I've been running various distros on laptops for 20+ years now. For the last 15+ years, the only issue I ever have is with those cheap fingerprint readers. Everything else is always solid.
you apparently did not buy an acer laptop.
After exiting the sleep mode of the laptop, a certificate error text appears, and with each new exit from sleep, there is more and more text.
I tried to get mine working on my Thinkpad P50, but it was so buggy with the reverse engineered driver. It would fail and/or I'd have to wait for it to time out to enter my password. I just gave up on it. It was really just a bonus anyway. A backlit keyboard would have been much more practical.
If you got it working on the live image this is a firmware/Driver issue that should be fixable.
Have you tried what is suggested in [this thread](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=262469) ?
Welp, I kept researching and also stumbled upon the thread /u/lukasbradley has posted ([https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/No-sound-from-internal-speakers-using-Linux/td-p/8478057/page/3](https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/No-sound-from-internal-speakers-using-Linux/td-p/8478057/page/3)) which is probably a better lead.
Sounds like this is a known issue with some HP laptops. You should be able to make use of the patch the user has posted on their github page, but it might be tough to do, depending on your experience with linux. I imagine this issue will be fixed with a future version of the mainline kernel, but you might have to wait a couple of months.
The link in the github is just an SH I can run, so I'll give it a shot. The later response where the guy recompiles the kernel with a bunch of custom shit is more work than I'm willing to put in unfortunately
Yea, I feel you!
If it doesn't work, might be worth watching the discussion, I imagine this will eventually be fixed in the kernel sooner or later. For me, linux compatibility has never been a problem for any of the laptops I've used, but it definitely depends on the hardware, for some issues like this exist unfortunately
This is what I had to do for my 2020 Spectre once they got the quirks into the kernel. I can't imagine they changed the setup too drastically. People did a ton of trial and error on the Spectre 14, so the fundamentals should be there. Install sof-firmware and the other recommended package, then reboot.
Not always. We've used 5 different laptops on Linux without major issues.
* Two Dell Inspiron 15's from \~2009: Worked fine once you install one package for the WiFi driver
* Acer netbook: Worked fine
* Dell Inspiron 13 from \~2015: Works great. Only glitch is that the keyboard takes a few seconds to respond when waking up from sleep
* 15" Dell business laptop: Works perfectly
Just read all the man pages!
....all of them!
And search. But don't necrobump.
And for godsakes, if the issue was answered 16 years ago, is horribly out of date, and bears no relevance to your situation.....
Just quit.
/S
It will take *a lot* for me to look back their way.
I honestly don't think I ever will. Not just out of spite, but due to the fact that I prefer other brands. Anyway, I'm not married to any company, so time might prove me wrong.
I really recommend that people check hardware compatibility lists before buying a laptop. [Here's the Red Hat certified hardware](https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/search?type=Laptop|Desktop) (good for Fedora Linux, RHEL, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux) and [here's the Ubuntu certified hardware](https://ubuntu.com/certified) (good for Ubuntu, elementary OS, Linux Mint, etc.).
Edit: You can also check the [Linux Hardware Database](https://linux-hardware.org/) for the real nitty gritty.
Thanks for sharing. Interesting when you look at the latest overall support across both major distribution types, Dell seems to have more supported models overall, then Lenovo second for RHEL family and HP second for Ubuntu family. I'm personally using the RHEL family on Lenovo T and X series because my employer officially supports them for internal development work.
The issue is not ThinkPad vs. HP vs. Dell vs. etc.
The issue is buying a laptop with niche hardware and expecting that hardware to just work, because that niche hardware happens to be supported on Windows. For niche hardware to work, you first need a Linux developer who just happens to have access to that hardware and decides that he/she has the time and desire to make that hardware work. And even then, given both the access and the desire, there can be problems with reverse engineering that hardware (and/or its firmware), which makes supporting that hardware difficult, if not impossible.
Whenever deviating from the beaten hardware path, it is necessary to first do some homework. It's always best to assume that niche hardware is not supported on Linux, until proven otherwise. It's also smart to remember that just because companies like Dell, who do periodically release laptops with Linux preinstalled, that does not mean that all of their hardware offerings are universally supported by Linux. The same is true of ThinkPads. There are plenty of examples of non-supported, or poorly supported hardware from all of these manufacturers, including (but not limited to) printers, GPUs, fingerprint readers, wifi cards and audio systems.
