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I'm considering to buy an Acer R7 572- I guess with an i7. So from previous HW-experiences I know, that "runs on Ubuntu" usually means, that most basics are fulfilled.

But with such a decent device (assumed that there is a working WiFi driver out there), I would like to know, which special keys of the keyboard actually work? As being a keyboard baby, I'd like to see, that the most important things work - if not I will help the developers to work on it - if they like.

My Question: From existing postings I can see, that there are some people out there having Ubuntu running on an R7. Could you please be so kind, to describe here, which special keys on the keyboard actually work and which not? For me and I guess for others as well there are some vital things: - Keyboard light on and off - Display brightness? - Sound buttons (on/off/volume up and down) - WiFi on and off => if the R7 doesn't have some of the above buttons: Sorry, I only put my hands on the keyboard light button, as I was too overwhelmed by the R7 in general.

I hope this doesn't cause too much efforts to you - it would be nice! Thanks in advance!

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Tested on Acer Aspire R7 (i7) with 13.04, 13.10, 14.04

All special keys work as expected: WiFi on/off, Sleep, Switch Display output, Screen on/off, Touchpad on/off, Mute, Keyboard backlight, Keyboard on/off, Play/Pause, Stop, Next&Previous track, Volume Up&Down, LCD backlight Up&Down.

There is only one key that is not handled by Ubuntu (but works) - Keyboard backlight.

Some additional xorg configuration is needed to make LCD backlight to work (/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/80-intel_backlight.conf):

Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
  Option      "AccelMethod"     "sna"
  Option      "Backlight"       "intel_backlight"
  Driver      "intel"
  BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Touchscreen with multitouch works as well as Synaptic Touchpad.

Also note, there are no drivers for ALS (ambient light sensor) and Gyroscope/Orientation sensor in current Linux kernel, so it will not work. You'll need to adjust LCD backlight and screen orientation manually.

WiFi works great with proprietary driver.

Bluetooth works only after some additional magic (/etc/rc.local):

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.
echo 04ca 2004 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id
exit 0

nVidia works great with bumblebee/optirun and proprietary driver (nouveau driver is installed by default and it does not work).

Additional devices, such as USB Ethernet Adapter, VGA Adapter and HDMI also work without any problems.

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