Linux Tweaks for Samsung 535U3C

The Samsung Notebook already runs pretty well out of the box with Ubuntu 12.04.3. All this information is used at your own risk, you might destroy your device!

uefi
You should be careful about using efi, as you've probably read - or you might brick your notebook. Although the 535 series is usually not explicitly listed as having problems in this regard, better be careful and disable secure boot and boot in CSM mode.

AMD apu/cpu tweaking
After a modprobe msr and modprobe cpuinfo you can use the turionpowercontrol tool to enable frequency boost for your cpu: (this is potentially DANGEROUS!)
sudo ./TurionPowerControl -psienable -boostenable

Fan Tweaking
In Windows, the FN-F11 combination slows down the system's fans to make it pretty quiet for usual use, although the fans already run less in Linux than in Windows. There is a special kernel module for this purpose here: easy_slow_down_manager, the dkms package download is here, after installing it successfully simply echo 1 > /proc/easy_slow_down_manager.

Wifi after Suspend
The rfkill force locks the wifi after suspend to ram (S3) mode in my experience. The problem is fixed in Kernel 3.8, which you can get from the Ubuntu kernel PPA. You will need to install the fglrx-experimental-12 driver package (sudo apt-get install fglrx...), which works with this new kernel. To automatically enable wifi after resume, create a pm file:
echo ''#!bin/sh
rfkill unblock all
rfkill unblock all
rfkill unblock all
exit 0' | sudo tee /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000-535-rfkill
chmod +x /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000-535-rfkill

Video Acceleration (VA-API)
You can use xvba with vaapi to get video acceleration with vlc and mplayer-vaapi. For mplayer-vaapi you need a special package from a ppa:
echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sander-vangrieken/vaapi/ubuntu precise main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vaapi-mplayer.list
With kernel 3.8 and the new catalyst 12 video driver, you'll need to manually install the xvba-vaapi backend. All you need to do is copy two libraries, though. (For some reasons the package is set to conflict with the newer driver, but really the same library is actually compatible and would still work. Feel free to inform the package maintainers for a workaround.)

Unsolved
Something I'm not sure how to fix yet is that the notebook can become become slow when the AC adapter is *plugged in*. I have no idea why this could be the case, but I've seen several reports about it.
There is no acceleration for the Adobe flash player plugin. However, this seems to be coming up, as AMD has just provided vdpau accelaration for its open source video drivers.

Let me know how this all works for you! Everything at your own risk!

5 comments:

  1. Hey mate,
    Helpful tips here, I have had the same problems.
    I think I've solved the performance issue on AC and the intermittent mouse problem.
    For the mouse I altered the modprobe config using
    http://askubuntu.com/questions/63265/touchpad-scroll-not-working-on-acer-aspire-one
    Once I done that, I noticed the fan on the laptop calmed down a bit (not sure if its related).
    Then I installed a package called tlp, http://linuxg.net/tlp-the-new-jupiter-install-tlp-on-ubuntu-13-04/
    With both of those fixes, my laptop seems to run perfect on AC and on Battery.
    Hope this helps you,
    Mike

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  2. Hey, do you mean 12.04.2 (you writed 12.04.3)?.. because the release of 12.04.3 is in august

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  3. hi first of all thank you for you tweaks...i have the same laptop model and im installing ubuntu 13.04 ,,, i have the same problem of the slowness when AC is plunged in ,,, Also I have the problem of the brightness which i cant adjust.. i couldn’t find a solution of that ...can you help me pls ??? thanx in advance

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  4. I found that none of the suspend fixes worked for me until I installed the latest AMD video driver from:

    http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx

    This not only fixes the suspend problem but reduces power consumption and waste heat enormously.

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