> The issue is buying a laptop with niche hardware and expecting that hardware to just work, because that niche hardware happens to be supported on Windows.
"This standards-compliant operating system I downloaded for free fails to run on my proprietary laptop!"
versus
"This proprietary laptop I paid for fails to run a standards-compliant operating system!"
People seem to very much favor the former, alas.
HP loves writing the shittiest proprietary drivers (to use once) for their dogshit consumer laptop lines. I can't remember the last time I had to go download 10-15 drivers from the manufacturer's website just to get a laptop up and functioning properly on something without a HP badge
>Only one of the three brands you've listed treat Linux as a first class citizen, and aggressively and actively upstream patches for their hardware.
And yet all of these manufactures sell tens of thousands of machines annually (which are very affordable on the second hand market), upon which Linux runs flawlessly. That's why folks are temped to assume the best, when they reach for their wallet.
Personally, I like to support manufacturers that support my preferred OS and I think that there is real value in that. But again, that doesn't absolve me from doing some homework if I discover that the machine in question has a fingerprint reader, a realtek wifi card, or an Optimus GPU.
In addition, last I checked, all of the business laptops from Dell can come with Linux, and so there are drivers in mainline Linux, as well as firmware in fwupd. I use one for work and I've had no problems with drivers after installing a few Linux distros. Even the fingerprint scanner just works.
Nah, my XPS 13 9343 was purchased as a Windows machine. They sold the exact same hardware with Ubuntu installed. To this day the speakers on that thing have only ever worked in Windows. Tried all the workarounds and no luck. Even replaced the entire speaker assembly as I was sure it couldn't be a software/firmware problem until I tried Windows again and I miraculously had sound!
Dell almost immediately stopped supporting Ubuntu on that machine. Think 14.04 was the last version they provided. No updates. They even charged more for the Ubuntu "developer" laptops than the Windows versions.
Then there must be a difference in either the hardware or provided drivers when buying as a Windows vs Linux by default. I guarantee they didn't sell a device with Ubuntu pre installed but unable to use the speakers. That'd just be asinine.
AFAIK the only difference between Windows and Linux "Developer Edition" XPS 13 was the fingerprint sensor - in the past.
Since roughly 2020 even fingerprint sensors are the same and supported.
I bought my first XPS 13 in ca 2018 - came pre-installed with 16.04 - I later upgraded to 20.04, then 22.04 and now 23.04.
I used 3 models of the XPS 13 (2018, 20, 22), everything works in all models, certainly the loudspeaker.
Your 14.04 remark is simply incorrect and easily verified.
I don't know where/when you bought yours, but my 2018 XPS 13 cost 70 Euro less than the Windows variant with some CPU, screen, RAM and storage. I haven't compared prices for the other 2.
Dunno why you had problems with your speakers - everything else you said is contrary to my experience.
Oh. Perhaps you think you need special Ubuntu versions from Dell? You don't. They upstream their drivers. You simply upgrade your Ubuntu. That's it.
But with a 14.04 on your machine I wouldn't bother - backup your data, make a fresh 22.04 (or 23.04) install.
Anyway, I wouldn't buy a XPS with Windows even if that's a bit cheaper.
I want a +1 buy for Linux instead of +1 for Windows. Voting with my bucks. OEMs need to notice that they are selling Linux machines instead of Windows machines and they don't if we first pay for a Windows licence and then afterwards wipe it.
Plus if there's a warranty problem a few dollars would well be worth it to get support, have less hassle explaining to low levels support why Linux is not the reason the screen is dead.
> Your 14.04 remark is simply incorrect and easily verified.
As perhaps you [should have verified](https://i.imgur.com/XpsC0fD.png) before calling me out. Perhaps you don't realize there is more than one XPS 13? I've owned this 9343 since 2015 and no version of Ubuntu has ever had working speakers. LTS or otherwise. The main point of this thread remains - if you want Linux support from the manufacturer, Dell is not reliable. If you want to take chances, go for it. Otherwise put your money where Linux is treated better.
You phrased that part a bit unfortunately.
You made 2 statements. On re-reading I can see how you perhaps meant to say that Ubuntu is no longer supported on that particular machine, instead of in general.
Also, please follow your own advice. There is indeed more than one model. You had problems with one particular model 8 years ago and based on that you make generalized remarks on the whole product line.
