Comment 5 for bug 1521792

Please bear with me as I'm a very new Linux user, though fighting to install any distro on this laptop has taught me a lot.

tl;dr: Please tell me what diagnostics I need to run to run so the bug can be better assessed. I'm a -- how you say -- "n00b".

What follows may be rambling to the learned, but the tl;dr is that all the issues I've experienced with the 4.2 kernel have something to do with the 4.2 kernel's acpi use/drivers/implementation/i-dont-know. At the moment I'm grudgingly satisfied with any distro's performance with the 3.19 kernel. I've accepted that the elantech touchpad won't work and the scren will tear when scrolling down on webpages. Every distro I tried using the 4.2 kernel has become unusable at some point..

So I installed Ubuntu 14.04 on a brand new laptop, and right away I battled the Nvidia card for the right to view the GPU. This is common as any "nvidia linux" Google search will illustrate. After 2 weeks of battle, using the resources of this site and others, I've managed to tame the GPU enough that I can ignore the issues that remain (screen tearing when scrolling down on web pages, incompatibility with DisplayLink USB-HDMI adaptors).

What does kill me is that I need to bring a USB mouse with me anywhere I go. The Elantech touchpad does not work at all, and is not detected by xinput. Here's the output of the `xinput` command, after removing the USB mouse. Notice no Elantech or PS/2 or Synaptic touchpad detected.

 ~ $ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Asus WMI hotkeys id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]

This drag on portability is what led me to try the 4.2 kernel, which I'd read had beefed up its Elantech support.

I was very encouraged when I first booted from my thumb drive Ubuntu 15.10. I learned from my 14.04 install that I must do nouveau.modeset=0 in the boot command line, so I did that and I was taken to the install screen. The moment that GUI loaded, I began moving my finger on the touchpad, and the cursor followed. Eureka! No. The instant I stopped moving my finger on the touchpad the install menu froze, and I needed to do a hard reboot. Like, a very hard reboot. In fact I could only reliably move past the BIOS's "ASUS" logo after a crash if I (a) removed the AC adaptor from my laptop (b) removed the battery from my laptop (c) waited >=20 seconds. Literally all 3 conditions needed to be present to move past the BIOS screen, e.g. waiting 10 or 15 seconds after removing the battery would show be a black screen after the BIOS "ASUS" logo screen. It needed to be >=20 seconds.

After realizing there was a serious issue connected to the laptop's power, I set both 'nouveau.modeset=0` and `acpi=off` in the boot command. This allowed me to enter the Ubuntu install screen and successfully install and run Ubuntu 15.10 (so long as I saved these two commands in `/etc/default/grub`).

Problem was that I paid good money for the GPU, and an onboard mouse is requisite for a laptop to be a `laptop` rather than a `lap-and-leg-top'. Unfortunately, with `acpi=off`, the Nvidia GPU wouldn't work - no matter the various divers/versions/helpers/installation-order-of-drivers that I used - and the touchpad was again disabled, which was ironically the main reason I tried the 4.2 kernel.

Almost-done-summary:
Installing Ubuntu 15.10 allowed me to use touchpad as long as I kept moving my finger on it the instant after boot-up-to-install-screen, after which it freezes. Only the boot option `acpi=off` plus `nouveau.modeset=0` allows a successful installation and use, however it disables the GPU and touchpad entirely.

I've since settled in with Linux Mint 17.3. The touchpad is not detected and thus is not usable, however the GPU works satisfactorily and all other components are acceptably stable.

I have installed the 4.2.0-19 on this distro and have had the same results as with Ubuntu. I'm happy to retrieve some diagnostics from it by booting into the 4.2 kernel, however just note that the only way to reach the GUI is with `acpi=off` set in the boot options.

Quirks I noticed that may help diagnose:

- the touchpad works when installing, as mentioned above, if I continuously move my finger on it once I see the install screen. After I stop moving my finger it freezes and requires a reboot-and-wait 20 seconds while the laptop's disconnected from any power sources.

- if I wait a few seconds after seeing the install menu and then touch the touchpad, the touchpad does not work, and the install still freezes within 2 minutes

- with `acpi=off`, the 3rd (?) screen on the installer does NOT say "(green checkmark) Connected to AC power" when going through the install steps. It DOES say this when I manage to make it to the 3rd (?) screen on the installer without setting `acpi=off` in the boot options. Again, without `acpi=off`, the install inevitably freezes.

- there are error messages printed to the screen during the boot-up in the 4.2 kernel that mention the acpi, but they fly by rather quickly.

- With `acpi=off`I cannot control keyboard or screen brightness. Even in the 3.19 kernel I cannot control the screen brightness with the keyboard keys. setting `acpi_osi= ` in grub allows the system to recognize that a "*BrightnessDown/Up" key is being hit, but it does not change the brightness. With `acpi_osi=Linux` or `acpi_osi=Windows` there's no screen brightness changes or recognition that "*BrightnessDown/Up" is being pressed, like when I don't have an `acpi_osi` command in grub at all.

- immediately after buying the PC I installed a 480 GB M.2 SSD, on which I have installed Linux. I use the onboard stock 1 TB HDD for bulk data storage.

- the laptop came with Windoes 10, in which the touchpad & GPU work without noticeable issues. Please take this to mean that all hardware on this brand new undamaged laptop is in perfect working order, and that this is certainly an issue on the software side.

Again, happy to post any needed diagnostics.