Installing Linux and Windows on the Asus Q325

Why?

Because I have returned to school for my masters degree, and because my current laptop is EOL and has less than 2hrs of battery life I decided that it is time to upgrade. 

I wanted a modern laptop:

• Plenty of RAM (8 GB min, 16 GB ideal)
• Large SSD (512 GB, going to be dual booting Windows and Linux)
• Core i7 7th generation 
• 1920x1080 display or higher 
• Long (6 hour min) battery life
• Light weight and thin (5 pounds or less and 2cm thick or less)

So basically I wanted an ultrabook.

I looked at a few models, but decided against them for the following reasons:

Laptop	Issue
Asus Zenbook UX330UA	Couldn't find a reputable seller
Samsung Notebook 9 Pro NP940X5M-X01US	Nice laptop, but I couldn't find one with a 512GB SSD
ASUS M580VD-EB76 VivoBook	Online reviews indicated it had a bad display, poor battery life a cheap build quality
Dell XPS9350-8008SLV	I really liked this laptop, it had really good specs, but online reviews indicated QC and reliability issues.

I choose the Asus Q325 because it was thin and light, met all my quantified requirements (Core i7, 512 GB SSD and 16 GB Ram, 1 cm thick, 2.5 lbs, 14 hr battery life (advertised)) and with the Best Buy student discount came out to just under $1k. However it has no standard USB ports, no display ports, no ethernet, just a pair of USB C ports. If the Wifi doesn't work on the laptop it would be disastrous. The biggest problem is that I was only able to find one mention of someone installing Linux on the computer, and they didn't explain how they did it.

I took a risk, decided to jump off a cliff, buy the Q325, and hope to land on BB's 15 day return policy if I mess up horribly.

The Goal

My goal is to dual boot Windows 10 and Debian 9 Stretch. I like Linux, the community and the possibilities it offers, but the moment my professor says "we will be using X proprietary program for this class" I would have to turn to Wine or virtualization to run the application, which have their own issues. 

Pre-purchase research

My first step was to see if the computer has a linux compatible wifi chipset. From my research the Q325 has an Intel 8260 wifi chip and is supported on Linux with the iwlwifi driver.

Other than checking if the wifi chipset is compatible, I checked nothing else. There are no discrete graphics on this laptop, it only has an Intel 620, so there won't be any additional drivers I need to worry about.

Installing

The only way to boot a new OS on the Q325 is from a USB drive attached to a dongle. Fortunately ASUS provides a bit of a docking station with a USB 3.0, an HDMI and another USB C port, so you can boot from a USB drive with what's in the box. I decided to purchase an insignia USB Type-C to Type-A adaptor as well for the installation of the Linux Wifi drivers later on (they need to be placed on another removable drive to be loaded). 

I started first with installing Windows. I do this so that when I install Linux, Windows will already be there for GRUB to detect and I should be dual booting without a hitch. 

I downloaded an .iso though my University and used Rufus to create a bootable USB. I was only able to boot from the drive when I used "MBR partition scheme for UEFI" under the Partition scheme and target system type section. Using the default produces an unbootable drive. 

The Windows install went smoothly. I had to press the 'esc' key on bootup to enable the BIOS to boot into the USB drive instead of the hard drive. The Asus BIOS is really riced out, but works well, I was able to quickly change the boot order.

Windows 10 automatically detected my wifi chip and selected the necessary drivers for it. Updates required me to download over 4GB of data and this took about an hour after loading the data and rebooting several times. 

For Debian, I created a bootable USB drive on my Mac using instructions from tinned-software.net. The only thing that didn't work was the last step, where Mac OS didn't recognize the disk it had just created and wouldn't let me unmount the USB drive. Regardless, I was delighted that the computer booted the installer on the first try. 

