Envy 14 & Linux

Ah, someone reported the same thing on my review.

 

that was me

Just did a fresh install of ubuntu lucid, and havn't updated ati drivers yet. Don't want to until i'm sure I can get it to work properly.

Ademmer, did you have that problem? Boot into ubuntu and u get black screen?? I'm not sure if that was on your envy 14 linux review on your blog, if you have got past that issue I would be grateful if you shared the solution with us

 

Add "nomodeset" as Grub parameter (only temporarily for this one boot) and you will at least be able to use the shell again. Uninstall/Blacklist the fglrx afterwards, it does not work even without modeset because of the switchable graphics (see here for more details: Andreas Demmer Review: Running Linux on the HP Envy 14)

Then blacklist the radeon driver and rebuild the ram disk with "mkinitrd". This is needed because the radeon driver does not work well with kernel mode setting (KMS) ATM. Afterwards, reboot and graphics should be fine. At least with the i915 intel graphics.

I saw that a new bugfix version of the xf86-video-ati driver was released yesterday. The changelog lists some KMS related fixes so maybe blacklisting radeon is no longer needed with the latest version. I need to test this out.

The good part of the story is that Evergreen support (HD 5xxxx series) in radeon matures and will be contained in the next major xf86-driver-ati release. This will allow us to make full use of the discrete ATI graphics card even with Linux. Yay!

 

so at the moment we can't actually use the ati graphics card?? Sorry I'm new to all this, not really following properly

 

Nope, you are stuck with the Intel graphics. You can use radeon driver but 2D only, no HW acceleration. fglrx won't work because it does not support switchable graphics and the E14 has no BIOS option to turn switchable graphics off.

 

dayam, thanks for help bro. One last question.... how in the world can i get yo frankie to play using the keyboard??? keeps saying joystick when i clearly don't have one

 

Hey all, has the ubuntu 10.10 beta been tried yet?

 

Linux detects the motion sensors as joystick device (at least KDE does):
/sys/devices/platform/lis3lv02d

 

i'm using an envy 17, but hardware is essentially the same as with envy 14.
has anyone tried the release candidate Ubuntu 10.10 yet ?
i am looking to find out if it recognizes and installs broadcom wireless out of the box ...
so far i've had issues doing this with the beta because although the proprietary driver is on the livecd, it finds it but gives me an error trying to install it.

 

Has anyone got sensors to work under Linux? The right side of my Envy 14 feels a bit hot under Linux but I can't figure out why that is.

Edit: Oh, reread the thread. I don't find anything under /proc/acpi/thermal_zone, and I guess the right side is hot because the GPU is still on but not being used. Gonna try to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 RC to see if it has vgaswitcheroo. Really wish the software I needed had OpenSuSE packages as I'd rather use that.

 

Hmm, I blacklisted fglrx and radeon but ubuntu doesn't have mkinitrd, it only has mkinitramfs. What should I do?

Edit: I ran update-initramfs -u (seems to be the equivalent for mkinitrd for Ubuntu) and I'm still getting black screens. Grr. I upgraded to 10.10 RC so that I could use vgaswitcheroo without installing my own kernel, but now this. Should I just remove the fglrx module? I'm actually wondering whether the Intel driver is even working, if after blacklisting fglrx I'm still getting black screens. I think I might just wipe the partition and install OpenSuSE tomorrow because I need to get some work done.

 

Actually openSUSE is the distro with the most packages available, thanks to the build service:
software.opensuse.org: Search Results

(Enable search in user repos, too, available in "search options").

 

Sure, that might be true in general but the packages I need are research oriented and rather specific, and not on there. I can always build them from svn but it's nice to have them in apt.

So any ideas guys? I even uninstall anything fglrx or radeon related and it's still getting me a blank screen upon booting. It almost sounds like the Intel IGP isn't working properly, which is kind of silly. I thought at least a few other people were running Ubuntu 10.10 on the Envy 14, has someone else got past this problem?

Edit: Haha hmm, Ubuntu is weird. I was about to wipe it and install OpenSuSE and it was like NOOO, I'll work I promise and the screen turned on when I moved my mouse. Yay, I think. Still going to install OpenSuSE on another drive most likely though.

 

I updated to meerkat RC today. New kernel 2.6.35-22 gives me blank screen even with nomodset, can still boot into 2.6.32-25. Never had ati fglrx insalled so not sure what the problem is.

