Using Linux Ubuntu on HP HDX 16t Laptop

Question:

I just finished purchasing an HDX 16t laptop (will receive it in a few weeks) and I was wondering what is the linux experience like on that system? Are all the hardware components working? Any challenges faced? Thanks!

Answer:

I've got an HDX16t (first relase), and I've finally got it to where I'm happy with it.

On the partition question, I dumped the recover partition (you don't need it once you make the recovery DVDs), and I let Jaunty shrink the Vista partition. The Vista disk manager would only let me shrink my 320 GB partition down to 160 or so, even on a fresh install of Vista that only used 25GB (only!). I told the Jaunty installer to shrink the Vista partition to 60GB, and I can still boot Vista no problem (I think it did some disk integrity checking on the first reboot after the resize, but it ultimately booted up and runs fine). I've got Jaunty and my swap drive on the remainder of the drive and all is good.

On the hardware, here is what I did:

I compiled and installed alsa 1.0.20, and that fixed almost all my sound issues (recording, mute LED, mismatch between hardware volume controls and software volume), even without upgrading the kernel. I also upgraded my kernel to 2.6.30, which seems to have smoothed a number of stability problems I had been having.

The ENE-CIR remote will work, but you have to undo whatever the vista driver does to the IR chip that makes it not work under linux. There are two ways reported to work. 1. boot into Vista, go into the hardware manager, and uninstall the ENE CIR driver. 2. Pull the battery out of the computer, wait a minute or so, and put it back in. I did #1, and now the remote works mostly fine except for a couple of the buttons (most notably the play/pause button). With #2, it is likely that if you boot into Vista again, then the ENE CIR driver will probably redo whatever it does that makes the remote nonfunctional under linux, so you may have to pull the batter again after every time you boot to Vista.

For Suspend to RAM to work, you need the latest bios (version F.23A) from HP. On a brand-new system, you may already have it.

Other things that don't work (yet):

1. Fingerprint reader (it's on the todo list for the fprint project).

2. DVB-T: mine doesn't work, though I think different hardware shipped with different systems (maybe for different markets), and I understand that some people have the DVB-T working in their HDX16's.

3. So far, the bass/treble controls for the sound don't work - maybe Chris will get that working next.

4. I have a strange issue on shutdown where the screen goes all pink, and the system sometimes hangs without shuttinng off, and I have to hold the power key to power it down. It's intermittent, but it seems to be related to the wireless (it only seems to hang when I'm actually connected to an access point).

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1106356