Hardware support on Zenbook U31A

As ASUS recommends Windows 8, I cannot recommend ASUS.
I won't by from a company that recommends nonfree software.

You might sell your ASUS, and buy a computer from ThinkPenguin. I did the same thing with my MacBook Pro.

The companies to avoid most are: HP, Dell, Lenovo/IBM, and Toshiba. While Asus isn't perfect either they at least aren't restricting the mini pcie slot to a particular card or set of cards. That means your free to replace it with a compatible free software friendly wifi card.

What you can do to test it's free software compatibility is run a Trisquel 6 Live CD. Test your sound, ethernet ports, wireless, USB, 3d acceleration, etc.

There are other things I'm not a fan of about Asus like there recommendation of a non-free OS, that they force a non-free OS on there users, and similar practices. This is a common practice though and hard to avoid without going to a company selling there own line of systems with GNU/Linux. Any company which sells MS Windows systems (even if they offer GNU/Linux on some hidden page or freedos) is going to have the recommendation all over the place for MS Windows.

There are other things to be concerned about as well like the graphics card. NVIDIA and ATI graphics chipsets are not free software compatible where new laptops are concerned. Ideally you will want to stick to Intel CPU & Graphics to avoid the dependency.

Intel's not a great choice either as they don't cooperate with the coreboot project. Hopefully we can change that although or move on to some non-x86 architecture. For now it's either you skip 3d acceleration support or you skip coreboot. We need to find a company willing to release code/specs for there graphics chipsets that can be used in a non-x86 system. Then ideally we would have full control. It's still not necessarily perfect. There are other bits of non-free software although it would be a huge step forward.

Thank you both for your elaborate answers!

@megurineturilli

I was quite shocked to read about the potential of Intel vPro and TXT nightmares on the ThinkPenguin website. That's a big one! However, their hardware is not as premium as I want it to be.

Luckily, the current Zenbook processors (i7-3517U, i5-3317) don't have those two features. The Zenbook has long battery life, is compact but sturdy and has a high-res display while maintaining a small form factor. It's unlikely that I will consider a different non-apple ultrabook.

@Chris

For my case, I'll be preparing a Trisquel Live USB using the same instructions as on the Ubuntu website. Just in case, I'll also prepare a second Live USB for Ubuntu 12.04 and use the "Free Software only" option.

Since I'm aware of the problems with Linux and graphic chipsets, I only ever considered an ultrabook with integrated graphics.

You sound like there will be Wi-Fi issues? For best battery life, I would prefer to use the integrated wifi. However, I found that the Zenbook family uses Atheros wifi chips (e.g. AR9485). Thinkpenguin also uses Atheros chips for their notebook, but I don't know what "freedom compatible" means in this case. As if there were some Atheros chips that are not freedom compatible?

"For now it's either you skip 3d acceleration support or you skip coreboot." When/where can I decide to switch between the two options?

Thank you both for the help so far, I hope to hear more from you :-)

Matt

Most Intel based devices do not support coreboot, And Intel is the only company that makes chips with 3d acceleration support for free software.

The Chromebook Pixel has both, but the coreboot here is not fully free.
It comes with a nonfree GNU/Linux distro.

> 2) Are there issues regarding secure boot when trying to install Trisquel?

On x86 and for now, you can switch off Secure boot if it's there.