Introduction

How to get your ASUS U36SD running Ubuntu 11.04 (64 bit).

Ubuntu 11.04 (x64)

After installing

What works out of the box

• Audio
• Audio out port
• Internal microphone
• Video (without desktop effects)
• USB
• Wireless Networking
• Brightness control (Fn+F5/F6)
• LCD on/off switch (Fn+F8)

What doesn't work out of the box

• Desktop effects
• Nvidia card
• Volume control (Fn+F10/F11/F12)
• Multimedia controls (Fn+Up/Down/Left/Right)
• Suspend

What works after tweaking

• Desktop effects
• Suspend

What haven't been tested (yet)

• WiFi switch (Fn+F2)

• VGA port
• HDMI port
• Mic port
• Card reader
• USB 3.0 port with USB 3.0 hardware

• TurboBoost (can be checked with turbostat utility from package acpidump - frequency is 2.93, but lowers when the CPU become warm)

• Hibernate
• Bluetooth

Tweaking

Desktop effects

Create a new file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf with the following content.

blacklist nouveau
blacklist nvidia

Remove nvidia drivers (otherwise it's libGL.so will used by default)

apt-get purge 'nvidia*'

Suspend

Suspend doesn’t work out of the box because of a problem with the USB buses. To workaround it, create the following file:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-asus-u36sd

And paste this script (original version for the Asus U35JC): [remove leading white space in the first line]

 #!/bin/sh

BUSES="0000:00:1a.0 0000:00:1d.0"
BUSES3="0000:07:00.0"

case "${1}" in
    hibernate|suspend)
        # Switch USB buses off
        for bus in $BUSES; do
            echo -n $bus | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/unbind
        done
        # Switch USB 3.0 buses off
        for bus in $BUSES3; do
            echo -n $bus | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/xhci_hcd/unbind
        done
        ;;
    resume|thaw)
        # Switch USB buses back on
        for bus in $BUSES; do
            echo -n $bus | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ehci_hcd/bind
        done
        # Switch USB 3.0 buses back on
        for bus in $BUSES3; do
            echo -n $bus | tee /sys/bus/pci/drivers/xhci_hcd/bind
        done
        ;;
esac

And make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/20_custom-asus-u36sd

Links

• Asus_U36JC - Previous generation

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1830430 - Ubuntu Forums thread