When I installed Debian I was unable to get the mousepad to work on the initial graphical install. I had to use the keys to navigate the installer. When I got to the wifi firmware section (which is crucial because the computer does not have Ethernet) I needed to scrounge around on the Internet to find all the firmware blobs (iwlwifi-8000C-[17-26].ucode files) I needed. You can't get them all from one place either, but you can download some of the firmware from the Linux kernel website, the remainder of it can be downloaded from this git repo. I downloaded the iwlwifi-8000C-[17-26].ucode files and placed it on a FAT32 formatted flash drive and plugged into the computer with another dongle.
Once the firmware was acquired I was able to use the laptops Wifi, which worked without issue for the rest of the install. 

After restarting, Debian did in fact boot. I had, not only full mouse support now, but touch support as well on gnome. 

When I rebooted back into Windows the Windows boot loader said it failed to boot properly. Uh-oh, I thought, I may have to do a reinstall of Windows. I rebooted again and found that I could boot into Windows just fine. Seems to have been a one-time glitch. 

Wrapping Up

My intuition with the laptop was correct. I was able to dual boot Windows and Linux on it and the major features (graphical UI and Wifi) work on both.

Minor issues with the laptop:

• The hinge between the screen and the body is designed such that the screen hits the surface its sitting on before the body if it's tilted more than 90 degrees. 
• The thing attracts and retains fingerprints like a fiend. I may have to rub it down with alcohol every now and then to keep it clean. 

I want to underscore that those are minor issues and not significant in the use of the laptop. These are just keep this from being perfect in my opinion. 

The laptop effectively gets 8 hours of battery life, less than the advertised 14, but still meets my requirements. The touchscreen support is nice, I didn't think I would like it but it gives me another point of control besides the keyboard and mouse.

I also tried to game on it. This is by no means a gaming laptop, but I was able to play Kerbal Space Program on it at 720p resolution.

I tried launching the Dynawing into orbit. In many places (launching and main tank separation) the frame rate was slow, but other places the frame rate was smooth. There wasn't any terrible stuttering. The experience wasn't great, but it was adequate. This laptop is certainly a viable option for light, non-competitive game play. Although battery life did suffer and went down to just 2 hours. 

LaTeX Makefile

The makefile script below compiles n number of .tex files to n number of .pdfs in the directory it's in and can include m number of .bib bibliography files.

SOURCES=$(wildcard $(SRC_DIR)*.tex)
BIBS=$(wildcard $(SRC_DIR)*.bib)
OUTPUT=$(patsubst %.tex, %.pdf, $(SOURCES))

.PHONY: all
all: $(OUTPUT) 

%.pdf: %.tex $(BIBS)
 pdflatex $(patsubst %.tex, %, $<)
ifneq ($(BIBS),)
 bibtex $(patsubst %.tex, %, $<)
 pdflatex $(patsubst %.tex, %, $<)
endif
 pdflatex $(patsubst %.tex, %, $<)

.PHONY: clean
clean:
 -rm -f *.pdf *.log *.out *.aux *.dvi *.blg *.bbl

If you use this script, make sure to use the actual tab character in front of lines that are tabbed over. Spaces are used on this page because of limitations of blogger to show tabs.

Compiling SDL Apps on Mac OS X With Just a Makefile

There are wonderful tutorials for the SDL 2D graphics library on Lazyfoo.net that I found. The one thing I would change for the Mac OS instructions is to use a Makefile instead of using the build process in Xcode. I want to use Makefiles because I have more control over the build process and to remove the magical blackbox model of compiling that an integrated IDE imposes. Making a Makefile is not easy because you must link to the SDL libraries and Mac OS X packages libraries into things called frameworks instead of bare headers and static object files like other *nixs do. Mac OS X has special flags for gcc to access frameworks, but once you know the flags using Makefiles is a possibility.

Step 1: Install SDL

As of Mac OS Version 10.11 (El Capitan) Mac OS does not have the SDL library installed by default. SDL can be installed by first downloading a .dmg file on the SDL Downloads Web Page. I use SDL 2.0 for this tutorial.

Step 1.2: after opening the downloaded .dmg file drop the SDL2.framework file into /Library/Frameworks, you'll need to have administrative access to do this and you'll need to use your password to add this file. 

Step 2: Write the 'Hello World' program

Create a new folder to put this simple hello world program into. The program below is a very simple program I called main.cpp.