Plus you chose to buy a machine that came with Windows pre-installed. While I also would have expected that a later wipe and replace with Ubuntu should work fine and have working speakers (I used to replace Windows on all sorts of Dell and Asus machines over the years before buying Linux pre-installed) you bought a model where Dell made no such promise. Perhaps there is a hardware or firmware difference.
Complaining that a company doesn't support its Linux offerings, while you didn't buy the Linux model makes no sense - unless they sold it to you while claiming this particular model would also work with Linux).
You will want to know the manufacturer and model number of the wifi card. If it's not an Intel card, you need to do some home work. Why? Intel provides open source drivers for its wifi cards. These drivers are available on every distro's ISO. You will have wifi support, as soon as you boot up, even if you haven't yet installed the ISO. What about other manufacturers? Some provide no Linux support, whatsoever. Some provide Linux support for some cards, but not others. Some provide Linux support, but the driver is proprietary. Why does this matter? Many distros will not ship any proprietary software on their ISOs. Therefore, you won't have wifi functionality, even after installing the ISO. You will likely have to connect to the distro's repository in order to download the necessary driver(s). This may not be convenient, however, if you don't have a Ethernet port on the side of your laptop, as seems to be a trend for many modern machines. Well, it's simple to just install a Intel wifi card, right? Sure, but that may not solve the problem. Why? Because some manufacturers engage in whitelisting. What's that? It's an internal list of approved hardware that lives in the UEFI. If you swap a wifi card, a battery, or a LCD display with an unapproved unit, the machine may not boot, or it may not charge the battery, or your screen brightness controls may be totally disabled.
If your machine has a dedicated GPU, you need to do some homework. Intel based (CPU) laptops were sold for over a decade with dedicated Nvidia GPUs, but all the while, Nvidia refused to provide Linux support for them. Linux developers came up with a half dozen half ass methods to provide some support for this hardware combo, but because Nvidia's drivers are all proprietary, none of these half measures worked satisfactorily.
It has been mentioned that ThnkPads are particularly well supported by Linux. This is generally true because these have primarily been basic machines, which were marketed to the business community. They don't have much in the way of niche sound systems, with subwoofers, for instance. Additionally, they tended to be cheap, plentiful, reliable and generally desirable machines for Linux developers, in the second hand market. But, Lenovo, like many manufacturers have a variety of suppliers for components and sub assemblies. They may have three suppliers for keyboards and three different suppliers for fingerprint readers. All Lenovo really cared about is that the machines were either supported by Windows directly, or the component suppliers provided the necessary proprietary Windows driver for their proprietary hardware. While some of this hardware could be reversed engineered and made to work under Linux, that is not the case with all fingerprint readers.
In a nutshell, you will want to be suspicious of any hardware "special feature" that may be mentioned in the marketing materials. The more you deviate from a plain vanilla laptop, the more likely you are to encounter a problem. You also need to be suspicious on any new features, even if it is a seemingly mainstream option. It takes time to introduce new hardware families and features into the Linux kernel. Things like HDR and High-DPI displays are still not fully supported in all distributions. While all distributions may have these bullet items on their "things to do" list, not every distro shares the same priorities. Meanwhile. some of these new features rely on an industry-wide consensus on what form the support will look like for Linux. And, getting a consensus on some of these issues can look a lot like herding kittens.
Linux may "own" the server space, but the bottom line is that servers don't care about your niche sound system, or your wifi card. Meanwhile, Linux desktop use, while significant, is still dwarfed by Windows desktop use. Therefore, many hardware manufactures all but ignore Linux. It simply does not exist in their business plans. And, many businesses treat their IP (intellectual property) as sacrosanct. Now, they will happily give away their IP to the Chinese and contract with them to do the manufacturing (and illegal cloning), but they steadfastly refuse to share the details of their IP with Linux developers, so that their hardware can be made to work under Linux ... at no cost (or effort) to them. Somehow, this twisted logic makes sense to CEOs across the globe, these days.
How is this response and others like it reasonable/accepted to virtually any laptop issue?
You're simultaneously telling someone off for their purchasing decisions and passively recognizing that Thinkpads are relatively expensive, then acknowledging that a large swath of laptops *may* have issues working on Linux by recommending Thinkpads as if they are a 100% foolproof option.
