I am looking for some opinions here… I just bought an ASUS Vivobook Pro 17 (N705UD) and for the life of me the only 2 distros I can get to work on it are LM 19 Cinnamon and Kubuntu! I am running Antergos KDE on an ASUS Vivobook S without an issue. The only thing that I can see that is obviously different between the 2 laptops in my new laptop has a NVIDIA card and from what I can tell that is causing the issue.
If anyone has any ideas for fixes I’m all ears!
Thanks!
NVidia… I can sense problems here. Nvidia has history of Linux compatibility issues. Unfortunately, I don’t have an NVidia device so I cannot be of much help in this hardware-oriented issue.
I had heard there were issues w/ NVIDIA cards as well but wasn’t paying enough attention when I bought this. I wanted a 17 inch screen and got a great deal on the laptop… so it’s back to Mint for me, I just wish they didn’t drop KDE!
Interestingly though, I tried to install Ubuntu Budgie and it wouldn’t install and I also tried to install Debian Stretch (it was my first attempt at installing Debian) and that wouldn’t work, neither did LMDE. Lubuntu worked but I wasn’t thrilled with that DE and Mint XFCE didn’t work either.
NVIDIA cards have a long history of giving troubles with Linux. You can read that al over the internet. The biggest problem seem to be the own drivers. If you choose to use the open source drivers there shouldn’t be a problem (at least, that’s my experience).
I am learning this! I guess it never occurred to me because I never had a NVIDIA card in any laptop that I owned. I agree, it seems like it is driver related. The problem has been I haven’t gotten to a point in the installation where I can choose an open source driver except using an Ubuntu based distro. I am sure there is some way to do it from a terminal but at this point I haven’t come across it.
If you cannot get into your machine, you could try to create a chrooted environment from a rescue disk/stick into your root system and then make the changes from the terminal. If you do not know how to do that, I can give you detailed instructions (lets say a mini how-to) on that. But that won’t be for tonight. 
.Just let me know.
I am very interested! I am heading out of town for a few days but I will have sometime when I get back mid week! I was resigning myself to using Mint Cinnamon until the newest Plasma Neon is released.
Come on, you should never let the machine be the boss. Au contraire, you should tell it what and how and when to do it. That is my motto since I started in IT back in the early 80’s and it always worked. Nevertheless, you’ll have an answer, when your back!
You’re right! The reason I switched to Linux was to be able to do what I wanted! Ok, I’m ready for the challenge!
What I’d like to do is partition my SSD to keep LM19 and add a few more distros to it! How difficult do you think that would be?
Its not that difficult. But why should you? Or is it just for experimenting? I use a test machine for that, so I can keep my “production machines” clean and running, and if anything goes wrong I just wipe the test machine. It’s the best way to go.
Actually since I am just learning the difference between the distros I probably am more accurately described as a “DE” hopper. I know you can install other DEs to have multiple choices but I’ve read that you can get into trouble. I’m somewhat comfortable with Ubuntu based and Arch (Manjaro and Antergos). What are your thoughts on just having multiple DEs available on one distro?
I promised you to get back on the NVIDIA driver issue, but while peeking around a bit I found out that, after upgrading to 18.04 that NVIDIA stuff gives me other problems than those I solved under 16.04. I’ll sort that out first to avoid telling you only half the story, which would not help you probably. I suffer from GPU hangs, sometimes almost unnoticable (DMESG tells me something else, though), sometimes I have to reboot, because the screen freezes partially/completely. First I thought it was a GNOME extension issue, but that is only a part of the problem. So, Iĺl be back in a bit.
I recently (2015-2016) had a great experience with an Asus “ROG” 15.7" UX501 gaming laptop… never really booted the pre-installed Windows on there (in fact I wiped it after a couple months)… tried Ubuntu 15.04 / 15.10 - but just couldn’t get switchable graphics to work… so I tried elementary, then read about the PPA for NVidia proprietary drivers - which can install NVidia “Prime” - this then allowed me to switch between discrete (NVidia GTX 970 ti) and onboard Intel GPU (had to logout of X then back in)… it was an easy workable solution - all my 3D games worked (especially Borderlands 2) and I was happy… a few games even happy to run on the Intel GPU…
I actually bought it with part of my severance package from work when I got laid off in a downsize - then - I didn’t find any work after getting laid off again (from another job) about 18 months later and had to sell it (which meant I had to re-install Windows and Asus didn’t supply any media - and I’d wiped the restore partition) - wish I still had it (despite being limited to only 8 GB of RAM)… My gaming desktop is getting a bit long in the tooth (Phenom II X6 with GTX660 ti and 12 GB RAM) these days… I kinda really hate the design of most “gaming” laptops (e.g. Alienware) - and I hate the touchpad being plonked over on the left side (I’m left handed and prefer it smack in the middle of the palmrest) - the ROG UX501 was a sweet design…
So - my experience with Linux on NVidia powered Asus laptop has been nothing but positive 
I actually have had nothing but good experiences with ASUS machines (in fact I have 4 of them)! I am not certain, but I think it was the Nvidia card that was giving me problems since that was essentially the only real difference between the machines. I am not a gamer so I don’t really need the benefits of the GTX card and didn’t even realize I was getting one when I bought this laptop.
At any rate, after multiple attempts and resigning myself to using Mint Cinnamon (I am not a fan of Cinnamon since it is too Windows like for me) I have finally succeeded to installing Manjaro Gnome and it’s up and running (including the Nvidia drivers).
Just an update on my installation issues. I finally was able to successfully install and setup Manjaro Gnome on the machine w/ the Nvidia issues and so far everything is working flawlessly.
Try Pepperment 6, or Pepperment 7 (Really fast Ubuntu versions). These slightly older (2016-2017 distros) run on anthing out there, and they look really great. The newer 2018 distros coming out seem to be slower and less likely to run efficiently on lots of laptops or older desktops. Cub 1.0 is still available; it runs on anything out there, but is obsolete. Also try Neverware, a Google Chromebook version free for download; it is super fast on any PC or even Mac (follow rhe install direction very carefully for Neverware). Good luck!
I have never tried Peppermint but I have heard of it. My main complaint about Ubuntu and its derivatives (can’t speak for pure Debian) is that they all seem incredibly slow compared to Manjaro and Antergos (which, as a relative newbie I attributed to Arch being a quicker system). My main laptop is a new system so system resources should not have been a problem.