Anyone been able to get any sort of Linux working on some thing like this? https://www.asus.com/Stick-PCs/

The reason I'm asking is because the "built-in" W10 is simply stupidly slow on this thing ... especially since its Defender keeps hogging the CPU at 40%-60% and jumps to 100% every time anything is opened (so meaning even opening Notepad could take minutes). And of course in MS's "infinite" wisdom, it's impossible to turn off Defender - it simply turns itself back on within a minute or two.

My idea was thus to replace W10 with something else ... ANYTHING else. I even tried other MS operating systems, W7 / W8.1. But I keep running into a brick wall: WiFi / BlueTooth / Sound.

I have however gotten to something close. Installing an Ubuntu image customized for the Intel Compute Stick seems to work half-way: The 14.04 ISO from here works for WiFi and BlueTooth, but no sound. And as a soon as I upgrade the BT to BT4 (so my keyboard & mouse actually works) the BT/WiFi drivers are then broken.

irneb,

The Asus model probably has several differences compared to the Intel Compute Stick (Windows), but you may find this article, "Install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on the 2GB Intel Compute Stick", of assistance:

http://liliputing.com/2015/07/instal...ute-stick.html

Thanks yes, that's actually a writeup pointing to the exact same ISO I've already gotten working (partly). It seems that the ICS and the ASP are very close to the same hardware, at least their CPU and WiFi/BT cards are the same. Probably why it worked.

Though as mentioned, my BT keyboard & mouse are BT4. So then I need to install Bluez in order to fix that problem. Like this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup

But that then seems to break the WiFi/BT driver of the ISO and I then no longer have any BT or Network.

I looked at a number of web pages on those systems.
They tend to have a bios that has a problem on 32 bit or 64 bit so you have to use a loader of one then jump to other.
The audio was another issue.
The web pages that I read all seemed to have it all working or nearly working.

What exactly is the difference between working and nearly working?

Yes, that is a problem. I have to make USB bootable images which work with the particular EUFI boot loader. Usually only the 64bit ISOs have that, but I've found that UNetBootin sometimes can take any ISO and wrap it up into a EUFI which does boot on this device (though no silver bullet - have had some which don't work even if wrapping them in UNetBootin's boot loader).

The "machine" itself is actually a 64bit - so 32/64 can run on it. The W10 installed on it is 32bit and uses a special type of 32bit EUFI boot loader (BTW this is pretty similar for the Intel Compute Stick). That's actually the problem those pages are referring to: If you dual boot to a 64bit, then it's near impossible to get to the W10-32 installation. You need some hybrid idea or get another EUFI-capable 32bit OS.

Though that's far from my problem. I couldn't care less about dual booting. If I can find any decent OS working on this then W10 would be history - all trace of it removed in a heartbeat.

Well, "working" would be that the BT keyboard can actually be used as a keyboard. "Nearly working" means it "sees" the keyboard, "connects" to it, but it's an "unknown" device which does nothing when you press a key.

But I guess your post was supposed to be humorous ... in which case ...

Hi, have you managed to make it work?
I have one that was bricked during the process of W10 update!!
I have tried to reset it to factory settings, it starts resetting and then it stuck to 49% where it remains for ages.
I tried to send it to Asus for warranty but I got a reply from them that this unit is not covered by warranty!!
So I will have to either throw it away or try to load a different OS.
Any advise welcome.
Thanks

The distro and kernel level make a statement like working or nearly working.

There are hundreds of web pages out there that tell one how to get one of these devices working. The device shares the same basic arch and other computers from tablets to mini computers. So you need to look at all of the devices for clues to getting your distro working. You may have to switch kernels and build drivers from scratch.

I have a similar mini pc with Ubuntu 16 working on it. BT is working to connect phone. As I don't have a BT keyboard I can't say.

I even used BT to remote into the box from phone.

Thank you for your reply. As I read above, the BT is not the main issue. The AUDIO is. Since my knowledge is limited in linux, I could only use a ready solution. I cannot make my own files, that is why I asked for help.

