Running Ubuntu 14.04 on Yoga Pro 2

Ubuntu running on Yoga Pro 2

I just got a Yoga Pro 2 and installed Ubuntu 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 Ubuntu 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

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

After the installation is done, change go the System Settings->Displays and change the "Scale for Menu" to 2.

In Ubuntu 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.

What works

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

Sound works

Options keys for sound work, side sound button up/down works.

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, refresh, brightness up and down, menu key, keyboard light, side buttons for up and down volume,  show all screens, work as expected.

Wifi and bluetooth works

No issues.

Does not work out of the box

Special Fn keys, side mute button, disable track-pad function, air-plane mode function,.

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 Ubuntu 14.04 fstrim is enabled by default on /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim, no need to tweak anything else for SSD.

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

Ubuntu 14.04 supports Hi-res be default, just go to Settings->Displays and set the Scale for Menu to 2.

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

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/

ubuntu 13.10 on yoga 13

Wireless
you need to run this whenever a new kernel is installed
sudo apt-get install git
git clone http://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au.git

make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe 8723au

Brightness:

git clone https://github.com/thrull/lenovo-yoga-brightness-control
cd lenovo-yoga-brightness-control
sudo sh install.sh

Bluetooth
sudo apt-get install bluetooth blueman bluez-hcidump bluewho python-bluez  bluez-tools

Extra packages to install

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras libavformat-extra-53 libavcodec-extra-53

Chrome:

Install chrome after installing chromium so that all required dependencies are present in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb

Touch friendly apps
sudo apt-get install webbrowser-app notes-app gallery-app

Video
sudo apt-get install vlc

References:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/4/1/280
https://github.com/thrull/lenovo-yoga-brightness-control

Ubuntu install K360 keyboard and M325, M557, M720 mice, logitech unifying support for linux

I have a K360 Bluetooth keyboard, a M557, M720 Bluetooth mice and M325 mouse.

I've been using these for years with Ubuntu, from 16.04 to 20.04 version without problems. Bluetooth stack on Ubuntu in much better now, i have a Yoga 920 laptop where I test use these devices.

I used the usb plug from the M325 mouse and it just works for the mouse.

Also installed solaar

sudo apt install solaar

Solaar allows you to pair one logitech usb dongle with many logitech USB devices, this way you don't need to use 2 USB dongles from logitech on the smae computer.

For the K360 keyboard, M557 and M720, I just use the Bluetooth section on Gnome setting panel and it works great.

This post was created with the k360 keyboard and m325  mouse.

In Ubuntu 20.04 all the special Keys in the K360 work on Ubuntu, and even the windows key on the M557 also work of of the box.

Some other references:
using cmd line: https://github.com/treeder/logitech_unifier

other: https://askubuntu.com/questions/113984/is-logitechs-unifying-receiver-supported

Install Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04 on non pae CPU like Intel Pentium M

Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 do not support non pae CPUs, but all Intel Pentium M cpus should work fine with ubuntu latest kernel if memory is below 2Gb even without the PAE feature, at least that is my understanding.

Install the fake-pae package

sudo add-apt-repository  ppa:prof7bit/fake-pae
sudo apt-get install fake-pae

Intall ubuntu next release, do this in each cycle:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade


sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

I upgrade my old laptop a vaio vgn-a190 from 11.04 to 11.10 to 12.04 to 12.10 to 13.04.

The only problem with this method is that you need to use the upgrade method instead of the live CD, and it takes a long time for each release upgrade.

In case the do-release-upgrade command reports some packages errors, use the following commands before upgrading to the next release


sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get --fix-missing install
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop


This Post was created using the vaio on Ubuntu 12.10 while is updating to raring.

Ubuntu 12.10 running on VirtualBox

If you run Ubuntu 12.10 without 3D support, desktop is slow but it should work fine without problems, if you want 3D support to get a speedy desktop read below.

Here are the steps I followed, it should also work on win 7 64:

• Install VirtualBox-4.2.5-82494-OSX.dmg, Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.2.5-82494.vbox-extpack.
• In ubuntu "sudo /media/lafa/VBOXADDITIONS_4.2.5_82479/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run" to install guest additions.
• Enable 3D Acceleration in Vbox Settings rebooted the vm.
• in Ubuntu execute "ccsm" go to OPENGL and disable everything (sync,texture,framebuffer,vertex, buffer swapping), this makes Compiz work a lot more stable, in VirtualBox.
• On the host os run "VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations noStatusBar", to help "Guest display is offset on retina display", until this bug is fixed.

I still have a problem when running in windowed mode, and the bug is:

• In Full Screen mode, the mouse works great, but in my macbook pro 15 retina display, I'm having problems the VirtualBox rendering of the display of the guest OS, seems some calculation of X and Y axels to render the screen is off, by a lot and the mouse can not hit the right location on the guest OS.

• View -> Scale Mode also does not work

I am running this on a MacBookPro Retina 15''.

Get the beta VirtualBox binaries from here:
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11107


Guest display is offset on retina display when 3d acceleration is enabled
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11021

How fix corrupted SDCARD partition table

sudo apt-get install testdisk

run testdisk