 

I actually got the screen to work after letting the laptop sit there for a long time and then moving the mouse/pressing keys under 2.6.35-22. But maybe I'll try the older kernel to see if that works better; the first time I got it to work under meerkat it just died after some time (no response to keyboard or mouse, not even ctrl-alt-backspace which I guess maybe Ubuntu disabled?). Does the .32 kernel have vga_switcheroo?

Edit: Did you make sure it's nomod eset? That at least worked for me. I think I'm going to try OpenSuse later anyway.

Hmm, tried the OpenSuSE 11.3 KDE Live CD (booted off USB) and it complained about not a kernel image, something about gfx. Gonna try with the DVD tomorrow I guess but it's taking a while to download.

 

openSUSE 11.3 comes with 2.6.34 kernel, you should build your own live CD with susestudio.com , based on Takashi Iwai's 2.6.35 ClickPad Kernel.

 

Seems like I need to make an account which might not be immediate?

 

I registred too today and it took about 10 minutes before I got a reply in my email.

However; whatever I tried... I could not ADD the clickpad repository so in the end I gave up because of the frustration. I did try to adding the clickpad repository by adding a URL (the one in the details sections of the download and by searching etc..

 

Oh nice, I got my email too. Yeah, it's a bit confusing right now but I like what I see.

 

Anyone interested in me preparing an openSUSE 11.3 appliance with all needed patches applied?

 

yes baby, definately !

 

I would be interested. I just burned an OpenSUSE DVD and was going to install it next week, but it would be nice if I had one with all the patches. Thanks.

 

So does ubuntu 10.10 have the necessary kernel updates? If not how would I go about getting them?

 

I'm trying to run the Ubuntu 10.10 RC live CD, but the OS doesn't load once I've told it to "Try Ubuntu without Installing." All I get is a blank screen.

 

No, 10.10 seems to give the black screen at boot even if no ati drivers have been installed.

 

The Envy 14 boots with screen brightness turned down to 0 for some reason. Just hit Fn + F3 a lot of times (or just F3 depending on your settings). I'm in ubuntu 10.10 and it works nicely.

Main problem is that the touchpad is completely retarded. I can't even type on my Envy 14 keyboard because the touchpad randomly clicks in places.

ubuntu 10.10 comes with 2.6.35 kernel supposedly so the clickpad stuff should be in there already?


and the disable touchpad option is really amazingly fail. so the touchpad doesn't work anymore with that option checked; when anything touches the touchpad it just puts the cursor at the top left corner of the screen.

 

I'm getting ready to install OpenSUSE. I notice that the current, stable release is 11.3, which contains the 2.6.34 kernel. However, there is an 11.4 Milestone 2 release containing the 2.6.36-rc4 kernel. Would I be better off installing this latter version, or should I stick with the 11.3 stable version? Right now I'm just interested in learning Linux and getting it working on my ENVY 14 without too much hassle. I'm not too concerned if it's not a perfect release or crashes every so often. I was wondering whether the 11.4 version would contain more of the up-to-date video/touchpad drivers, etc. used by the ENVY 14.

EDIT: The 11.4 M2 release doesn't install. It says the GNU C Library needed by Grub is missing. I'm going to try installing the stable 11.3 release.

 

You're on Ubuntu 10.10 and have no problems with black screen on boot? I rolled back to 10.04 because it was basically hit or miss (usually miss) as to whether the screen would come back to life after a while or not. Kind of annoyed.

Also, do you or anyone else have sensors working on Ubuntu? Kind of a pain to not have it working and have the GPU burning power at the same time, can't tell how hot it's getting.

 

has someone gotten 10.10 successfully loaded on the envy ?
i am looking to find out if broadcom drivers install without a hitch, also wondering if video drivers install fine, and whether the startup/shutdown graphics tearing is corrected with the latest kernel ....

 

I think what generally happens is that wifi works fine, and on 10.04 Intel graphics works fine but you can't turn off the ATI under the 2.6.32 kernel. With 10.10 you get the 2.6.35 kernel which has vga_switcheroo to turn off the ATI (or switch between them if the drivers supported switchable graphics; my impression is that they don't) but most people are getting a situation where when you boot up the screen is blank. This happens to me even if no ATI drivers are installed so I'm guessing they broke the Intel drivers in 10.10 somehow, or something like that.

Someone said that booting the 2.6.32 kernel under 10.10 also works fine but then you don't get vgaswitcheroo which was the main benefit of upgrading to 10.10 for the Envy 14. Since I need Linux for work, I'm going to stick with 10.04 until someone else figures out the black screen thing; setting nomodeset didn't help me at all.