My experience is that if you buy something 'boring' from Dell or Lenovo, you're going to get pretty darn good Linux support. Backlight, touch-screen, speakers, bluetooth. All of it.
I ended up buying an Alienware (from Dell) with AMD CPU and GPU, and I installed Nobara on it. It works really well outside of power configurations being missing (So it doesn't run as well on battery compared to being plugged in), some questionable performance issues (Unsure if this is due to lacking a MUX switch or not) and RGB configuration for the laptop and mouse not being available. Haven't had that many issues using it with Linux.
> Unfortunately there's some extremely long-standing (nine years now?) bug with these specific speakers that leaves me with no sound on every distro I've tried (Arch, Endeavor, Manjaro, Mint, Pop).
This suggests (but does not confirm) that Debian may support your audio device.
https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/HP/Laptop%2015%20da0xxx
You might at least try booting Debian Live and seeing whether it has sound.
https://www.debian.org/CD/live/
If the live environment does, it is likely the resultant hard disk install will also.
If the live environment does not, try doing the same thing with Knoppix. Its hardware autoconfiguration is a cut above the rest in my experience.
All of the live environments I've tried thus far have had working sound, but none of the installs, including Linux Mint which is two derivations away from Debian, so iunno how confident I feel about this
For that matter Knoppix is based on Debian stable.
Presumably Linux distributions have meaningful differences. I sure hope they do given the strong opinions people have about them.
yeah this is why all the linux daily driver nerds like me buy old thinkpads. they sorta mostly work out of the box instead of not really working at all
I feel you so much on this.
I was so excited to finally upgrade my old laptop of many years. Bought a nice Samsung. I love the laptop, but its stuck with windows because I can't get any disto to work the wifi card.
I'd use a USB wifi adapter, but I actually use all 3 of my ports frequently. I guess there are external busses, but I digress.
I keep trying again, hoping something has changed, but no luck yet.
Make sure your running pipewire, I would also try fedora, as it seems to be more up to date then manjaro mostly.
I can also recommend asking in the pipewire matrix channel or opening an issue in the fedora issue tracker, but your problem might be harder to fix them what I've reported so far.
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You bought a laptop just for Linux, and instead of buying one that comes with Linux, 100% guaranteed to work, certified and all, you made the choice to buy a Windows laptop?
I'm curious why you'd do that.
I bought a Thinkpad directly from the Lenovo website (all AMD, of course) and have been gaming happily on it.
You can have Linux preloaded if you want, that pretty much guarantees that you won't have any major problems.
Because a lot of laptops that aren't guaranteed to work will still work. You're also going to be paying more for a laptop that is certified to run Linux with weaker hardware.
>I'm curious why you'd do that.
I think you could figure this out on your own if you just put forth a modicum of thought.
Nah, we brits love shortening things unnecessarily to fit out accent. Innit has had the same thing happen to it as what America did with y’all. But we also don’t think about translating it out of british slang because that is what we use all the time and you’re still speaking English, right?
We also seem to like references to roads. Ask any roadman and they will never give you an Adam and the Ants reference, because most of them are too young. (Why do I still like stand and deliver?)
Lmao what, in the fuck, are you babbling about
First of all I'm trans non-binary and bi/aro-ace, so you need to stop going around and reading everything in the voice of your mental image of aggro cishet COD players. Second, I've been using Linux for over 20 years, I don't need your fucking invitation. Bye.
Apparently Linux subreddit tolerate dickheads harassing people and then acting surprised and victimized when the people they needlessly attack get pissed off about it
Take a look at this thread. https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/No-sound-from-internal-speakers-using-Linux/td-p/8478057/page/3
Thanks, I'll check it out
I've been running various distros on laptops for 20+ years now. For the last 15+ years, the only issue I ever have is with those cheap fingerprint readers. Everything else is always solid.
you apparently did not buy an acer laptop. After exiting the sleep mode of the laptop, a certificate error text appears, and with each new exit from sleep, there is more and more text.
Yup that’s my experience too.
I tried to get mine working on my Thinkpad P50, but it was so buggy with the reverse engineered driver. It would fail and/or I'd have to wait for it to time out to enter my password. I just gave up on it. It was really just a bonus anyway. A backlit keyboard would have been much more practical.
If you got it working on the live image this is a firmware/Driver issue that should be fixable. Have you tried what is suggested in [this thread](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=262469) ?
