I have a new Asus Zenbook UX31E. One instant problem that I have run into is that there doesn't seem to be a way to get wifi working out of the box using an Ubuntu 11.10 Live USB stick which has kernel 3.0.00-12 (it does work when I try with Fedora 16 and with OpenSuse 12.1).
Here is some relevant output:
nm-tool
NetworkManager Tool
State: disconnected
- Device: wlan0 ----------------------------------------------------------------
Type: 802.11 WiFi
Driver: ath9k
State: unavailable
Default: no
HW Address: 01:08:CA:87:2F:D5
Capabilities:
Wireless Properties
WEP Encryption: yes
WPA Encryption: yes
WPA2 Encryption: yes
Wireless Access Points
lshw -C network
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
product: AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 01
serial: 01:08:ca:87:2f:d5
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.0.0-12-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
resources: irq:17 memory:dea00000-dea7ffff memory:dea80000-dea8ffff
rfkill list
0: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
1: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
2: asus-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
3: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
lsmod | grep ath9
ath9k 112711 0
mac80211 272785 1 ath9k
ath9k_common 13599 1 ath9k
ath9k_hw 293893 2 ath9k,ath9k_common
ath 19387 2 ath9k,ath9k_hw
cfg80211 172392 3 ath9k,mac80211,ath
The problem is that ethernet isn't working either (the laptop uses a special adapter), so instruction on how to fix this will likely involve putting .deb packages on USB sticks.