Envy 14 & Linux

Hey ademmer, were You able to apply the ClickPad and backlight control patches to the 2.6.35 kernel?

I am getting my Envy at the end of next week and am wondering whether to stay with vanilla opensuse 11.3 as You did or upgrade to 2.6.35 (I'd prefer 2.6.35, but it might too big of a hassle to get everything done right)

I saw a Your comment on Your blog saying it should be rather easy, but apparenttly there are some problems. (See comments on Your blog's Envy 14 post for more info)

PS Are You planning to upgrade to 2.6.35? I believe You are a person who could provide a priceless source of information in that matter, thus helping me and surely lots of other Linux guys wanting to have a cutting-edge kernel

 

Takashi just told me, that he now provides the 2.6.35 openSUSE kernel with ClickPad patches applied in his BuildService repo. I am pretty busy this weekend but I plan to patch the backlight controls by the start of next week. I let you know if I succeeded. I also want to try, to make my patched kernel available as an BuildService repo of my own for your convenience.

 

That's fantastic news!

Don't think it's just me, though. I feel there is quite a bit of people wanting to run Linux on Envy 14 as effortlessly as possible

PS I've seen an ademmer/envy_14 repo in openSUSE BS, and I think You're trying to build a pre-compiled kernel with all patches already merged, right? Would be fantastic if You were able to succeed! Right now it seems the pkgs are broken, though (At least BS reported that)

 

i keep coming around to installing ubuntu on my machine to get deterred by the issues i experience. i tried installing 10.04 on the envy 17 twice, both times i wound up with issues related to X not starting @ bootup.

i had to manually install the wireless, which wasn't too bad, but i want a linux build that works out of the box without hickups on this laptop hardware ... is there another ubuntu build that's more stable or works better with the envy line ?

 

I don't think Linux is yet ready to work with Envy fine out-of-the-box. It still requires some effort to set it up correctly. It will most probably be made easier in the future, where things like backlight control software and ClickPad driver will get merged into main Linux kernel. Right now getting them to work requires quite a bit of hassle.

 

maybe ubuntu will mature more in 10.10 ... so wen it rolls out i'll do some research before putting it on ...

 

Anyone have install de version of ubuntu 10.04 64 bits in envy 14?

It give me an error this:

(process:258): GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due tu onknown user id (0)

I read in some forums the error is because of the intel vga but I don't now why.

Can be isntall it via USB?

 

How did you guys partition the drive? I used gparted and there are already 4 partitions. I want to resize the windows partition and place an extention to run ubuntu. I want to run ubuntu but I heard there are many issues right now. Would it be wise to stay away? I like linux because I use it for programming class since I'm a comp sci major and I had it on m other laptop. Can anyone help me out with how I'm suppose to partition this. There's all the crap like system and hp tools that are partitioned. So can I make them all into an extention?

 

I just received my Envy 14 and plan to install openSUSE on it. Personally, I think i'l just remove those 2 HP Recovery and Tools partitions, then shrink the Windows partition.

I plan to use the space I obtain to install openSUSE.

Personally, I don't care how Windows handles it - if something goes wrong, I'll simply do a clean reinstall with a stock Windows. Why not? Bloatware and HP Stuff doesn't make the system any better, IMO.

 

I'm just worried about screwing up the drivers or stuff that works for windows. I made the factory recovery disks so incase something goes wrong

 

I kept the "boot" partitition and shrinked the Windows partition to 60 GB. Then I deleted the other partitions. In openSUSE installer, I added a logical partition with the full available space (400GB+) and created 3 partitions in it: A 2GB swap partition (EXT4), a 20GB Linux partition (EXT4) and the rest for a data partition (NTFS if you want to share between Windows and Linux, EXT4 if you want it to use only with Linux).

 

Do not forget to create your recovery disks before partitioning! Also, backup the drivers folder etc.