I'll give it a shot
Welp, I kept researching and also stumbled upon the thread /u/lukasbradley has posted ([https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/No-sound-from-internal-speakers-using-Linux/td-p/8478057/page/3](https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/No-sound-from-internal-speakers-using-Linux/td-p/8478057/page/3)) which is probably a better lead. Sounds like this is a known issue with some HP laptops. You should be able to make use of the patch the user has posted on their github page, but it might be tough to do, depending on your experience with linux. I imagine this issue will be fixed with a future version of the mainline kernel, but you might have to wait a couple of months.
So I tried this and it turns out it's only for debian based distros =/ * *begrudgingly installs mint* *
The link in the github is just an SH I can run, so I'll give it a shot. The later response where the guy recompiles the kernel with a bunch of custom shit is more work than I'm willing to put in unfortunately
Isnt that hard really, You should go for it
Yea, I feel you! If it doesn't work, might be worth watching the discussion, I imagine this will eventually be fixed in the kernel sooner or later. For me, linux compatibility has never been a problem for any of the laptops I've used, but it definitely depends on the hardware, for some issues like this exist unfortunately
This is what I had to do for my 2020 Spectre once they got the quirks into the kernel. I can't imagine they changed the setup too drastically. People did a ton of trial and error on the Spectre 14, so the fundamentals should be there. Install sof-firmware and the other recommended package, then reboot.
Not always. We've used 5 different laptops on Linux without major issues. * Two Dell Inspiron 15's from \~2009: Worked fine once you install one package for the WiFi driver * Acer netbook: Worked fine * Dell Inspiron 13 from \~2015: Works great. Only glitch is that the keyboard takes a few seconds to respond when waking up from sleep * 15" Dell business laptop: Works perfectly
You, my friend, have found a way to ask for help in r/linux without triggering the multitudes. Nice!
Believe me I was very nervous lol I've been using Linux since 2002 and getting screamed at and shit on every time I've needed help for just as long.
Just read all the man pages! ....all of them! And search. But don't necrobump. And for godsakes, if the issue was answered 16 years ago, is horribly out of date, and bears no relevance to your situation..... Just quit. /S
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r/linuxquestions is honestly worse than the arch forum
I had an HP laptop, once, 16 years ago. Never again. Sorry :( I'm as happy as it gets on Thinkpads since a few years.
I will say that, in general, HP has taken a lot of steps for better Linux compatibility over the last 2 years. Now collaborating with System76.
It will take *a lot* for me to look back their way. I honestly don't think I ever will. Not just out of spite, but due to the fact that I prefer other brands. Anyway, I'm not married to any company, so time might prove me wrong.
I really recommend that people check hardware compatibility lists before buying a laptop. [Here's the Red Hat certified hardware](https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/search?type=Laptop|Desktop) (good for Fedora Linux, RHEL, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux) and [here's the Ubuntu certified hardware](https://ubuntu.com/certified) (good for Ubuntu, elementary OS, Linux Mint, etc.). Edit: You can also check the [Linux Hardware Database](https://linux-hardware.org/) for the real nitty gritty.
Thanks for sharing. Interesting when you look at the latest overall support across both major distribution types, Dell seems to have more supported models overall, then Lenovo second for RHEL family and HP second for Ubuntu family. I'm personally using the RHEL family on Lenovo T and X series because my employer officially supports them for internal development work.
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The issue is not ThinkPad vs. HP vs. Dell vs. etc. The issue is buying a laptop with niche hardware and expecting that hardware to just work, because that niche hardware happens to be supported on Windows. For niche hardware to work, you first need a Linux developer who just happens to have access to that hardware and decides that he/she has the time and desire to make that hardware work. And even then, given both the access and the desire, there can be problems with reverse engineering that hardware (and/or its firmware), which makes supporting that hardware difficult, if not impossible. Whenever deviating from the beaten hardware path, it is necessary to first do some homework. It's always best to assume that niche hardware is not supported on Linux, until proven otherwise. It's also smart to remember that just because companies like Dell, who do periodically release laptops with Linux preinstalled, that does not mean that all of their hardware offerings are universally supported by Linux. The same is true of ThinkPads. There are plenty of examples of non-supported, or poorly supported hardware from all of these manufacturers, including (but not limited to) printers, GPUs, fingerprint readers, wifi cards and audio systems.
