Running Kubuntu 14.04 in Yoga Pro 2

Kubuntu running on Yoga Pro 2


I just got a Yoga Pro 2 and installed Kubuntu on it, works great.

Create a USB boot drive with another ubuntu machine, plug the USB stick on it.

Yoga Keys boot key

F12 - Boot menu to select booting from usb drive
F2 - Bios Menu

Power down the computer. Push the “novo” button ounce or press F2 while booting, to force the computer to enter into BIOS menus. Disable “Security Boot” and disable “Lenovo Fast Boot”. Leave UEFI option turned on since Kubuntu 14.04 supports UEFI out of the box. I also enabled the Functions keys in the BIOS by default, but this is not required, personal preference.

After install

Kubuntu will boot with full resolution, leave that alone for the install if you can work the installer at that resolution, otherwise change resolution on KDE settings screen panel. Select the partition size for Kubuntu let the Kubuntu installer resize your windows partition. Grub will have an option to boot windows after the install is done and will setup kubuntu as the default OS.

After the installation is done, change the resolution to 1920x1080 on System Settings -> Display and Monitor. Below I will describe how to setup for Hi-Res in Kubuntu, in case you wish to use full resolution.

In kubuntu 14.04 to make bluetooth and wifi work you need to blacklist the ideapad_laptop module
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad_laptop.conf
blacklist ideapad_laptop


After this reboot the laptop, this will enable wifi, bluetooth and optimize the disk operations on the ssd.

What works

Almost everything works great out of the box in kubuntu 14.04, there isn't many changes you need to do.

Sound works

Options keys for sound work, side sound button up/down works. Change the Master channel on the KDE sound mixer to "Audio Analog Stereo" from the panel bar to control the laptop volume, instead of the default HDMI.

Screen

Everything works, brightness, resolution changes, even the option key to turn off the screen and brightness. 

Sleep works

No issue.

Keyboard works

Keyboard background light works, menu key works, Special Fn key mute, volume up, volume down, turn off screen, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, side buttons for up and down volume, work as expected.

Wifi and bluetooth works

No issues.

Does not work out of the box

Special Fn keys, side mute button, disable trackpad funtion, airplane mode function, refresh function, show all screens.

Optional SSD tunning

This fstab change is optional and should reduce the amount of writes to your ssd, no real problem here just a personal preference.
In kubuntu 14.04 fstrim is enabled by default on /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim, no need to tweak anything else for SSD in ubuntu 14.04.

On /etc/fstab file change the root mount line to add extra parameters and mount /tmp and /var/tmp as a tmpfs, as described below:

UUID=9-5-4-a / ext4 noatime,nodiratime,discard,errors=remount-ro 0 1
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noexec,nosuid 0 0

tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noexec,nosuid 0 0

Setting to use Hi-res

  • Increase font dpi (System Settings → Application Appearance → Fonts → Force font dpi, enter a number such as 125, 150 or 250)
  • Increase icon sizes (System Settings → Application Appearance → Icons → Advanced, here choose a higher icon size for all icons, eg. just increase each icon type by one step
  • You may also increase Window Decoration sizes (System Settings → Workspace Appearance → Window Decorations → Configure Decoration)
  • I installed the Firefox addon NoSquint and chose in settings: default full page zoom level 200%
  • Adjust the height of the KDE-Controllbar at the bottom with the button on the right to the desired height, then all icons grow with the height
Use KDE this way or look for a particular application you use regularly and test if it still looks nice. If it does not, look in the list below if the issue is already listed, if not, file a bug on bugs.kde.org.

As a reference, the Retina Screen on MacBook Pros doubles the pixel count. That means, to completely see how an app would look on it, you should double the font DPI and the icon sizes.

References

Ubuntu, Kubuntu, UbunutGnome 14.04 support for HiRes in Yoga Pro 2
Ubuntu 14.04 running in yoga pro 2
UbuntuGnome 14.04 running on yoga pro 2 
Kubuntu14.04 running in yoga pro 2

External References

https://community.kde.org/KDE/High-dpi_issues
http://askubuntu.com/questions/443761/how-is-trim-enable
http://datainfer.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/install-ubuntu-on-ideapad-yoga-2-pro/
http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_ideapad_yoga_2_pro
https://github.com/pfps/yoga-laptop
http://askubuntu.com/questions/367963/ubuntu-on-lenovo-yoga-2-pro
http://memobadz.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/lenovo-yoga-pro-2-on-ubuntu/

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