 

anyone else have input for 10.10 on the envy ?

once again, a release that doesn't play nice with all hardware ....

 

Ubuntu likes to power on both GPUs for some reason; so far I've only been able to stick a script in startup to power off the ATI GPU but hopefully there's a way to just prevent it from powering on instead of powering it on and off.

The touchpad more or less works with this
How to Enable Right | Middle Click On Clickpads – Ubuntu 10.10 bigbrovar

It's still really sporadic and jittery, but a lot more usable. Side scrolling works fine; two-finger actions don't work at all. There's no way to click and drag consistently. Clicking with one finger and dragging with another is a nightmare. You have to pray that tap to click works (it's kinda random; works on some boots and not on others). Also there's no way to disable the touchpad (clicking disable under pointing devices does absolutely nothing), nor does the disable while typing feature work.

 

Oh huh, you mean the black screen issue on 10.10 is really just the brightness starting off at 0? Wow, that's pretty lame but an easy thing to work around. Now I'm just waiting for some packages I need to provide a 10.10 repo and I'll probably upgrade once that happens.

 

In most cases it's just screen brightness turned down.
I have had one case in which the display just didn't load, but I was messing around with /etc/rc.local Apparently if you just call echo OFF to the vgaswitcheroo/switch file, it'll power down both GPUs or something and you won't get a display.


Has anyone gotten the ATI card to work with external monitors? When I connect mine it either shows graphics glitches on my external or puts some weird desktop combination on my external + laptop monitor (like 1/3 of the desktop is on my laptop monitor and 2/3 is on my external).


And my battery life lasts around 3-3.5 hours in ubuntu 10.10, whereas it was more like 5 hours in windows 7. what gives? same screen brightness, intel graphics, wi-fi connected,...

 

Do you mind sharing the script you're using to turn off the ATI card at boot? I figure that'll drastically improve my battery time. Right now I'm lucky to get 2.5 hours.

 

go to your /etc/rc.local file

type in

chown user /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo DDIS > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

where user is your username

if someone knows of a better way to do it without turning the ATI card on then off let me know as I don't think that's good for the card...

 

I have gotten the ATI card to work with external monitors in Linux (Arch specifically but that shouldn't matter).

The trick was to use xrandr and turn off the laptop panel. At that point the garbage being output on the displayport instantly becomes clear.

For example, to turn off the panel and turn on the display port:

Code:

xrandr --output LVDS-1 --off  --output DisplayPort-0 --auto

HDMI worked similar except I still got a message on my monitor saying the mode wasn't supported. Though the picture was relatively clear (kinda fuzzy though).

HTH

 

ok there's still two problems I'm having; both are sporadic and I don't really know what's going on...

when I shut down ubuntu sometimes it doesn't shut down... it displays in text "<string of numbers> powering on radeon" and then gets stuck there

and about the black screen at boot, sometimes increasing display brightness doesn't work... it's really odd since it doesn't happen all the time; if restart then it boots correctly...

 

Is there any place where we can find the progress of ATI hybrid graphics support in Linux? I kind of need to use the ATI graphics card under Linux with 3D acceleration for a simulator that barely runs on the Intel, but I can't right now. I might just have to throw together a cheap desktop to do my work instead ><

 

finally successfully loaded 10.10 on the envy 17. went on without issue, found and installed the restricted drivers for ATI, Broadcom drivers were installed by ubuntu automatically.

noticed that the system runs much cooler, that's a huge plus for me. windows 7 is a power hog, with the same browser windows open, just surfing the internet the power consumption difference is noticeable.

one thing i noticed as odd is that the panels and parts of the OS sometimes revert back to the old gnome theme from ubuntu 8.xx... don't know why it does this, and changing the theme doesn't correct. the only thing that seems to correct is removing the .gnome folder in the home folder, but again, it sometimes reverts back to the old theme.

i suspect it may have something to do with the ATI catalyst control center

 

My ubuntu consumes more power than my windows 7 for some reason... windows 7 runs 4+ hours whereas ubuntu runs for 2.5 before the battery runs out.
I think it's most likely the fan because the fan on ubuntu is extremely loud, even when I'm not doing anything.

 

I'm running ubuntu 10.10 server edition on my envy 14.
So far, the only complaint I have is the heat and the graphics card not supporting 3d acceleration.

