Linux distro for UX305

[nine_tails]

Hello!

I just picked my self a UX305CA from Asus. I wanted some suggestions on which distro to install on the machine. Searching through, Arch linux seems like an option. I am sort of looking for a solution which works well out of the box , basically i do not wish to spend hours looking for a driver to get something working.

My usage for this will be some programming , watching movies and general office related work.I am not familiar with any linux based OS's (though I work as a developer ) ; I feel some comfort level with wrestling some parts of the system.

Can some one please enlighten me on how most of the common distros differ? ex does an update to the kernel require you to rebuild and deploy the source yourself ? Or is this possible via an update-manager sort of application?I'd be glad to hear from someone who has this lappy and has a OS up and running.

Cheers!

 

[nine_tails]

Cheers mate! Is there any particular guide or introductory link where how and what needs to be configured for most linux installations? I am happy to spend some time working with it , I do not mind getting hold of the tool chains/desktop shells etc... mainly worried about hardware support.

Are any distros more of a resource hogs?

 

[nine_tails]

Alright , so i am going to do arch install over the weekend as a dual boot with Win10. Been following the wiki on the site...have a few questions ...


The laptop comes pre-installed with Win10 and i can see the following partitions, last one created by me to install linux after shrinking volume

/dev/sda1 <windows primary>
/dev/ef1 <windows efi> (260 MB) <- Is the size a problem in any way?
/dev/rec <windows recovery>
/dev/sda2 <unallocated>


1. Is a GPT needed if i am already on a UFEI system running windows 10

Basically do I need to do this step ?
(parted) mklabel gpt
Wanted to confirm this is only if it is a clean disk.


2. Since the EFI partition already exists on the system and i am going for a straight forward only single partition for everything, is this the right command to use once i run parted on my unallocated partition.
(parted)/dev/sda2
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1MiB 100%

3) Do i need to mark existing EFI partition as boot ?
i.e
(parted) /dev/ef1
(parted) set 1 boot on


4) I am not clear on what needs to be mounted before the installation.
What i assume is :
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/boot
mount /dev/ef1 /mnt/boot

5) If for some reason if I need to remove arch and get back to just windows..can some one please elaborate how this can be achieved?
Since the laptop came pre-installed i do not have the disk drive or the cd-key... i have however created a USB recovery disk.

Cheers!

 

[nine_tails]

Part of the whole purpose with configuring your system with Arch is to also make decisions of what software you want to run. Certain projects are unfortunately more "unstable" with regards to changes than others. Of course, your breakage wouldn't have happened on a more update stable distribution, however the old adage of "Arch breaks" is something that I personally don't believe to be true. The Wiki makes up for any issues 99% of the time in my experience.

nine_tails, to answer your questions:
0. That EFI partition size isn't a problem. Mine is 96MiB, 52% full.
1. You'll already be using GPT. Don't do this step.
2. That command seems right to me. I hate parted though, gdisk is much more friendly! I strongly recommend you use it so you can clearly see exactly what you're doing, it really is the idiot-proof utility.
3. No need to mark partitions as boot (boot flag) this extends back to MS-DOS days. Leave it unmarked.
4. Your mounting is correct.
5. I'm guessing you're using systemd-boot? No real reason to use any of the alternatives on an EFI system. If so, just remove all but the EFI folder in your /boot partition, and delete the Boot and systemd folders in /boot/EFI.

Cheers mate! This weekend will be exciting!!

 

[nine_tails]

Thanks guys! I managed to install it successfully over the weekend and it was a bit of a pita. Problems faced :

- GParted : I resized the windows partition using the live USB , and for some reason it created an unallocated space (50 mb) and moved everything by an offset of that , and then shrunk it form the right... 30 mins for the operation which made no sense to me.

- Installed successfully after this , but the boot kept on failing.. it dropped me into emergency shell. Solution was to add the crc libs into mkinitcpio.conf (something introduced in kernel 4.6), but unknown to me , i started reverting the install... reboot via live USB, clean partition , removed boot loaders and merged back to windows. I thought this was due to me pulling the USB before a proper shutdown occurred.

- Started with GParted to parition again... this time , it moved everything by an offset of 6.7~GB... I was really loosing it... and cancelled the operation and it left everything in an unusable state... no windows , no linux. boom!

- Recovered windows using recovery USB created...which took about another hour or two... luckily ...everything back to normal... this was pretty much end of day 1.

- Day 2, i partitioned from windows (shrink volume) and only used Gparted to format the disk to ext4.

- Re-installed.. everything worked out... rebooted ...same error as 2.. but since i knew i did not do anything dodgy , spent more time figuring it out... after which it was a breeze.

The system is blazing fast... I still need to play around with it. Any apps you guys suggest to have... got libre office and rocking gnome... I have set up AUR and using it via yaourt...

Can you guys point me in the direction of some guides which speak related to maintenance of the distro? (frequency of updates etc).

Cheers!