{"id":308,"date":"2019-03-26T12:10:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T17:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/?p=308"},"modified":"2019-11-27T20:30:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T02:30:24","slug":"the-hp-x2-2-in-1-notebook-and-how-well-it-runs-fedora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/2019\/03\/26\/the-hp-x2-2-in-1-notebook-and-how-well-it-runs-fedora\/","title":{"rendered":"The HP x2 2-in-1 Notebook, and How Well It Runs Fedora"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Update November 26, 2019]<\/strong> – Hans de Goede, a Linux kernel programmer, has figured out a way of partially fixing the suspend issue. He has since written patches for the kernel and have submitted them upstream. Apparently, he found that the embedded controller (EC) on the notebook isn’t like other ECs, and so doesn’t handle suspend and resume events differently. His article on the problem can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was working with a company a few months ago who had just bought a bunch of notebooks (HP x2 2-in-1 notebook laptops) so as to loan out to their clients. Since they had such a tough time getting the notebooks configured properly, I look into getting GNU\/Linux working on the notebooks. I had initially tested Linux on one of their old notebook tablets, and that looked promising. However, I didn’t stay around long enough to proceed with further testing (my contract ended). Still, I thought the notebooks they bought looked interesting, and got one of my own. I then proceeded to install Fedora on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The HP x2 2-in-1 Notebook in all its Fedora glory
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Initially, I thought of installing Ubuntu, because it has great\nhardware support. To my surprise, Fedora worked because it had the\nproper bootloader set-up (it had its UEFI files aligned correctly).\nThere was that reason, and I have been wanting to learn more about\nusing Fedora, so this was a good match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The model I have is an HP x2 Detachable Notebook<\/a>, model number 10-p018wm, and it took two tries to get the notebook to boot from the LiveUSB. I had to disable secure boot (as usual with notebooks like these), and I had to figure out how to get to the boot selection screen (press escape as the device is booting up, then press F9). The installation process of Fedora 29 was smooth, too. Though I had to remove Windows because I couldn’t free up enough space in storage. By default, on Fedora 29, Gnome is installed. Using that was a bit of a chore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When people criticize Gnome, half the time the criticism seems to be on the design. The problem didn’t necessarily lie in the design of the interface. Navigating through the windows, bars, application screen, and other stuff in Gnome 3.30 was easy, since Gnome’s design is now mostly suited for touchscreens. The problem was in how sluggish it all was. Since the interface rendering wasn’t really optimized for a notebook like this one (the on-board GPU is laughable, it comes with an Intel Atom CPU, and it only has 4GB of memory), I couldn’t do much with it. So I had to put the notebook aside for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After about a month, I thought, Why not test out some other\ndesktop environment on it? It’s not that hard to switch to desktops\non Fedora. So I installed the other big desktop environment, KDE. I\nhad heard that KDE is usually hard on the resources, mainly because\nit offers such pizazz and eye candy for the desktop. Since I was\ntesting this notebook out anyway (and because it had been a long<\/em>\ntime since I had used KDE), I didn’t expect the findings to be\namazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I installed KDE (first the Xorg version), and logged into that.\nThe look, polish, and experience blew me away. Not only does the\nPlasma desktop (version 5.14.5) run very well on this notebook, the\ndesktop has some support for touchscreens. The applications menu\nlauncher can be changed to one which is touch friendly, swipes and\ndrags on some menus respond well (e.g. in System Settings), though\nscrolling is still handled by using the scroll bars on windows. It’s\nnice that KDE has some<\/em> support for touchscreens. Gnome has it\nbeat in this regard. Under Gnome with Wayland, the touchscreen is\nwell supported: the swipes and drags of a finger work, and in many\napplications, two finger zooming and expanding work, too (at least\nfor the ones which can expand and zoom). Other features of the\nnotebook, though, are lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only one of the cameras (the front facing camera) on the device\nworks; the other one (the back one) is undetected. As far as I can\ndiscern, the kernel I’m running (4.20.16) doesn’t detect the back\ncamera. The accelerometers on the tablet, while detected, are only\nused in Gnome. Special\nmethods<\/a> had to be found just to get some screen auto\nrotation functionality in KDE. What’s worse is that, since there is\nlittle Wayland support in KDE (especially kwin), the auto rotation\nfunction can’t be used. The problems with Wayland also extend to the\nHP x2 Notebook’s stylus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The HP Active stylus is detected and supported, but not quite.\nStylus support in Wayland is there, but it doesn’t always work as\nintended. Under Gnome (and using the Krita program), the stylus\nmostly works: it’s detected as a separate input, and it has pressure\nsensitivity. With KDE and Wayland, though, the stylus is not detected\nat all, and so can only be used with Xorg. This is fine for most\napplications. However, getting a little multi-touch support is nice.\nIn Krita, for instance, two finger zooming and expanding is\nsupported. Other smaller capabilities are supported, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, I had read that similar\nnotebooks<\/a> to this one lacked support for sound; the user\ncouldn’t get sound working. I am happy to report that sound is\nworking under Linux. I was able to watch a couple of YouTube videos\non this tablet, and sound could be heard. Bluetooth is also\nrecognized, though I did not use it. The battery was recognized, too,\nand from the looks of it, the device has great battery life. As for\nits suspend and sleep capabilities, the HP x2 Notebook could fair\nbetter. When closing the lid, the device goes into suspend. However,\nafter a while, it won’t go into hibernation. I have tried making it\ngo into hibernation a couple of times, but it doesn’t seem to do\nthat. I have also changed the options in the \/etc\/systemd\/logind.conf<\/code>\nfile (setting the HandleLidSwitch<\/code>\nand HandleLidSwitchDocked<\/code>\noptions to “hybrid-sleep”). However, that doesn’t seem to\naffect the suspend and hibernation. This is great as a notebook, but\nas a tablet? That looks uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When detached, an on-screen keyboard can be used. The keyboard\naccessibility feature in Gnome can be used as an on-screen keyboard,\nthough it doesn’t always pop up, e.g. it doesn’t show up when typing\nin Chromium. Another on-screen keyboard, onBoard, can be used as\nwell. Though the user has to tweak the program to their likings.\nOtherwise, wherever a tap is necessary, KDE can provide it. Since\nChromium and Firefox already have touchscreen support, so navigating\nsites aren’t that difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The upright screen. What fun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The support for the HP x2 Notebook has grown tremendously since it\nwas released a couple of years ago. It’s great that a nice little\nnotebook like this one is finally usable under Linux. It can be used\nfor small stuff like surfing the web, and possibly used as a tablet.\nThough it can’t be used in a similar fashion to its Android brethren,\nit does desktop stuff nicely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Update November 26, 2019] – Hans de Goede, a Linux kernel programmer, has figured out a way of partially fixing the suspend issue. He has since written patches for the kernel and have submitted them upstream. Apparently, he found that the embedded controller (EC) on the notebook isn’t like other ECs, and so doesn’t handle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,7],"tags":[147,146,145,143,150,102,144,148,151,149],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment","category-information-technology","tag-fedora","tag-fedora-29","tag-gnu-linux","tag-hp-x2-notebook","tag-install","tag-linux","tag-notebook","tag-review","tag-tablet","tag-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonsblog.place\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}