 

heyho, i started an wiki page for the envy 14
HP Envy 14-1010eg - Gentoo Linux Wiki
i got everything working except switchable graphics, clickpad (+led) and keyboard leds (mute / wireless).

tutorials on how to get those things working are very welcome.

greetings zoa

 

Anyone install ubuntu 10.04 64 bits

 

Thank you ademmer! I have been awaiting for your response haha! I have the recovery disks and I backed up my harddrive, so I'm ready to go. Can I just delete the hp recovery to create an extended partition which will hold the ubuntu and linux swap logical partitions? Also would you say that the ubuntu is a good linux distro since I'm a newb?

Lastly, will deleting the system recovery and other partition affect my windows 7?

 

Wait, I had linux as EXT3 before what does that do, and what does EXT4 do?
Is it possible to mount the NTSF from windows with EXT4?

 

Ubuntu is not a bad choice for Newbies though it only has a good Gnome desktop and I prefer using KDE which is more innovative. If you want to use KDE, have a look at openSUSE which has the best KDE desktop around.

You can delete the recovery partition though this will render the recovery functionality in BIOS useless. But since you have created the recovery disks, this should not be much of a problem.

My Windows 7 still runs fine with only the boot partition and windows partition left. Your Linux installation will most likely install Grub as boot manager (at least Ubuntu and openSUSE do so). Then your Windows installation shows up in the boot menu.

Ext4 is the successor for Ext3 and is used by most modern distributions today. Nevertheless, Ext3 would still work, too.

 

Keep in mind that either way, you need to compile a new kernel! Ubuntu has a pre-compiled kernel for backlight controls, but it misses the ClickPad patches. openSUSE has a precompiled ClickPad kernel that misses the backlight patches.

Next day or the other, I try to build an openSUSE kernel with all patches applied. I keep you posted.

 

I can not install ubuntu on envy 14, anyone do it?

Ademmer opensuse is not debian no? I am familiarise with aptitude commands.

 

How do you do the partitons, I try to do it on Windows with the partion magic, but it doesnt read me the disk, why?

Thanks.

 

Hi. I installed my openSUSE from here:

Index of /factory/iso

Code:

openSUSE-KDE-LiveCD-x86_64-Build0011-Media.iso  

And, shockingly, backlight controls worked flawlessly even from LiveCD! I was able to modify the brightness from the KDE's energy monitor applet.

I installed it on my Envy's SSD now (I shrank the Windows partition to create a ext4 one for openSUSE, deleted the recovery one from WIndows, there is a HP Support tool for that)

Even the LED for wireless/muting work ootb! (Note - in BIOS I set it to the way that only Fn+Fxx trigger the function, don't know if it matters)
I am able to enable/disable wireless using Fn+F10, when it conects the LED flashes from orange to white, when connected it goes to white, I can the disable it, etc.
When clicking Fn+F9, KDE's OSD pops up displaying a disabled speaker. Pretty much what You'd expect.

Surprisingly, I did a "uname -a" and I'm running 2.6.34.

Code:

warnec@linux-jgww:~> uname -a
Linux linux-jgww.site 2.6.34-13-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2010-06-29 02:39:08 +0200 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
warnec@linux-jgww:~> 

I also took a look at Yast's repositories and they all are for 11.3. Weird. If it looks so, stock 11.3 users should be able to get backlight controls with a simple kernel update from official repositories, right? No patch seems to be needed.

The only thing that doesn't seem to work out of the box is the ClickPad - only moving the pointer works, no tap-to-click. And double-tapping the top left corner to disable it works (can't move the mouse and the LED is orange), but I can't get it working back again without rebooting. Oh wel, probably just a matter of installing Takashi's kernel.

PS I also wasn't greeted by a black console after install, but by a functional GUI KDE desktop (although no compositing, of course)

 

Finally I install ubuntu 64 bits, it works more or less everything, only the touch pad, not work as multitouch and I cant switch off.

Anyone can help me?

 

Good news: I just tested the latest ClickPad kernel 2.6.35 for openSUSE 11.3. And it has also backlight controls fixed! Means: No more manual patching, yay! Just install openSUSE 11.3, add this repo, install the kernel-desktop 2.6.35 from there and you are good to go!

