Acer TravelMate B115

The Acer TravelMate B115 is a great device, however its newer hardware has a few quirks that need to be addressed for ideal functionality.

Installation

While the B115 does support "legacy" mode in the BIOS, I have found this mode to be quite unstable. Therefore, we will want to install in UEFI mode. To prepare the system for install, follow these steps:

1. Press the power button and immediately press F2 repeatedly, until the configuration screen appears.
2. Press the right arrow to select "Main", then down arrow to select "F12 Boot Menu", press Enter and choose "Enabled".
3. Press the right arrow on the keyboard until "Security" at the top is highlighted.
4. Press Enter on "Set Supervisor Password" and set the password to something simple.
5. Press the right arrow again to select "Boot" and down arrow to "Secure Boot". Press Enter, and select "Disabled".
6. (Optional, but recommended) Press the left arrow to return to "Security", then set the supervisor password back to blank.

You are now ready to install. Insert an ubermix 2.12 or greater install key in a USB port, right arrow to "Exit", and select "Exit Saving Changes". On reboot, press the F12 key immediately and select the USB key to install.

Post-install Configuration

Before you begin, be sure to boot your device in "generic" mode, so that all of the changes made stick in the event of a reset. For details on booting in generic mode, see the first six steps under "Rebuilding the base image" on the Customization page.

Brightness Controls

The Intel HD Graphics in the device is a newer breed that doesn't respond to the default brightness controls in the stock Ubuntu configuration. To make them work, we need to create a configuration file. First, open a terminal (ctrl-alt-t) and type:

sudo gedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

When the page appears, copy and paste the following into it:

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Backlight fix"
        Driver      "intel"
        Option      "Backlight"  "intel_backlight"
EndSection

Save the file and brightness controls will work on reboot - but don't reboot just yet.

Intel HD Graphics Driver Update

The Intel HD Graphics card is quite powerful, however the driver needs to be the absolute latest and greatest to realize its full potential and eliminate some glitchy behavior on a default install. Fortunately, Intel has a semi-easy installer available.

First, download the driver installer, open a web browser and navigate to https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads, then download the latest "Graphics Installer for Ubuntu* 14.04, 64-bit"

Once downloaded, open a terminal (ctrl-alt-t) and type (or copy and paste) the following commands, one at a time, pressing Enter after each line:

wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg -O - | sudo apt-key add -
wget --no-check-certificate https://download.01.org/gfx/RPM-GPG-KEY-ilg-2 -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get install ttf-ancient-fonts
sudo dpkg -i Downloads/intel-linux-graphics-installer*.deb

Once complete, you will find an "Intel Graphics Installer for Linux" in the Activities menu under "Preferences". Run the installer and follow the steps to complete the installation.

When you are done, reboot and all will be right with the world!