The heat isn't noticable, but sensors report a higher than my other laptops temp.(~37*C for CPU)... still, not too bad. I'd turn off the fan always on in the bios, but I think that would just make the heat shoot up. The fan is pretty quiet anyways

For the brightness, I don't mind hitting the f3 once at startup. and my brightness is set at 30%.

I'm getting 4hrs+ with wifi and bluetooth on(and downloading SC2 7GB) Side note: I had to plug it in to finish the download cause it took forever. This is without the battery slice.

made a simple bash script to turn on only integrated graphics at boot.

touchpad is a little annoying to use, but if you be careful and use the side of it, it works ok. most of the time i use a mouse anyways.
What is nice about the touchpad though is that it turns off/doesn't jump like crazy if you're typing.

Aside from the... lack of 3d acceleration support, which basically makes this laptop like running linux out of a virtual machine. It's pretty good.

PLEASE let me know if anyone finds a working graphics driver for the envy14 under ubuntu10.10! I'm sick of only playing 2d games from 10 years ago .

 

could you send me the script to turn only integrated graphics on?? I'm new to linux and don't have much knowledge of it.

 

To enable integrated graphics and disable discrete graphics, just do:

Code:

sudo echo DIGD > /sys/kernel/vgaswitcheroo/switch
sudo echo OFF > /sys/kernel/vgaswitcheroo/switch

To enable integrated graphics and disable discrete graphics, just do:

Code:

sudo echo DDIS> /sys/kernel/vgaswitcheroo/switch
sudo echo OFF > /sys/kernel/vgaswitcheroo/switch

 

4 hours on linux with wifi on? Wow, i get 2 hours on windows with wifi off.....im thinking i should call HP. i5 by the way

 

i5 here too... and with the script
you may need to do a
"sudo chown username /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch" first

and. yeah 4 hours. not doing anything though, except downloading starcraft2. no screensavers either.

 

4 hours on Ubuntu, that is great!!! Is that the 64bit version? I'm running Ubuntu 10.10/64 bit desktop edition and I can't get more then 2 hours battery life ... I have the same CPU i5, 2.4MHz.

If you have a few minutes, can you please post the output from "powertop -d"? I'm wandering what is different and why I only get 2 hours. I posted here the output from powertop and some other changes I made to make this laptop work with Ubuntu. Overall I'm happy with the quality.

[ubuntu] Poor battery life on HP Envy 14 laptop (PowerTop) - Ubuntu Forums

 

Can someone possibly make a Wiki for all this info. I plan on getting a HP envy soon and putting Ubuntu on it. It may not be a perfectly easy install but compared to most of the current laptops with Optimus, this is better choice for me.

Has anyone used Kernel 2.6.35-23? That is what I am on now.

 

I've been able to get 4hrs battery life with wifi using the instructions on this page.
Ubuntu Forums - View Single Post - [ubuntu] Poor battery life on HP Envy 14 laptop (PowerTop)

For the graphics just put
chown username /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo DIGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

in /etc/rc.local
so it does it automatically upon boot


Does Ubuntu support the slice battery? I might buy that soon now that the price is down from $200 to $140ish, but I'd like to know if it works properly in Ubuntu.


Also does anyone know how to turn the atombios timeout to 2s? I keep getting messages saying atombios got stuck in a loop randomly when shutting down/resuming. I searched around and someone said that setting the timeout to 2s (from 1s) got rid of the problem, but how do I do that?


For the touchpad I'm trying to make a keybinding to turn on/off the touchpad click. I believe the configuration file is in ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/peripherals/touchpad/%gconf.xml
since it matches what is under preferences > mouse
but when I change the values in that (specifically the value of tap to click to true/false) it doesn't make any difference.

Changing the settings in preferences > mouse changes the values in this file but only after a certain time period (however tap to click takes effect immediately).
So it seems this file and the preferences > mouse both point somewhere else, but where exactly do they point?

 

It is funny, I wrote that post, I'm the same "mpdava" I'm wandering what is the difference between our systems as I only get 2 hours and I have exactly the same config. I would appreciate if you could post the output from "powertop -d". I have listed here my results, at the beginning:

[ubuntu] Poor battery life on HP Envy 14 laptop (PowerTop) - Ubuntu Forums

atombios error shows during shutdown because ATI card is off and I believe the system tries to power it off again ... not sure how to fix this. Probably a script that runs when you logout and switches the ATI card back on before reboot?