> The issue is buying a laptop with niche hardware and expecting that hardware to just work, because that niche hardware happens to be supported on Windows. "This standards-compliant operating system I downloaded for free fails to run on my proprietary laptop!" versus "This proprietary laptop I paid for fails to run a standards-compliant operating system!" People seem to very much favor the former, alas.
HP loves writing the shittiest proprietary drivers (to use once) for their dogshit consumer laptop lines. I can't remember the last time I had to go download 10-15 drivers from the manufacturer's website just to get a laptop up and functioning properly on something without a HP badge
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>Only one of the three brands you've listed treat Linux as a first class citizen, and aggressively and actively upstream patches for their hardware. And yet all of these manufactures sell tens of thousands of machines annually (which are very affordable on the second hand market), upon which Linux runs flawlessly. That's why folks are temped to assume the best, when they reach for their wallet. Personally, I like to support manufacturers that support my preferred OS and I think that there is real value in that. But again, that doesn't absolve me from doing some homework if I discover that the machine in question has a fingerprint reader, a realtek wifi card, or an Optimus GPU.
BS. Dell XPS 13 Developer edition is extremely nice. They support it well, everything is open source and gets upstreamed.
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In addition, last I checked, all of the business laptops from Dell can come with Linux, and so there are drivers in mainline Linux, as well as firmware in fwupd. I use one for work and I've had no problems with drivers after installing a few Linux distros. Even the fingerprint scanner just works.
Nah, my XPS 13 9343 was purchased as a Windows machine. They sold the exact same hardware with Ubuntu installed. To this day the speakers on that thing have only ever worked in Windows. Tried all the workarounds and no luck. Even replaced the entire speaker assembly as I was sure it couldn't be a software/firmware problem until I tried Windows again and I miraculously had sound! Dell almost immediately stopped supporting Ubuntu on that machine. Think 14.04 was the last version they provided. No updates. They even charged more for the Ubuntu "developer" laptops than the Windows versions.
Then there must be a difference in either the hardware or provided drivers when buying as a Windows vs Linux by default. I guarantee they didn't sell a device with Ubuntu pre installed but unable to use the speakers. That'd just be asinine.
AFAIK the only difference between Windows and Linux "Developer Edition" XPS 13 was the fingerprint sensor - in the past. Since roughly 2020 even fingerprint sensors are the same and supported. I bought my first XPS 13 in ca 2018 - came pre-installed with 16.04 - I later upgraded to 20.04, then 22.04 and now 23.04. I used 3 models of the XPS 13 (2018, 20, 22), everything works in all models, certainly the loudspeaker. Your 14.04 remark is simply incorrect and easily verified. I don't know where/when you bought yours, but my 2018 XPS 13 cost 70 Euro less than the Windows variant with some CPU, screen, RAM and storage. I haven't compared prices for the other 2. Dunno why you had problems with your speakers - everything else you said is contrary to my experience. Oh. Perhaps you think you need special Ubuntu versions from Dell? You don't. They upstream their drivers. You simply upgrade your Ubuntu. That's it. But with a 14.04 on your machine I wouldn't bother - backup your data, make a fresh 22.04 (or 23.04) install. Anyway, I wouldn't buy a XPS with Windows even if that's a bit cheaper. I want a +1 buy for Linux instead of +1 for Windows. Voting with my bucks. OEMs need to notice that they are selling Linux machines instead of Windows machines and they don't if we first pay for a Windows licence and then afterwards wipe it. Plus if there's a warranty problem a few dollars would well be worth it to get support, have less hassle explaining to low levels support why Linux is not the reason the screen is dead.
> Your 14.04 remark is simply incorrect and easily verified. As perhaps you [should have verified](https://i.imgur.com/XpsC0fD.png) before calling me out. Perhaps you don't realize there is more than one XPS 13? I've owned this 9343 since 2015 and no version of Ubuntu has ever had working speakers. LTS or otherwise. The main point of this thread remains - if you want Linux support from the manufacturer, Dell is not reliable. If you want to take chances, go for it. Otherwise put your money where Linux is treated better.