Do not forget to also install xorg-x11-driver-input from here in order to have your ClickPad support gestures.

This makes openSUSE 11.3 now the Linux distribution of choice for the Envy 14!

 

I have all except the Mic working on ubuntu, but I have a problem with multitouch, that make difficult to use the touchpad, because if you click in one point and at the same time on other the mouse go out, and it is difficult to move.

Any help on it, and also with Mic?

 

I installed PC BSD 8.1 since I prefer using BSD. Almost nothing worked without tweaks. I didn't expect much to work since both the Envy14 and PC BSD 8.1 are both very new.

The only thing that did work was the touch-pad. I was able to write a driver for the video card, but I couldn't get wifi to work consistently. I worked on it for a few days, but wireless would randomly disconnect. Ethernet worked well, but I only have the Ethernet option at home. There also was very little power management and the keyboard stayed extremely hot.

I reverted back to Windows and am tweaking PC BSD in virtualbox as I have time. Hopefully in a few months I will have a fully functioning BSD Envy14. I can't wait to shed this Microsoft crappiness.

 

How did You run 2.6.35 on openSUSE 11.3? I thought dependencies make running 2.6.35 only possible on Factory.

PS Don't You think the Envy is a little louder in openSUSE than Win7?

I can't be sure, but I am under the impression the fan below the monitor is on full speed all the time I run openSUSE, even though I blacklisted "radeon" module and made sure discrete graphics is disabled and unpowered.

PPS Do the HDD entries in Your power-saving scripts in Your blog posts are also relevant for an SSD? (I've got the 160GB option )

 

Getting touchpad to work nicely on Linux requires a special kernel patch written by Takashi Iwai. It is currently only available in 2 forms:

*)A pre-compiled 2.6.34 or 2.6.35 kernel for openSUSE 11.3 and openSUSE Factory, respectively (the easiest way to get it for newbies)

*)A kernel patch, which You can merge in Your own kernel - the upside is it can work with any Linux distribution (including Ubuntu, of course), the downside is it is quite hard. For the moment, it is the only way to get multitouch touchpad in Ubuntu.

The touchpad kernel patch could be available in stock kernels in the future, so that it works out-of-the-box. But right now, Novell investigates if the patch doesn't infringe any patents, so it is only available directly from Takashi Iwai's repository or by manual install.

PS Read it everything in a more extensive version here (there is also a link to a site describing how to compile Your own kernel):
Andreas Demmer Review: Running Linux on the HP Envy 14

Don't forget to take a look at comments!

 

[Phoronix] Open-Source 2D, 3D For ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series GPUs

\o/ I didn't read it yet (don't have time)

But could it mean support for 5650 Mobile discrete graphics finally comes?

 

You need the ClickPad patches! Read through this thread for further information.

 

Just install the kernel from the given location, works perfectly with 11.3.

No.

Dunno, never had one.

 

Yes! I works right now if you compile Mesa and xf86-driver-ati from trunk but it has a few glitches and hangs and is still depending on Xorg 1.8+ which is in very few distros available.

I guess in a couple of weeks, we'll see a stable release on mainline Mesa and xf86-driver-ati with backports to older Xorg versions.

 

Hopefully it could mean full DisplayPort and HDMI support soon (next year in stable distros), no?

I wonder what is the 3D performance compared to Catalyst, I'm counting on Phoronix to test that new driver extensively as soon as it gets to a fully usable state

 

I just installed Ubuntu on my Envy 14 (i7 720, 500gb, 4gb). All of the function keys worked out of the box like back light keyboard, sound, mute, and brightness.

The only issue I'm having is the touchpad is extremely sensitive. The multi touch and button zones don't really work. I tried:
- Enabling SHMConfig
- Installed the gsynaptics package

I'm a linux rookie, so I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I read the blog listed previously in this thread, but that approach seemed like it just applied for openSUSE.

 

Fetch the patches from the openSUSE repos (extract them from source package) and apply them to your kernel.

