Asus X205TA - Arch Linux

Introduction

The Asus X205TA is a thin netbook with great battery life. It ships with a 32-bit copy of Windows 8.1 Bing Edition. It uses a 64-bit Intel Atom processor, an d is equipped with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC. While it can run a 64-bit OS, the bootloader must be installed as 32-bit.

Installation

Secure boot

Secure boot must be disabled before you can boot a live Arch USB. The BIOS can be entered by pressing F2 during power-on. This option is avaliable under the Security tab in the BIOS menu. In order to boot the live USB, go to the Boot Override menu.

Bootia32

On some distros, for the live USB to boot, you will need to copy in a bootia32.efi file into the ISO and repack it. This guide is for Arch, which already has a working archiso for systems with 32-bit EFI.

If you are installing Arch manually, make sure to install GRUB as 32-bit. If you are using archinstall, it will automatically attempt to install GRUB. However, this GRUB installation is for 64-bit and it will fail to boot. To resolve this, after installing GRUB, run these commands in a chroot:
1.) If you are using archinstall, your EFI partition has already been mounted to /boot. If you are installing manually, mount it.
2.) Reinstall GRUB for i386: grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
3.) Regenerate your GRUB configuration: grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

After this, you will have a bootable system. However, you may want to make some changes for better usability.

Fixes

WiFi breaks after hibernation

Place this shell script in /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/hibernate.sh:

⎗
✓
#!/bin/sh

case $1 in
    pre)
        rmmod brcmfmac
        ;;
    post)
        modprobe brcmfmac
        ;;
esac
exit 0

Make it executable by running chmod +x /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/hibernate.sh

Bluetooth not working

In order to get Bluetooth working, install the Bluetooth driver at /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM43341B0.hcd. You can find more information here.

Create a file at /etc/systemd/system/btattach.service with the following contents:

⎗
✓
[Unit]
Description=Btattach

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/btattach --bredr /dev/ttyS1 -P bcm
ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall btattach

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To enable it, run systemctl enable btattach.service

You will also need to run pacman -S bluez bluez-utils to install Bluetooth utilities.
Check if the kernel module for btusb is loaded by running lsmod|grep btusb.
If there is no output, it is not loaded and you will need to run modprobe btusb.
Finally, run systemctl enable bluetooth.service.

If you are running a desktop like Hyprland that does not provide Bluetooth utilities, install blueman.

Microphone

Previously there was a package in the AUR called alsa-lib-x205ta, however it no longer exists.