Linux on the Asus T100 in 2025: Zorin OS Lite is your friend!

It's been awhile since I wrote something for this blog. I solved a recent, longstanding technical challenge that I thought would be worth covering: installing a Linux distro on the finicky, quirky, yet still somehow useful and intriguing Asus T100 (10.1" laptop/tablet/netbook hybrid).

Windows 10 "works" on this device, but it's slow, laggy, and leaves very little space for you to work with (at last count, I think I had 4 gigs of storage free on the 32 gigs of built-in storage). Between that and Windows 10 losing support as of October 2025, I would not recommend continuing to use it. 

Zorin OS lite breathes new life into the device. In my testing, it's noticeably faster (though the device is from 2010 and uses an Atom processor, plus only has 2 gigs of total RAM, so manage your expectations). You also have more drive space to work with. My wife and I use it for basic streaming and it works just fine.

NOTE: The device itself is old and will struggle with modern websites, no matter what OS you put on. But the resources seem more optimized on Zorin OS, so it'll generally feel more responsive. Strongly recommend that you stick to 1-2 tabs tops when browsing, though.

Though the Lite flavour of the OS will eventually be retired, as per Zorin's post, this OS stream will be supported until at least June 2029 -- that means security updates and ongoing official support, so I think it's a safe bet for the humble Asus T100. 

So, if you want to breathe a little bit of new life into your T100 and keep it out of a landfill, follow along for the steps I followed to get Zorin OS Lite on the device.

Prerequisites

Here's what you need:

• An Asus T100 (likely lying around!), preferably with Win 10 32 bit, since that seems to configure the boot stuff properly. When I distro hopped from one Linux to another, things got messed up and wouldn't work again until I reinstalled Win 10, so make that your starting point. 
• A USB drive with at least 8 gigs -- something that doesn't have important files.
  
• A computer that you can use to write an ISO image to said USB drive. A program like Rufus or Balena will be fine.
  
• A copy of the Zorin OS Lite -- I specifically used the 16.3 (64 bit) ISO on archive.org and later upgraded to 17.3 within the OS. You may be able to use the latest ISO, but I can't guarantee these steps will work, so suggest you start with 16.3 and go from there.

Booting into the Zorin OS Lite installer from USB and installing the OS

With this process, there's no need to mess with adding 32 bit bootloader files to your USB stick or anything. Just make sure you are working from a Win 32 bit system before doing the Zorin OS install.

1. With the USB drive plugged in, turn on your T100 and keep hitting F2 to enter the bios.
2. Disable secure boot by setting Security > Secure Boot > Secure Boot Control to Disabled.
3. Go to Save and Exit, click, Save Changes.
4. Finally, under the Boot Override section, you should see your USB stick. Choose that and the system will reboot into the Zorin OS installer. The standard option failed, then I chose the Safe Graphics option in the install options and it worked just fine.
5. Follow the prompts for the install (fairly routine and I didn't have any issues with these).
6. Run any updates that may appear -- I promise it won't be as painful as Windows updates! Reboot when prompted, too.
7. Optional but recommended: go to Zorin Menu → System Tools → Upgrade Zorin OS and upgrade to the latest Zorin OS Lite that appears (at the time of writing, 17.3).

What works well

Just about everything works nicely out of the box, apart from audio (more on that in the following section). I also can't confirm whether the camera and SD card reader work as I'm not really using those at this time. I'll post an update if I ever do test those out, though, but I believe they generally don't work on most Linux distros at this time.

I was pleasantly surprised that suspend works well on this distro on  the Asus t100. Most other installation guides call out that suspend typically still drains the battery noticeably on this device, but that hasn't been my experience since installing Zorin Lite 16 and upgrading to 17.3.

Configuration issues/quirks I encountered with audio

Mostly, Zorin OS Lite worked great out of the box, I was pleasantly surprised to see. Even sleep mode works on this OS, and it typically doesn't on other Linux distros on the Asus T100, from what I've read. Other than the fixes/workarounds I mention here, I would recommend not tinkering with it too much (speaking from experience), as it's designed to be user friendly and work well out of the box. For example, no need to install battery life extenders or anything. Just use the OS as is and I think you'll be pleased!

 

That said, one thing that was causing issues out of the gate was the audio: there was none! Thankfully, another Zorin OS user posted a fix and I'll provide the commands here, just to be safe (run these one-by-one in the terminal emulator app and then reboot your system):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall alsa-ucm-conf

echo "options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=2" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Upon reboot, my audio was working fine.

Another issue I encountered (and this might've been related to me tinkering too much when I tried to get one of my midi instruments working on this system) is that when I switch from bluetooth speaker audio to built in speaker, the sound would be at half speed (it sounded like a slowed-down cassette tape, which people of a certain vintage will understand!). If you don't muck around much, you should avoid encountering this issue, but if you happen to stumble across it, never fear: I discovered a fix for that, too! (Credit: Comprehensive Sound Problem Solutions Guide)

1. Remove these packages:

   sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

2. Reinstall those same packages:

   sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

3. Reboot.

BONUS: Youtube performance and an alternative solution

You likely guessed the answer already, but Youtube performance is anything but optimal. Once videos load? They look great and this device handles HD 1080p, no issues. The issue is the loading time itself.

The answer (or at least a possible answer)? Freetube! I just installed this app recently and it works a treat. Videos play just as well as they do in the browser, but those pesky loading times are gone and this app feels much snappier by comparison. The downside is that, AFAIK, you can't sign in with your Youtube account, but it does let you import your subscriptions, I believe. 

For my use case, I'm just using it for ad-hoc viewing and it works perfectly fine for that. I'd strongly recommend it! You can install it from the Software app (kinda like Zorin's app store).