 

I used ubuntu too, and in my case all works only the touchpad, is very dificult to move it, the multitouch make it difficult, do you get something to resolve this problem.

 

Not yet, although I haven't had much time to play around with it. Will see if I can follow Ademmer's guidance, and will let you know if I get it working.

 

I am interested too. According to a Ubuntu Kernel Team letter the patches are already included in 10.04 Ubuntu, however the clickzones don't work for me either. Keep us posted!

 

I installed all the packages from Takashi Iwai's clickpad reository for openSUSE 11.3, and all the clickpad gestures work great, including two finger scroll, two/three finger tapping, etc.

I am however a little disappointed - the performance in overall is underwhelming.
Two finger scrolling is slow, desktop effects are laggy.

It all changes when compositing is disabled, however. It's like the system gets a new life! Seems much better, smooth scrolling in Chromium like in Windows, etc.


Still, I hoped to see some better performance. Guess I'll try Ubuntu 10.10 and Compiz in the near future and see if they give me better performance.

 

Hi ademmer,

I put the radeon module into blacklist as the way you described in your blog with the following command:
sudo /sbin/mkinitrd -M /boot/System.map-$(uname -r) /

After reboot, the core temperature went up to 48 Celsius (35 at max. before blacklist) and the fan keeps running . I guess it's because the ati card is not powered off, but there's no vgaswitcheroo under /sys/kernel/debug either.....

Does this happened to you? Any workaround?

Thanks in advance

 

I pulled the three patches that I could find from the openSUSE repositories, but I couldn't get them to patch correctly (probably my lack of Linux knowledge ). The code that I found was in emails and I attempted to create my own patches from it. If someone has successfully ported the patches to work on Ubuntu, pls let know how.

I did however get the touchpad to work a little better (in UBUNTU) with some config changes. The two finger scrolling is still unfortunately extremely sporadic. The clickzones work fine with these settings. This is what I did:

1. Enable SHMConfig. This allows touchpad tools to access shared memory.
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad#shmconfig

2. Update the xorg synaptics.conf file. To do this, go to /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d

Code:

cd /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/

Edit the synaptics configuration file:

Code:

sudo gedit 10-synaptics.conf

Replace the contents of the configuration file with the following, and then reboot.

Code:

