You're welcome. Just to be clear: The ZenBook Pro UX510VW is a nice Linux laptop, once properly configured. If you're okay with a investing several hours of setup, it could well be one of your better options.
Here's a quick rundown of the issues I remember encountering, in case it matters. (I was setting it up a few months ago, so I would have been trying to install Ubuntu 16.10 and Mint 18.1.)
(1) I can't remember all the details, but I was unable to install either Ubuntu 16.10 or Linux Mint 18.1 using the traditional BIOS-based installer. I had to use a UEFI-based one instead. (Which wasn't a big deal, but I had no past experience with UEFI, so I had to read up on it first.)
(2) The trackpad jumped around a lot. I found an easy solution at [1]. IIRC, I had the problem initially with the 4.4 kernel that came with the Linux distros mentioned above. The problem might be fixed on its own with more recent kernels.
(3) The laptop has both nVidia and (built-in) Intel graphics chips. The ability to switch between them is pretty seamless, except for the need to log out and back in again in order to go back and forth. However, this only worked well for me when using nVidia's proprietary driver, which in turn prevented me from (easily) using very recent Linux kernels (4.10+). Supposedly there are other ways to get this working (Bumblebee, et al), but making that work required more effort than I wanted to invest.
(4) The laptop has two connectors for external monitors: a USB-C, and HDMI. My monitor accepts DVI and HDMI. IIRC, I tried three ways of connecting the laptop to my monitor (a Dell U2412M):
Of those three, only (c) worked. Regarding (a) and (b), I can only guess as to where the blame lies.
(5) The laptop has a high-DPI display, which many Linux apps have trouble with [2]. Those problem aren't peculiar to this laptop, but mention the issue because a lower-DPI laptop display wouldn't have this trouble. For one app I use (Intel VTune, which uses Gtk2), the only really workable solution was is to use an external monitor when using that app.
Another consequence of the high-DPI display is that the virtual terminals (e.g., the terminal you get when you hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 ) have really small text. Which can make it a real hassle when you have to fix graphics-driver problems, etc. There may be an easy fix for this; I haven't checked.
(6) When I'm fiddling with graphics drivers, sometimes the laptop's fan runs loud and stays on until the next time I reboot. When I've got the graphics drivers working right, this problem doesn't occur.
Here's a quick rundown of the issues I remember encountering, in case it matters. (I was setting it up a few months ago, so I would have been trying to install Ubuntu 16.10 and Mint 18.1.)
(1) I can't remember all the details, but I was unable to install either Ubuntu 16.10 or Linux Mint 18.1 using the traditional BIOS-based installer. I had to use a UEFI-based one instead. (Which wasn't a big deal, but I had no past experience with UEFI, so I had to read up on it first.)
(2) The trackpad jumped around a lot. I found an easy solution at [1]. IIRC, I had the problem initially with the 4.4 kernel that came with the Linux distros mentioned above. The problem might be fixed on its own with more recent kernels.
(3) The laptop has both nVidia and (built-in) Intel graphics chips. The ability to switch between them is pretty seamless, except for the need to log out and back in again in order to go back and forth. However, this only worked well for me when using nVidia's proprietary driver, which in turn prevented me from (easily) using very recent Linux kernels (4.10+). Supposedly there are other ways to get this working (Bumblebee, et al), but making that work required more effort than I wanted to invest.
(4) The laptop has two connectors for external monitors: a USB-C, and HDMI. My monitor accepts DVI and HDMI. IIRC, I tried three ways of connecting the laptop to my monitor (a Dell U2412M):
Of those three, only (c) worked. Regarding (a) and (b), I can only guess as to where the blame lies.(5) The laptop has a high-DPI display, which many Linux apps have trouble with [2]. Those problem aren't peculiar to this laptop, but mention the issue because a lower-DPI laptop display wouldn't have this trouble. For one app I use (Intel VTune, which uses Gtk2), the only really workable solution was is to use an external monitor when using that app.
Another consequence of the high-DPI display is that the virtual terminals (e.g., the terminal you get when you hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 ) have really small text. Which can make it a real hassle when you have to fix graphics-driver problems, etc. There may be an easy fix for this; I haven't checked.
(6) When I'm fiddling with graphics drivers, sometimes the laptop's fan runs loud and stays on until the next time I reboot. When I've got the graphics drivers working right, this problem doesn't occur.
[1] https://github.com/vlasenko/hid-asus-dkms.git
[2] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-hidpi-support-for-gnome-k...