Tutorial: Dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu on the Zenbook Prime (UX31A)

I recently was lucky enough to be robbed of my Galaxy Tab. Why lucky? Well insurance paid out and the company was nice enough to get me a new notebook to keep me productive. Thanks company!

Anyway, being the linux lover I am, I read the forums to death about installing nix on my new baby. I soon came to learn about UEFI and that dual-booting can be a pain in the arse.

Why dual-boot anyway? Well unfortunately I still have to keep a copy of Windows on my machine for a few things I need to run every now and then at the office.

Important: Before you start, let me just tell you that on first boot after installing Ubuntu you will not be able to execute the Windows bootloader to run Windows. You will get the "Invalid EFI file path" error which you need to fix (step 6).

So, please read this tutorial fully before doing anything!

Here's my roundabout way to get dual-booting working (click read more for the whole tutorial):

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How to unpair a logitech device

In our office, many of us have Logitech devices. I recently stopped using my keyboard and decided to give it to one of my colleagues. Pairing it with his oldschool Logitech Mini Receiver (not unifying) was easy enough, but the problem was that it seemed to remain paired with my receiver. A problem seeing as I like my mouse and dislike having his keystrokes on my screen!

So after a lot of Googling, I finally found this: http://www.technipages.com/reset-logitech-keyboard-and-mouse.html

In short:

1. On the receiver you want to break a connection with, hold in the "reset/connect" button for 5 seconds.
2. On the device you would like to unpair, push the "reset/connect" button once.
3. Push the "reset/connect" button once more on the receiver.

Et voila :)

Enjoy!

Edit: This is what the Mini Receiver looks like:

So this solution won't work for the "Nano" receiver. I believe you should use the Logitech Connect utility for that. (Thanks to Euge for pointing this out)

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Why some people have issues later in life...

More crazy after the break!

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Onwards! A general update ...

Word.

So it would seem I left openSUSE ... at least for now. In the last few months I've switched to Gnome 3 (while still using openSUSE) and despite the gasps from the audience, I absolutely love it! Gnome has taken a lot of flack for the vast differences from its traditional desktop design in Gnome 2.x, and I do think that most of that criticism was probably well founded, however I am beginning to see the bigger picture.

Gnome 3.x might be quite dumbed down, but we all know that can be a blessing in disguise, especially to the obsessive customizer such as myself.

So why the switch from openSUSE? Well I think for the most part they are way more focused on KDE (that's not a bad thing) and as such, don't customize the experience enough to suit both DEs.

Gnome 3 lacks serious integration in openSUSE and I think they will do well to look into the configuration flow if a user were to select a different desktop environment.

Another reason for the switch is due to the ever widening gap between .deb and .rpms. The latter is just becoming harder and harder to find and compiling from source is only fun for a while. After having to hunt down dependencies for your distro you will eventually just give up. Not a great experience when you're installing something simple.

Mint 13

While I have committed to this switch, please don't assume it was an easy one to make. I've long been an oO fan and I'm sure that if they move to more intuitive configurations and if RPM returns to its glory days I'll be back ...

But Mint has been a pleasant surprise. From install to first-run. There was a partitioning issue, but that's not really a big pain. I just used Gparted to do it myself when the installer didn't want to disregard SWAP being "busy".

Oh, and for those of you tempted to run sensors-detect, please beware! I ran it in order to get one of the Gnome extensions working (CPU temperature monitor), but halfway through it actually killed my machine. Luckily for me, removal of the CMOS battery solved that ...

Not so lucky for others though. I have read of a CPU getting fried with "sensors-detect". If you run into this issue pull the CMOS battery and hope for the best! YMMV

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Sweet

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