6.5.5/

Feedback is welcome at the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=140297#p140297

Have fun!

Tags: easy

Easy Daedalus package version bumps

January 16, 2025 — BarryK

I am just about to release Easy Daedalus 6.5.5 and have bumped some package versions:

chromium     131.0.6778.204  131.0.6778.264
dnsmasq      2.89            2.90
libsystemd0  252.31          252.33
pup-tools    20241019        20250115

The first three are DEBs, the last is a PET package.

Tags: easy

Fix description field in pkg db

January 15, 2025 — BarryK

Forum member Caramel discovered the problem, when using PKGget:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=13626

The script /usr/local/petget/0setup calls /usr/local/petget/debdb2pupdb-nim to convert the Debian package database to "Puppy format". The problem that Caramel discovered is that the description field of this package contained " characters:

libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0_1.22.0-4|libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0|1.22.0-4||BuildingBlock\
|2387K|pool/DEBIAN/main/g/gst-plugins-bad1.0|libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0_1.22.0-4+deb12u5_amd64.deb\
|+libc6&ge2.29,+libdrm2&ge2.3.1,+libglib2.0-0&ge2.68,+libgstreamer-gl1.0-0&ge1.22.0,+libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0&ge1.22.0,+libgstreamer1.0-0&ge1.22.0,+libnice10&ge0.1.21,+libva-drm2&ge1.8,+libva2&ge2.10.0,+libvulkan1&ge1.2.131.2,+libwayland-client0&ge1.20.0,+libxcb1,+libxkbcommon-x11-0&ge0.5.0,+libxkbcommon0&ge0.5.0\
|GStreamer libraries from the "bad" set|devuan|daedalus|8ad1b5148b4fc676523250df74fb4cae||

The previous debdb2pupdb was written in Bacon and it had better filtering of the description field.

I have edited debdb2pupdb.nim in the 'pup-tools' package, to filter out all characters not strictly required for the description. See commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/91c16fb70865188c91b84ce82a38a1d7aa081041

Tags: easy

Easy Daedalus Bluetooth fix

January 15, 2025 — BarryK

Forum member tallboy reported that bluetooth does not work in Easy Daedalus. I have confirmed this, trying to use BluePup to pair with a blutooth loudspeaker.

There is something wrong with the Debian bluez package. I don't know what, and have implemented a hack fix, overwriting with the 'bluez5' packages from Easy Kirstone. See commits:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/afe75379b3f6f1f6d14bb3fffe44b1bd9a30f9c9

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/e73f67f9a357ae8105d94fffccb24fe007538764

Another minor fix, for /usr/lib/lsb:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/499e7899890ab1f856f16ef3b7d64abafa09c6a8

Tags: easy

EasyOS 6.5.4.2 released

January 12, 2025 — BarryK

Scarthgap:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/scarthgap/2025/6.5.4.2/

Daedalus:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64/releases/daedalus/2025/6.5.4.2/

Tags: easy

Partial fix for JWM blurry wallpaper

January 12, 2025 — BarryK

The problem was reported by SteveS:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=13561

I do get this blurry-wallpaper problem at shutdown, when a window asks whether you want to save the session. That happens because ROX-Filer has exited and fallback is to the wallpaper provided by JWM. I have fixed that, so I get nice JWM wallpaper at shutdown:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/25282aa1c898c876652d59f3cd6ef2a5c31aacdf

I don't get the blurry wallpaper in icon-free-desktop mode, but that is because my screen is 1920x1080, and the wallaper is the same size. JWM doesn't have to scale it down, as in SteveS' case.

So, a partial fix, only at shutdown and when JWM doesn't have to scale the image down.

This is really a bug in JWM, and should be reported to Joe.

Tags: easy

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