Sorry, I've still been unable to use anything else than W10 on this.

The closest I've come is using an Ubuntu variant intended for the Intel Compute Stick. But as soon as I attempt to upgrade the Linux BT drivers so I can use BT4 devices it breaks those drivers and I then have no use of sound, BT or network. And for my usecase, those are deal breakers.

So my solution was to firewall this device's MAC address at my router. I.e. it never even sees an internet connection, thus it never gets any W10 updates. In other words: I go through lots of hoops to stop Microsoft's malware OS from screwing me (my ISP costs and my machine) over.

It seems your device's rescue partition has become corrupt. I think the only solution for you would be to obtain a W10-32bit install image that you write into a USB stick. Connect that to the devices USB port (through a USB hub so you can also connect the keyboard and mouse). You'll need to also download the drivers from Asus's site (you'd need another computer to do this as W10 does not come standard with these drivers), then copy them onto a USB and install them once you've got W10 working on the device. Then I'd suggest you do something similar to what I've done - block updates physically instead of attempting to tell W10 to refrain from screwing with you.

Edit: Note you're going to have some issues to start booting this from USB. The "official" idea is to press and hold the F2 key while the boot process starts (you'll need a USB keyboard for this), though I've found it doesn't always work. Just keep trying, else you're never going to get the device to boot from the USB drive you've written the W10 ISO to.

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Thank you, I will try the W10 option. Since I am not interested in BT, if I load the linux option as you did, would i have audio or not? I understood that the problem with the audio had nothing to do with BT. In your latest reply it seems that you are losing the audio as soon as you update the BT drivers. If I have AUDIO then I will install the linux option as i only care for browsing and audio/video playing with this device.

Unfortunately no. The Ubuntu iso only includes the BT and Network driver, not the audio. If you go through that link in the 2nd post which beachboy2's made, you'll see they have made one with audio included. However, it's for the Intel Compute Stick - while the BT and Network devices on this Asus Stick PC is the same, the audio is not, and thus the driver in that ISO doesn't work.

It might be possible to get some other driver to work, but I haven't tried it as my first priority was to get my mouse and keyboard working.

Hi guys,

Firstly, apologies in advance for resurrecting this corpse of a thread, and secondly for the non-linux based question, but I'm in a major bind with my ASUS QM1 PC Stick, and from reading through the informative thread posts on here, maybe someone might be able to offer some advice!

Basically, the problem is my QM1's recovery partition is totally borked, so it won't boot into Windows 10 at all - just a never ending recovery boot-loop. Now, at this point I don't really want to install any OS other than Windows 10 on it, but I just can't get an ISO to boot from USB. I've tried a few different ISO creators, including Rufus and also different Windows 10 ISO builds (x32/64), all to no avail. Pressing F2 at start-up doesn't work, nor does entering the extremely limited BIOS settings and selecting boot media (only option is Windows Boot Loader - never changes).

As another poster on here experienced, ASUS support are useless and have washed their hands of honouring any sort of warranty with this device, which is a disgrace in fairness. They seem to want to spin it that MS are to blame, as it would appear a Windows update maybe caused the initial issue.

Can anyone throw some light as to how I can get a Windows 10 ISO to actually boot on this device?

Again, sorry about the non-linux question and many thanks in advance for your time - much appreciated!

I've had similar problems trying to make a bootable USB for this device. The only stuff which worked for me was:
MultiSystem (if working from Linux) or Easy2Boot working from Windows. Nothing else wanted to work properly.

The trouble is that that stick is actually a 64bit machine, but you need to install a 32bit Win10. "Stupid" I know. Actually, I've since discontinued using this thing ... just too much trouble for what it does.

But I've not had a situation where the entire thing was borked. Hopefully this may solve your issue.

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Thanks very much for the reply and info, irneb. I'll give Easy2Boot a shot and see what I can do! Thanks again :-)