Saturday, August 11, 2012

Linux on the Samsung Series 9 NP900X4C-A03US

I just purchased a Samsung Series 9 laptop model NP900X4C-A03US with the intentions of installing Linux on it.  Since I Couldn't find any thing on Google with someone installing Linux with this exact laptop, I figured I would share my experience with it along with a review of the overall laptop.

Briefly,  the Samsung Series 9 model NP900X4C-A03US is a 15" Ultrabook laptop.  It is extremely thin at about a half an inch (1.3cm) thick when closed and only weights about 3.6lbs.   (1.63kg)   It comes with a 1.9Ghz Core i7 quad-core processor, 8Gb of memory, 256Gb SSD hard drive, and Windows 7 64bit Professional.

The laptop comes with three USB ports.  Two on the right side are USB 3.0 and one on the left said that is USB 2.0.  This is a big deal for me as I like to carry a optical mouse with me and I also have an external DVD burner (LITEON model eNAU708) that requires two USB ports to power it.   The laptop does not have a Ethernet port, but does have a USB to Ethernet adapter included in the box with the laptop.  It also supports not just B/G/N Wifi,  but N speeds at both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.  If you want to see all the laptop specs, you check it out here.

With the SSD hard drive, it took about 8 seconds to boot Windows 7 Professional.  It takes about 6 seconds to boot Ubuntu 12.04.  So far, I'm very happy with the laptop.  I hope with a few fixes, it will be even better!

On to the Linux stuff.

Linux

As a Linux Admin, my preferred distribution on the server are Redhat or Redhat clones.  I first booted Fedora 17 live cd.  Everything seem to work except the Wifi.  Rather than going ahead and installing it and trying to get the Wifi working, I booted a Ubuntu 12.04 live cd and everything worked out immediately. (mostly, I will get to that)  Since I'm also a Ubuntu fan for desktops, I was fine with installing Ubuntu so that is what I installed.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04

Since it comes with Windows 7 Professional with recovery partitions, I didn't want to lose them.  Especially if I couldn't get a distribution properly functioning on it.  First I re-sized the Windows partition and tried to install Ubuntu, but due to how the partitions were setup, the Ubuntu wouldn't allow the install on the free space.  I had no choice, but to re-partition the disk which would have blew out the Samsung / Windows partitions.  So, I rebooted the live cd, connected a USB hard drive and used "dd" to clone the SSD drive to a 1TB drive I keep for backups.  

After cloning the drive, I wiped the partitions out created new partitions though leaving 20% of the disk space free for the SSD drive to use for caching allowing faster operation.

The install went flawlessly.

Now, there are a few things that don't function correctly, but so far they haven't been that big of a deal. I have also haven't yet tried to get them working.  I will update this with the outcome once I do.

What doesn't work

Touchpad

The touchpad works fine.  What doesn't work is right clicking with the touchpad.  So far, I've only came across this issue once.  As I noted earlier, I carry an optical mouse with me and use it most of the time.

*Edit* I have located a fix for right clicking with the touch pad.  Special thanks to b16a2smith over at ubuntuforums.org.

 sudo su
 echo options psmouse proto=exps > /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.modprobe
 reboot


Backlit Keyboard

So far, I haven't gotten the backlit keyboard lights to light up using the function key (Fn) and F9 / F10.

Screen Brightness Control

Again, using the Fn key and F2 / F3 to control screen brightness doesn't really work.  It can cause the screen to flicker, so don't keep tapping them or it will.  After it finishes, it will return to normal though.

Fan Control

Using the Fn key and F11 doesn't seem to do anything in controlling the fan.

What Does Work

Sound

 Sound works perfectly.  The Fn key with F6 (mute) / F7 (sound down) / F8 (sound up) work perfectly also.

WebCam

While I haven't used to extensively, I was able to open up a Google+ Hangout and video chit-chat with a buddy of mine.  

Just About Everything Else

Just about everything else that I have tested works fine.

What I haven't yet tested

  • The HDMI port
  • The microUSB Network adapter

Possible Fixes

There maybe a fix for the backlit issue, but I'm not sure if it will work with this model yet as I haven't tried it.  Special thanks to John Slade and his post about his Series 9 laptop for the link to samsung-laptop-dkms.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post. I will be following soon with the 128GB SD i5 version. To save space, you can use "ntfsclone -s" on the partitions instead of dd, and grab the MBR/PartTable with dd if=/dev/sda of=mbr bs=1 count=512

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  2. After making the change for right clicking with the touchpad, my two finger scrolling isn't working. Has anyone tried to make both of these work? Thanks!

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  3. Heloo... Am a rh linux admin nd I have ordered a Sam np535u4c-so2in lap...but I heard a shocking news dat Sam Laps doesnot support linux... d product will reach me soon.. so pls tell me his dere any way 2 dual boot with linux ?

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  4. I just bought this computer, but I can't seem to boot from any USB devices (USB DVD drive, live USB, etc). I'm trying to use Ubuntu 12.10. Did you have any issues getting the boot to work?

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