Issues Installing openSUSE 12.1 on Asus Zenbook UX32VD

[LEFT]So just got a fancy new Zenbook UX32VD handed to me with instructions to install openSUSE 12.1 on it and virtualization isn’t an option… SO far I have hit issue after issue and cant seem to find a lot of information on the problems I have encountered and I figured what better place to start collecting it then right here.
Laptop Manual

First issue I ran into when installing 12.1 on a Zenbook is there is no disc drive. I solved this by making a bootable USB drive.

Second issue I ran into is that the installer doesn’t seem support the USB 3.0 ports on the Zenbook. Fortunately USB 3.0 is backwards compatible so I had to create another bootable USB on a 2.0 USB with openSUSE 12.1’s Installation data.

Third issue I hit is a black screen after the installer loads udev; screen just completely goes black and nothing comes back up. It looks like the drives are still busy and loading is going on in the background but nothing happens. I think this is the optimus technology making openSUSE choke so I figured using VESA mode would take care of it…NOPE! Instead for some reason using the installation parameter nomodeset in the openSUSE boot menu works which is strange because to my understand nomodeset is the same as selecting VESA. Maybe I’m wrong? but nomodeset works for installation.

Fourth issue I ran into is that there are no drivers to support the Intel wifi in the stock installation of 12.1. In addition to this issue; there are no ethernet ports. Instead Asus has included a usb to ethernet adapter and I cant find out the spec on it; perhaps its not working because it USB 3.0 Ethernet adapter? cant find out and its not working.

Fifth (Major Issue!) After then install I’m already in a pickle because I cant update due to the connectivity issues I’m dealing with in the above issue. The biggest problem is however that after my install is completed and I reboot from the KDE desktop It boots straight int the system BIOS! The drives are detected by the BIOS and listed in the SATA configuration but there are no boot options and no options to set boot options. All I get is delete boot options. This is a real issue because all the work I have done up to this point is gone and for any alternative to installation I try requires me to repeat this installation process.

I’m stuck here and humbly need the help of the community! Thanks for reading this post and a big thanks in advance for any help contributed to accomplishing this install![/LEFT]

Sounds like you have uEFI instead of BIOS on this machine, You might wan to read this.

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/476011-whats-story-uefi-stuff.html

You also may have GPT formating on the hard drive.

In theory you should be able to turn all this off in the uEFI controls (ie think BIOS) However this may be hard or impossible to do depending on how the maker set things up.

Welcome to the brave new world

BTW Who or why did you have to install openSUSE. If this is a work requirement perhaps the IT guys can help

Hi
UEFI booting with GPT works fine, just uses elilo so at present on this
machine I have to use the BIOS boot menu if I don’t want to use the
default. The only thing at present to setup efi booting you need to use
the DVD.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 3.0.34-0.7-default
up 2 days 6:26, 3 users, load average: 0.28, 0.37, 0.34
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

Hi bazuela, did you have any luck after that ? I’m getting my UX32VD next week. I’m planning to install openSUSE 12.1 as well. I know I’m going to be running into similar issues - but I’m willing to spend time to get a working openSUSE setup on it (even if it requires taking the TumbleWeed route :wink: )
Folks at Ubuntu have had success with the modules for Fn keys, brightness control, etc.

Hallo!
I have a lot of problems to install openSuse 12.2 on ux32vd :S
The installation go well, but i don’t find the system on the boot options!
On internet I read some articles who talk about the GPT partition system, but I don’t understand the problem!

Thank for the attention.

p.s. Sorry for my awful english.