Ubuntu-Certification

Feedback on the Asus 1225C

Asked by Ira

Hello,

we got the Asus Eee PC 1255C with preinstalled Ubuntu. That had troubles booting up. We figured, we could just re-install the latest Ubuntu (12.04). That worked more or less, though the graphic card wasn't properly recognized, for example you'd get a black screen upon booting which you could switch to the normal login screen by a repeated ctrl+alt+F1 and ctrl+alt+F7. External monitors were not recognized, monitor brightness switched only between min and max values, if at all.

We made the switch to 12.10 figuring it would improve things, but there Unity 2D is not available anymore and as the graphic card is still not recognized, the computer is unuseable under Ubuntu. We added the Lubuntu desktop and since it is lighter the computer can be used for simple tasks. Videos are not running smoothly, however. Most special keys (to switch off the touchpad while typing, for example) don't work, brightness and sound level can be regulated.

Tests with 13.04 beta versions crash repeatedly, the graphic card is still not recognized, the computer is painfully slow. External monitors are recognized.

Apparently the preinstalled Ubuntu had some graphics packages that are not available under standard ubuntu installations. Will that be fixed at some point? Where can we get drivers for the graphic card? The situation as it is is not acceptable.

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Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew) said : 		#1

Hello Ira,

Sorry for the issue you are experiencing,

As indicated on http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201203-10695/
There is no guarantee that a later version of Stock Ubuntu will work on it.

For a pre-installed system, it often includes many customized fixes to support its very own hardware, thus set it apart from the stock version that you can download from our website.

A little personal suggestion is to use the RECOVERY CD to get the pre-installed version back, or contact ASUS service center for it (and contact them for the unable-to-boot issue).

Regards
Sam

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Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew) said : 		#2

FAQ

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der_vegi (m-may) said : 		#3

The thing is, that there is no recovery CD or any kind of image coming that computer. (It doesn't have a CD drive anyway.) The latest development is, that I got back our computer after a hardware repair with a new harddisk - unformatted. So Asus does not provide de modified Ubuntu version. In principle, you can buy a "recovery image" for 10% of the price of the hardware. To summarize: The first "Ubuntu(/Linux) certified" computer I ever bought - the worst Linux compatibility I ever experienced running Linux on my computers for over 10 years...

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Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan) said : 		#4

Ira, (or der_vegi), just a quick question - you said you bought this system with Ubuntu pre-installed, but when that didn't work well you installed the 'latest Ubuntu 12.04' - does that mean the version originally installed was 11.10? I'm curious to know as this system has never been certified with Ubuntu 11.10 in any way.

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Ira (iramia) said : 		#5

The version originally installed should've been 12.04 in a modified version, which worked on a computer we had previously tested. It wasn't 11.10.

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Ira (iramia) said : 		#6

The system runs -- more or less -- with the 32-bit 12.04. The necessary proprietary graphiccard driver installation fails. It really does not work at all with 64bit 12.04, when it is painfully slow, with the 32 bit version most of the hardware keys (dimming the screen etc) work, but the lack of graphic card recognition makes it impossible to use external monitors at appropriate resolutions, and films still render slowly.

Can you help with this problem?

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