#include <SDL2/SDL.h>
#include <iostream>
int main( int argc, char* args[] ){
  int rc;
  //Start SDL
  rc = SDL_Init( SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING );
  if(rc){
    std::cout << "Could not init SDL" << std::endl;
    return 1;
  }
  //Quit SDL
  SDL_Quit();
  return 0;
}

All this does is open up a blank SDL instance and immediately exits. Not much of a program, but it does demonstrate that the SDL library has been installed and you can link to it, otherwise your code won't compile or you'll get the "Could not init SDL" message.

Step 3: Write your Makefile

Now you'll need to create your Makefile, again nothing too complex, just called the following file Makefile

CC=g++
EXE=setup
setup: main.cpp
 $(CC) -F/Library/Frameworks -framework SDL2 -o $(EXE) main.cpp
.PHONY: clean
clean:
 rm $(EXE)

Notice the -F and -framework flags. These are the Mac OS X specific gcc compiler flags. -F specifies a path to your frameworks (libaries) and -framwork specifies a specific framework to load. Now you're ready to build your application, go to your terminal in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and navigate to your hello world folder. Then run make.

You'll notice that a new file setup had been created. If you run this ./setup your terminal will go out of context for a split second and return when the program exits. Congratulations! You can now build SDL applications without the need for Xcode. 

Oblique Cylinder in OpenSCAD

While working in OpenSCAD I found the need to create an oblique cylinder, which is a combination between a rhombus and a cylinder. Unfortunately there is no easy way to create an oblique cylinder (at-least in version 2015.03-1) and by easy I mean something that can be done in three lines of code.

I ended up having to create a very trigonometry heavy module to accomplish this goal. Below is the code, which I hope saves some people a few hours. 

module ObliqueCylinder(height = 1, radius = 1, angle = 0, faces = 360) {
    theta = angle; 
    m = radius * sin(theta); 
    k = radius * sin(2 * theta);
    l = radius * pow(sin(theta), 2);
    hPrime = height/cos(theta) + 2 * m; 
    
    difference() {
        translate([0, -l, -1/2 * k]) {
            rotate(a = [-theta, 0, 0]) {
                linear_extrude(height = hPrime) {
                    rotate(a = [theta, 0, 0]) {
                        circle(r = radius, $fn = faces);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        translate([0, 0, -1/2 * k]) {
            cube(size = [2 * radius, 2 * radius, k], center = true);
        }
        translate([0, height * tan(theta), height + k/2]) {
            cube(size = [2 * radius, 2 * radius, k], center = true);
        }
    }
}

Below is the result.

PHP script for showing computer info

For those wanting to print out information about their server to a web page: I designed the following php script to do that on a Linux server.

 <?php  
      //Removes everything before the first ':' character, meant to get information from /proc/cpuinfo  
      function extractCPUInfoLine($inputString)  
      {  
           return trim(substr($inputString, strpos($inputString, ':') + 1));   
      }  
      //Returns an array of info for the processor  
      function getCPUInfo()  
      {  
           $cpufile = file("/proc/cpuinfo");  
           $memFile = file("/proc/meminfo");  
           $cpuinfoArray = array();  
           $cpuinfoArray["cpu"] = extractCPUInfoLine($cpufile[4]);  
           $cpuinfoArray["speed"] = extractCPUInfoLine($cpufile[7]) . " Mhz";  
           $cpuinfoArray["cache"] = extractCPUInfoLine($cpufile[8]);  
           $cpuinfoArray["memory"] = extractCPUInfoLine($memFile[0]);  
           return $cpuinfoArray;   
      }  
 ?>  