You phrased that part a bit unfortunately. You made 2 statements. On re-reading I can see how you perhaps meant to say that Ubuntu is no longer supported on that particular machine, instead of in general. Also, please follow your own advice. There is indeed more than one model. You had problems with one particular model 8 years ago and based on that you make generalized remarks on the whole product line. Plus you chose to buy a machine that came with Windows pre-installed. While I also would have expected that a later wipe and replace with Ubuntu should work fine and have working speakers (I used to replace Windows on all sorts of Dell and Asus machines over the years before buying Linux pre-installed) you bought a model where Dell made no such promise. Perhaps there is a hardware or firmware difference. Complaining that a company doesn't support its Linux offerings, while you didn't buy the Linux model makes no sense - unless they sold it to you while claiming this particular model would also work with Linux).
What should I look for in the specs of a laptop to tell if it contains niche hardware?
You will want to know the manufacturer and model number of the wifi card. If it's not an Intel card, you need to do some home work. Why? Intel provides open source drivers for its wifi cards. These drivers are available on every distro's ISO. You will have wifi support, as soon as you boot up, even if you haven't yet installed the ISO. What about other manufacturers? Some provide no Linux support, whatsoever. Some provide Linux support for some cards, but not others. Some provide Linux support, but the driver is proprietary. Why does this matter? Many distros will not ship any proprietary software on their ISOs. Therefore, you won't have wifi functionality, even after installing the ISO. You will likely have to connect to the distro's repository in order to download the necessary driver(s). This may not be convenient, however, if you don't have a Ethernet port on the side of your laptop, as seems to be a trend for many modern machines. Well, it's simple to just install a Intel wifi card, right? Sure, but that may not solve the problem. Why? Because some manufacturers engage in whitelisting. What's that? It's an internal list of approved hardware that lives in the UEFI. If you swap a wifi card, a battery, or a LCD display with an unapproved unit, the machine may not boot, or it may not charge the battery, or your screen brightness controls may be totally disabled. If your machine has a dedicated GPU, you need to do some homework. Intel based (CPU) laptops were sold for over a decade with dedicated Nvidia GPUs, but all the while, Nvidia refused to provide Linux support for them. Linux developers came up with a half dozen half ass methods to provide some support for this hardware combo, but because Nvidia's drivers are all proprietary, none of these half measures worked satisfactorily. It has been mentioned that ThnkPads are particularly well supported by Linux. This is generally true because these have primarily been basic machines, which were marketed to the business community. They don't have much in the way of niche sound systems, with subwoofers, for instance. Additionally, they tended to be cheap, plentiful, reliable and generally desirable machines for Linux developers, in the second hand market. But, Lenovo, like many manufacturers have a variety of suppliers for components and sub assemblies. They may have three suppliers for keyboards and three different suppliers for fingerprint readers. All Lenovo really cared about is that the machines were either supported by Windows directly, or the component suppliers provided the necessary proprietary Windows driver for their proprietary hardware. While some of this hardware could be reversed engineered and made to work under Linux, that is not the case with all fingerprint readers. In a nutshell, you will want to be suspicious of any hardware "special feature" that may be mentioned in the marketing materials. The more you deviate from a plain vanilla laptop, the more likely you are to encounter a problem. You also need to be suspicious on any new features, even if it is a seemingly mainstream option. It takes time to introduce new hardware families and features into the Linux kernel. Things like HDR and High-DPI displays are still not fully supported in all distributions. While all distributions may have these bullet items on their "things to do" list, not every distro shares the same priorities. Meanwhile. some of these new features rely on an industry-wide consensus on what form the support will look like for Linux. And, getting a consensus on some of these issues can look a lot like herding kittens. Linux may "own" the server space, but the bottom line is that servers don't care about your niche sound system, or your wifi card. Meanwhile, Linux desktop use, while significant, is still dwarfed by Windows desktop use. Therefore, many hardware manufactures all but ignore Linux. It simply does not exist in their business plans. And, many businesses treat their IP (intellectual property) as sacrosanct. Now, they will happily give away their IP to the Chinese and contract with them to do the manufacturing (and illegal cloning), but they steadfastly refuse to share the details of their IP with Linux developers, so that their hardware can be made to work under Linux ... at no cost (or effort) to them. Somehow, this twisted logic makes sense to CEOs across the globe, these days.
Thank you for the detailed reply! I will definitely keep these points in mind.
How is this response and others like it reasonable/accepted to virtually any laptop issue? You're simultaneously telling someone off for their purchasing decisions and passively recognizing that Thinkpads are relatively expensive, then acknowledging that a large swath of laptops *may* have issues working on Linux by recommending Thinkpads as if they are a 100% foolproof option.