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "touchpad catchall"
	MatchIsTouchpad "on"
	MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
	Driver "synaptics"
	Option         "SHMConfig" "true"
	Option		"LeftEdge"		"1752"	# X coordinate for left edge.
	Option		"RightEdge"		"5192"	# X coordinate for right edge #If set SpecialScrollAreaRight is ignored.
	Option		"TopEdge"		"1620"	# Y coordinate for top edge.
	Option		"BottomEdge"		"4236"	# Y coordinate for bottom edge.
#	Option		"SpecialScrollAreaRight""bool"	# Enable scroll region on the right edge as  scroll wheel region.
	Option		"FingerLow"		"30"	# Finger pressure below this level triggers release.
	Option		"FingerHigh"		"31"	# Finger pressure above this level triggers touch.
	Option		"FingerPress"		"250"	# Finger pressure above this value triggers press.
#...							# A press is equivalent to putting touchpad in trackstick emulation mode.
	Option		"MaxTapTime"		"200"	# Max time in ms for detecting tap.
	Option		"BMaxTapMove"		"100"	# Max finger movement for detecting a tap.
	Option		"MaxDoubleTapTime"	"100"	# Max time in ms for detecting a double tap.
	Option		"SingleTapTimeout"	"100"	# Timeout after a tap to recognize it as a single tap.
	Option		"ClickTime"		"100"	# Duration of mouse click generated by tapping.
	Option		"FastTaps"		"false"	# Driver reacts faster to a single tap, double clicks caused by slow double tapping.
	Option		"VertScrollDelta"	"1"	# Edge-to-edge scroll distance of the vertical scroll.
	Option		"HorizScrollDelta"	"1"	# Edge-to-edge scroll distance of the horizontal scroll.
	Option		"VertEdgeScroll"	"false"	# Enable vertical scroll zone.
	Option		"HorizEdgeScroll"	"false"	# Enable horizontal scroll zone.
	Option		"CornerCoasting"	"false"	# Enable continuous scroll with finger in corner.
	Option		"CoastingSpeed"		"0"	# Corner coasting speed.
	Option		"VertTwoFingerScroll"	"true"	# Vertical scroll anywhere with two fingers.
	Option		"HorizTwoFingerScroll"	"true"	# Horizontal scroll anywhere with two fingers.
	Option		"MinSpeed"		"0.4"	# Speed factor for low pointer movement.
	Option		"MaxSpeed"		"0.6"	# Max speed factor for fast pointer movement.
	Option		"AccelFactor"		"0.01"	# Acceleration factor for normal pointer movements
	Option		"TrackstickSpeed"	"40"	# Speed  scale in trackstick emulation mode.
	Option		"EdgeMotionMinZ"	"30"	# Finger pressure at which min edge motion speed is set.
	Option		"EdgeMotionMaxZ"	"150"	# Finger pressure at which max edge motion speed is set.
	Option		"EdgeMotionMinSpeed"	"1"	# Slowest setting for edge motion speed.
	Option		"EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"	"400"	# Fastest setting for edge motion speed.
	Option		"EdgeMotionUseAlways"	"false"	# If off, egde motion is used only when dragging. If on, also used for normal movements.
	Option		"PressureMotionMinZ"	"50"	# Finger pressure at which minimum pressure motion factor is applied.
	Option		"PressureMotionMaxZ"	"150"	# Finger pressure at which maximum pressure motion factor is applied.
	Option		"PressureMotionMinFactor""1"	# Lowest setting for pressure motion factor.
	Option		"PressureMotionMaxFactor""1"	# Greatest setting for pressure motion factor.
 	Option		"UpDownScrolling"	"true"	# If on, the up/down buttons generate button 4/5 events.
#...							# If off, the up button generates a double click, the down button generates a button 2 event.
	Option		"LeftRightScrolling"	"false"	# If on, the left/right buttons generate button 6/7  events.  
#...							# If off, the left/right buttons both generate button 2 events.
	Option		"UpDownScrollRepeat"	"false"	# If on, when the up/down buttons are used for scrolling, will send auto-repeating 4/5 events,
#...							# with the delay between repeats determined by ScrollButtonRepeat.
	Option		"LeftRightScrollRepeat"	"false"	# If on, when the left/right buttons are used for scrolling, will send auto-repeating 6/7 events
#...							# with the delay between repeats determined by ScrollButtonRepeat.
	Option		"ScrollButtonRepeat"	"100"	# Time in msec between repeats of button events  4-7 from the up/down/left/right scroll buttons.
	Option		"EmulateMidButtonTime"	"500"	# Maximum time in ms for middle button emulation.
	Option		"EmulateTwoFingerMinZ"	"60"	# For Alps touchpads, sets Z pressure threshold to emulate a two finger press.
	Option		"EmulateTwoFingerMinW"	"500"	# Some touchpads report a two-finger touch as wide finger. This emulates a two finger press.
#...							# This  feature works best with (PalmDetect) off.
	Option		"TouchpadOff"		"0"	# Switch off the touchpad, enabled = 0 / switched off = 1 / only tapping and scrolling off \ 2.
	Option		"GuestMouseOff"		"0"	# Switch on/off guest mouse.
	Option		"LockedDrags"		"0"	# If off, a tap and drag gesture ends when you release the finger.
#...							# If on, the gesture is active until you tap a second time or until LockedDragTimeout expires.
	Option		"LockedDragTimeout"	"5000"	# How long in ms for the LockedDrags mode to be automatically turned off after finger is released.
	Option		"CircularScrolling"	"false"	# If on, circular scrolling is used.
	Option		"CircScrollDelta"	"30"	# Move angle (radians) of finger to generate a scroll event.
	Option		"CircScrollTrigger"	"0"	# Trigger region on the touchpad to start circular scrolling.
#...							# All Edges = 0. Top Edge = 1. Top Right Corner = 2. Right Edge = 3. Bottom Right Corner = 4.
#...							# Bottom Edge = 5. Bottom Left Corner = 6. Left Edge = 7. Top Left Corner = 8.
	Option		"RTCornerButton"	"1"	# Which mouse button is reported on a right top corner tap. Set to 0 to disable.
	Option		"RBCornerButton"	"1"	# Which mouse button is reported on a right bottom corner tap. Set to 0 to disable.
	Option		"LTCornerButton"	"1"	# Which mouse button is reported on a left top corner tap. Set to 0 to disable.
	Option		"LBCornerButton"	"1"	# Which mouse button is reported on a left bottom corner tap. Set to 0 to disable.
	Option		"TapButton1"		"1"
	Option		"TapButton2"		"2"
	Option		"TapButton3"		"3"
	Option		"PalmDetect"		"true"	# If palm detection should be enabled.
	Option		"PalmMinWidth"		"10"	# Minimum finger width at which touch is considered a palm.
 	Option		"PalmMinZ"		"200"	# Minimum finger pressure at which touch is considered a palm.
	Option		"GrabEventDevice"	"true"  # If true, no other user space or kernel space program sees the touchpad events.
#...							# This is desirable if the X config file includes /dev/input/mice as an input device.
#...							# This is undesirable if you want to monitor the device from user space.
	Option		"TapAndDragGesture"	"true" # Switch on/off the tap-and-drag gesture. The gesture is enabled by default.
	Option		"AreaLeftEdge"		"0"	# Ignore movements, scrolling and tapping which take place left of this edge.
	Option		"AreaRightEdge"		"0"	# Ignore movements, scrolling and tapping which take place right of this edge.
	Option		"AreaTopEdge"		"0"	# Ignore movements, scrolling and tapping which take place above this edge.
	Option		"AreaBottomEdge"	"0"	# Ignore movements, scrolling and tapping which take place below this edge.
	Option		"JumpyCursorThreshold"	"100"	# Set the threshold above which movement events are ignored on single-touch touchpads.
#...							# This option is disabled by default.
EndSection