 <html>  
      <head>  
           <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">  
           <title>Server Info</title>  
           <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">  
      </head>  
      <body>  
           <h2>About This Server</h2>  
           <?php  
                $cpuInfoArray = getCPUInfo();  
                print "          <table>  
                <tr>  
                     <td>CPU</td>  
                     <td>" . $cpuInfoArray["cpu"] . "</td>  
                </tr>  
                <tr>  
                     <td>CPU Speed</td>  
                     <td>" . $cpuInfoArray["speed"] . "</td>  
                </tr>  
                <tr>  
                     <td>Memory</td>  
                     <td>" . $cpuInfoArray["memory"] . "</td>  
                </tr>  
                <tr>  
                     <td>Cache</td>  
                     <td>" . $cpuInfoArray["cache"] . "</td>  
                </tr>  
                <tr>  
                     <td>Total disk space</td>  
                     <td>" . number_format(disk_total_space("/home") / (1024 * 1024 * 1024), 3) . " Gb</td>  
                </tr>  
                <tr>  
                     <td>Free disk space</td>  
                     <td>" . number_format(disk_free_space("/home") / (1024 * 1024 * 1024), 3) . " Gb</td>  
                </tr>  
           </table>";  
           ?> 
      </head>  
 </html>  

This script will print out the CPU type, speed, memory size, cache size and total and available disk space.

The trick is that within most Linux systems there are files under the /proc directory, such as procinfo and meminfo, which tells you information about your computer's cpu and memory. Getting basic computer info is a matter of reading those files.

Why Free Software Will Sell Our Kids Short

A petition to the White House, asking the Obama administration to promote the use of Free Software, has recently received 3,000 signatures. The petition advocates that schools should be encouraged to use free software and the Linux operating system instead of "mysterious and opaque" proprietary software, however the action this petition proposes will be detrimental to our children's future in the growing digital economy.

Linux was created by Finnish computer hacker Linux Torvolds in the early 1990s. The operating system Linux was an unlicensed copy of an industry operating system called Unix, created by Bell Labs in the 1960s. Unix was sold to large corporations and banks, which made it prohibitively expensive to a young computer hacker. So Mr. Torvolds created his copy in his spare time. Today Linux has become a favorite operating system of hackers world wide and lies at the core of knockoff smartphone brands like Android.

The main problem with Linux, and free software in general, is quality. In 2009 Microsoft invested nearly $9 Billion in research and development. By contrast free software is developed by hackers and computer enthusiasts in their spare time. It may be difficult for most people to understand, especially those who choose to pirate their software, but programing software is a very expensive and time consuming process. How can free software measure up to the standards of large American companies that employ college graduates? The only two outcomes of Free Software is that it is either substandard or illegal.

Assuming Linux is both high quality, legal and free where is it? I can guarantee you that no device in my house runs Linux and we have 3 computers. If you walk into a store, where can you buy a Linux PC? Speaking of which, where is Linux in advertising? You don't see any Mac Vs. PC Vs. Linux ads on TV (by the way I have no preference to either Macs or PCs, I think they both have their distinct uses). The reason for this is that Free Software doesn't have a business model. You can't make money just giving away software. Without a business model you don't see advertising or a presence in retail outlets. Without a business model free software has no incentive to serve its customers like proprietary software does. Linux is not as great as Windows or Apple because the lack of business model doesn't provide any incentive to give the customer a great product.

The lack of a business model in Free Software is detrimental to its users. I decided to install Linux on an old Laptop I had to see what our nations' kids would be getting into. I did my research and found a version that was touted as being user friendly for beginners: Ubuntu Linux. The installation process went alright and when I rebooted my computer it looked very similar to the Apple operating system, but immediately I knew something wasn't right. Apparently I needed to install special drivers for my wireless? It didn't come on the CD apparently. The only way to install the drivers was through an ethernet cable, something I hadn't used in years. I had to dig around in my garage to find the one I used when I had a Desktop. Now here's the problem: why do you need to already be connected to the internet to get an internet connection? Nobody working on Linux realizes this obvious catch-22? My old laptop had an ethernet plug on the side but more modern laptops are so thin that they don't even have one. I worry this is indicative of the quality of the Linux software and that the developers ignore the needs of common computer users.

