ubuntu

The heavens shined its light upon me… [dramatic pause] as I purchased my latest computing device… the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. What a sweet piece of machinery. Yes, I played with the Windows 8 a bit and then re-sized the hard drive to make way for its Linux-overlord. Of course, it didn’t go smoothly — I ran into some minor issues, but once I got through them I was off to the races.

Below is a quick breakdown of my steps to install Ubuntu on the Yoga 3.

  1. Ubuntu on USB
  2. Boot USB
  3. “Try Ubuntu” first
  4. Enabling WiFi
  5. Install
  6. Troubleshoot Wireless
  7. Acquiring and Prepping Ubuntu

Downloading Ubuntu and prepping a USB for it was pretty straight forward. Once you acquire the ISO file use Pen Drive USB Installer to get it USB-ready. The next step is to plug in the USB key and reboot the system. The BIOS will pick up the additional bootable device and display additional boot options. Choose the USB and “Try Ubuntu.”

Additional Drivers

Certainly the wireless won’t work out-of-box. Simply open the “System settings” click on “Software sources” and choose the “Additional drivers” tab. The following driver will be available:

Broadcom Corporation: BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter Using Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source

Go on ahead and use that driver, connect to your local Wifi router and perform a full install onto your system. Make sure to use “available” space and not the entire hard drive so you can dual-boot with Windows.

The Wireless Driver from Hell

Here’s were things got interesting. After my initial install of Ubuntu and the computer rebooted I could no longer access the wireless device. I tried all sorts of solutions, but none worked. It wasn’t until I bought a USB ethernet adapter and performed a system update. Once I did that the proper drivers were available and I no longer had any wireless issues.

Root User Password?

Oddly enough after the initial install of Ubuntu my root account either didn’t have a password or I’m not sure what it was set to. I had to figure out how to reset the root password in order to do some troubleshooting during the “wireless adapter” stage.

Preferences

The preferences will be the toughest part to configure. This post is simply proof that Ubuntu can be installed on the Yoga 3. At the time all the articles I found referenced Yoga 2. Some of the links in the reference section has detailed preference tweaks.

References

  1. http://askubuntu.com/questions/367963/ubuntu-on-lenovo-yoga-2-pro
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VVosf9p5GM
  3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33zxgEl6eTo – Reset root password
  4. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows