I just wanted to say that I have really enjoyed Math ∩ Programming over the past year. Lot of interesting reading material for my commute. Keep up the good work! (Signed up for the mailing list. Good luck!)
Nope. Simply installed from a USB drive. Of course, there's a little effort if you want a Windows partition, but that has been documented / blogged about ad nauseam, so shouldn't be too difficult.
I run Ubuntu 16.04.1 (no Windows partition) on an Asus X555 (8GB RAM, 120GB SSD). Works extremely smooth. I've also used the same setup on a Transformer series notebook and have had no issues at all. It's honestly been my best notebook experience - having used Acer & Lenovo before (not that those notebooks were bad)
Sadly, viewing the videos requires login with a Stanford ID. For those inclined to learning through videos like me, this is a good alternative resource for the same - https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229
If possible, can you post a link to the same? The material on edX is currently of the Fall 2013 offering. Not that it's an issue but it would be nice to be more current.