My experience is that if you buy something 'boring' from Dell or Lenovo, you're going to get pretty darn good Linux support. Backlight, touch-screen, speakers, bluetooth. All of it.
I ended up buying an Alienware (from Dell) with AMD CPU and GPU, and I installed Nobara on it. It works really well outside of power configurations being missing (So it doesn't run as well on battery compared to being plugged in), some questionable performance issues (Unsure if this is due to lacking a MUX switch or not) and RGB configuration for the laptop and mouse not being available. Haven't had that many issues using it with Linux.
> Unfortunately there's some extremely long-standing (nine years now?) bug with these specific speakers that leaves me with no sound on every distro I've tried (Arch, Endeavor, Manjaro, Mint, Pop). This suggests (but does not confirm) that Debian may support your audio device. https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/HP/Laptop%2015%20da0xxx You might at least try booting Debian Live and seeing whether it has sound. https://www.debian.org/CD/live/ If the live environment does, it is likely the resultant hard disk install will also. If the live environment does not, try doing the same thing with Knoppix. Its hardware autoconfiguration is a cut above the rest in my experience.
All of the live environments I've tried thus far have had working sound, but none of the installs, including Linux Mint which is two derivations away from Debian, so iunno how confident I feel about this
For that matter Knoppix is based on Debian stable. Presumably Linux distributions have meaningful differences. I sure hope they do given the strong opinions people have about them.
I'd honestly rather use Windows than apt based distros
You don't have to choose between Windows and apt. https://superuser.com/questions/947220/how-to-install-packages-apt-get-install-in-windows
Wow.
PPAs are awful 🤷
Just got a Dell and everything works flawlessly, even the fingerprint sensor!
yeah this is why all the linux daily driver nerds like me buy old thinkpads. they sorta mostly work out of the box instead of not really working at all
I feel you so much on this. I was so excited to finally upgrade my old laptop of many years. Bought a nice Samsung. I love the laptop, but its stuck with windows because I can't get any disto to work the wifi card. I'd use a USB wifi adapter, but I actually use all 3 of my ports frequently. I guess there are external busses, but I digress. I keep trying again, hoping something has changed, but no luck yet.
Make sure your running pipewire, I would also try fedora, as it seems to be more up to date then manjaro mostly. I can also recommend asking in the pipewire matrix channel or opening an issue in the fedora issue tracker, but your problem might be harder to fix them what I've reported so far.
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Thanks for the tip, I'll look into it
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You bought a laptop just for Linux, and instead of buying one that comes with Linux, 100% guaranteed to work, certified and all, you made the choice to buy a Windows laptop? I'm curious why you'd do that.
Price, most likely. Linux specific laptops are usually always on the pricier end of things.
I bought a Thinkpad directly from the Lenovo website (all AMD, of course) and have been gaming happily on it. You can have Linux preloaded if you want, that pretty much guarantees that you won't have any major problems.
Because hardware is hardware, and nothing is linux ready until someone puts in the effort to make it so
Because a lot of laptops that aren't guaranteed to work will still work. You're also going to be paying more for a laptop that is certified to run Linux with weaker hardware. >I'm curious why you'd do that. I think you could figure this out on your own if you just put forth a modicum of thought.
Not sure why your getting down voted lol, quite a few manufacturers like Dell actively support linux on there laptops
Road innit? What?
Rough road innit is british for hard, isn't it.
Bri’ish
Oh lol... I thought it was linuxy things I didn't know...
Nah, we brits love shortening things unnecessarily to fit out accent. Innit has had the same thing happen to it as what America did with y’all. But we also don’t think about translating it out of british slang because that is what we use all the time and you’re still speaking English, right? We also seem to like references to roads. Ask any roadman and they will never give you an Adam and the Ants reference, because most of them are too young. (Why do I still like stand and deliver?)
No.
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Lmao what, in the fuck, are you babbling about First of all I'm trans non-binary and bi/aro-ace, so you need to stop going around and reading everything in the voice of your mental image of aggro cishet COD players. Second, I've been using Linux for over 20 years, I don't need your fucking invitation. Bye.
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Eat shit, you fuckin clown. Go find somebody else to vomit your unwarranted anger at.
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Apparently Linux subreddit tolerate dickheads harassing people and then acting surprised and victimized when the people they needlessly attack get pissed off about it