Assuming you can get Linux working, most worrisome is the fact that Linux doesn't have the software we're used to using. Most businesses use Windows PCs, a lot of creative enterprises and colleges use Macs, I see some retailers at the mall who can swipe credit cards on their iPhones. Linux isn't at any of these places. I did some research and found that common software, used in industry, isn't available. Instead of Microsoft Office or Photoshop, Linux has pale imitators like LibreOffice and Gimp. In our high tech globalized world our kids need skills to compete. How are they supposed to do that if they grow up using something called LibreOffice? A typical job opening today receives hundreds of applicants. HR departments look for any reason to cull that number to about a dozen. If your daughter wants to be a secretary but doesn't have Microsoft Word on her resume how is she even going to get an interview?

Is Linux right for our kids? Linux isn't developed by a single respectable corporation, it doesn't have the investment that being developed by a company would give it, it doesn't have the direction or spirit to compete that a business model would give it, it lacks ease of use and it doesn't support programs used in industry. The core of the problem of Free Software is its decentralized nature. It isn't guided by any one organization and doesn't have the capacity to compete. We know Microsoft will develop great products for business, we know Apple will develop thin innovative new gadgets. Where's the drive behind Linux, what is it there to do? With no one really in charge of Linux how do you know that development will continue? With paid software they always come out with new versions every few years because they know we will buy it. I say don't endanger our kids with the radical notion of depending on Free Software, they deserve quality software.

Android App for Photographers

I had found out recently that my mom had an old 35mm SLR, with some really great lenses, that I didn't know about. Since she wasn't using it she let me borrow it. 

Thanks Mom

One problem I had was what should I set the film speed too? 

Usually a digital camera would just do this for me

Well I found a nifty equation that relates ISO speed, aperture, luminance and exposure time on Wikipedia. 

Where N is the aperture (f-stops), L is luminance (lux), S is the film speed (ISO) t is the exposure time (seconds) and K is a constant (14 for Pentax cameras). 

I could find N, K and S fairly easily as they were given, but what about L? I didn't have a lux meter lying around. But, I did have an Android device with a light sensor and found out there were free lux meter apps. 

But the apps had adds in them! 

Then I found out that it was a pretty trivial excise to get light sensor data and print it to the screen. Since Google has made the Android app development environment pretty open all I had to do was fire up my Eclipse IDE and make my own lux meter app. 

And I did, but why stop there? Since I eventually wanted to calculate the ideal exposure time for a scene and I didn't really want to do the calculations every time I wanted to take a shot, I decided to extend my app to let me input aperture, film speed and the calibration constant and my phone would detect the luminance and calculate the exposure time for me. 

It took me about an evening to relearn the Android API and implement that well defined functionality. 

Pretty cool huh?

I put a large button on the bottom to let the user press to sample the luminance because most light sensors are on the face of the device, which means that the user must point the screen away from them to sample the luminance from their subject. A really big button would let them press somewhere on the bottom of their screen to do that. 

I decided at this point to actually make this an actual app at this point. Which meant designing a logo. And I, of course, chose a camera diaphragm for the logo because nothing says photography like a diaphragm. 

Surprisingly it took more math to design the logo than the app actually used. 

I swear these are not satanic symbols

Once I mapped all the coordinates for all the triangles in the diaphragm I wrote the image in an SVG file and rasterized it to a png. 

It's like the logo of some '60s Bond villan's criminal organization

At this point I had to think about licensing, since this was a pretty trivial app I'm sure there is a lot that could be done to improve it, so I decided to license it under the GNU General Public License to ensure that it would always exist to let people use it how they want and modify it to fit their needs. 

One curious thing: this decision forced me to make the app's underlying code better. Since people might look at the source code I made I felt that the code represented myself as a developer and I want to give the best impression I can. So I removed as much redundant code as I could, separated classes into their own separate files, commented key parts of the code and remove hard coded values. I basically wanted to make it a model Android app. 

That took a few days but I'm confident to say that this is the best work I can deliver. 

So without further deliberation, I present my Android exposure time calculator:

Here is the Android apk to install the app

And if you're inclined you can download the source code too. 

I haven't put it up on the Play store. The developer application costs $25 and I haven't decided if I want to pay that right now, but if I do I'll definitely upload it.