I also have the TouchPad installed, but I don't believe thats needed.

The following site provides some reference on the xorg synaptics driver:
- http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man4/synaptics.4.html

 

Have you resolve the problem with the touchpad in Ubuntu?

 

Grr, I'd love to use openSUSE instead of Ubuntu but some software I need currently only has packages for Ubuntu, and at this stage I'd rather go with the packages than roll my own from their SVN. This is good to know for future reference though, because I also prefer KDE over GNOME. (Yes, I know about Kubuntu, but it doesn't get nearly the same attention/integration as Ubuntu does).

 

Hi. If I buy the i7 edition, without the switchable graphics, will this work under linux?
I ma interesting to connect an external monitor, with decent performance.
Thanks

 

I guess it will. Interesting option, but I worry about the i7 getting too hot in the slim E14 casing. Nevertheless, there is only the preconfigured i5 model available in Germany.

 

I placed my order for an i7-720QM and after reading through the forums I'm thinking of cancelling the order and changing it to a i5-520M. What's your experience been so far with battery life and heat? Can you consistently get over 2 hours of juice out of it?

 

I received my Envy and did a full review of it after doing a fresh Windows 7 & Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) install. Just about everything works out of the box with the exception of multitouch support on the trackpad and switchable graphics.

Here's the full review.

 

I installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and I get weird graphic glitches on the loading (flash of green/pink on lhs of screen, also the ubuntu logo is surrounded by a green film) and a black screen instead of a desktop.

Meh, fortunately I installed it on a USB to try it out so wiping it was easy. Downloading openSUSE right now...

 

Weird. I get the same green glow, but have no issues other than that. Ubuntu loads up fine after that.

 

Yea seems like fglrx is just messing everything up...

apparently I can't even boot it in recovery mode...?? the screen just goes black as well

 

how can i enable keyboard to work on yo franky?? It says only joystick :S