18.04 LTS on Asus T102HA tablet - review

Support & Help Requests Hardware
1

Good day,

A couple of weeks ago I tested Ubuntu Mate 18.04 on this tablet, Asus T102HA, out of an USB drive. The test was OK, so finally I decided to move on and install it onto the internal drive, removing windows completely.

I did a clean install of Ubuntu Mate 18.04 64bits and some apps I use. No tweaking the system yet. This “review” is of a clean install as is.

I haven’t finished the testing/setting process yet, but for now what works:

  • Keyboard and touchpad. Can detach the keyboard without issues, re-atach too.
  • Wifi works fine. Is Asus who provided a flawed wifi to this tablet.
  • Sound and sound keys on the tablet and keyboard
  • Multitouch in the touchpad

What sort of works:

  • Touch (finger) works without pressure sensitivity. Pen ran out of batteries so haven’t tested yet.
  • Rotating the display (inside Display prefs) does not rotate the touchscreen making it weird to move the mouse or touch.

What does not work:

  • Screen autorotation with touch autorotation
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Brightness keys
  • Airplane mode key
  • Pressure sensitivity
  • Touch scroll on app windows

Well. Overall this tablet with Ubuntu Mate is quite nice. Mypaint works very well, and is fast, much better than on windows. Just need to fix the pressure sensitivity issue to make this a good sketcher tablet (it’s main purpose, way too slow Mypaint on windows).

Battery seems to be ok. Looks like it does not last as much as with windows.

I need to add the onscreen keyboard to the panel and fix the issues, and it is going to be a good companion tablet.

I will keep researching and updating as soon as I get issues fixed. I would appreciate any hint on these too :smile:

Regards,
RR

1 Like
2

You may want to try 18.10 it should support the fingerprint reader and possibly other things

3

Good day @Bernie

I will do that on the weekend and test it.

I should report that I installed Godot Game Engine (Linux Mono 64bit version), and seems to work fine, same applies to VSCode. If pressure sensitivity and rotation is fixed with 18.10 I will be more than happy, even the fingerprint reader does not work! :wink:

Regards,
RR

4

Also if rotation doesn’t work with 18.10 the version of UM for the gPD pocket might work I think it had some of the rotation problems figured out

5

I’ve been running MATE on my T102HA for about a year now. The upgrade from 17 to 18.04 went poorly and I ended up doing a fresh install which went well. Sound is a constant struggle requiring me to play with the settings after ever re-start, and sometimes it just plain won’t work. Otherwise my only real complaint is lack of support for the cam so if anyone has any suggestions there it would be greatly appreciated.

Here’s a work around for making the screen stay in landscape so that you don’t have to reset it after each boot, if your interested http://migueleonardortiz.com.ar/linux/installing-debian-on-asus-transformer-mini-t102h/1428

6

By any chance could the cam be one of the other things?

7

I wouldn’t know the release notes might say something

8

Good day,

I can say that finally I bought a battery for the Pen and pressure sensitivity works. I’ve already tried with MyPaint and works fine. I already did a sketch for a new videogame to test the pen pressure sensitivity.

I installed the latest Ubuntu Mate 19.10 to check if some issues posted before were still present. Had to add the Orca icon on the dock in order to launch it in Tablet Mode, but once on, it works fine. Touching any Entry Field triggers the Orca keyboard and can type.

@neiltholland Also had to add the Display notification applet in order to change from Wide (laptop) to Portrait (Tablet) in order to properly use the pen input for drawing. Rotation is fixed in Displays to laptop, and keeps like that from power on to power on, so no issue there. But the touch panel input does not rotate, thus need to have the Displays notification in order to rotate the screen to sketch anything properly.

With 19.10, Software Boutique does not show any software at all. I presume this is related to being, ehem… still a testing release. I installed everything through “apt” and Synaptic.

Autorotation still does not work. I’m not sure if this is possible, but if the GPDPocket works, I presume the autorotation thing could be turn into a package available to all. Correct me if I’m wrong.

19.10 resolves some Display issues I had, that rendered some tabs, dropdowns,… half themed half blue.

I keep noticing that boot time is loooong… UMate takes about 7 seconds to boot to login screen from hitting the power on button on the old AMD A8-5600k, it takes more than a minute to boot the T102HA.

Still need to test some other things, like finger scrolling that seemed not to work on Firefox, though it works in the Control Center, and other sys apps.

Have to check the camera though. If have time, will check soon.

Anyway, the fact that can use MyPaint and Mate with pressure sensitivity is a nice point.

Thanks for the hints.
Regards,
RR

9

Hi, for autorotation have you tried iio-sensor-proxy?
It works in Fedora and in Manjaro Arch....