*OFFICIAL: HP HDX16 & HDX18 Linux Owners Lounge*

Knowing that there are a few of us linux types on here I decided to start a thread for HDX and linux users.
Vistabad and cocopuffz are just two I know using linux on their systems.
After reading cocopuffz post earlier today in the HDX 16 lounge
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4393572&postcount=1112
I could no longer wait for my Ubuntu 8.10 DVD so I downloaded Wubi from www.download.com and 10 mins later after downloading the 700Mb I installed Ubuntu 64 bit with Wubi.
First impressions and observations:
My mouse on the HDX 18 would never travel from end to end of the screen on fast acceleration, but does under Ubuntu.
My sound is much much louder under linux.
The soft keys work for the most part I'm still trying.
Volume works fine, but the bass and treble soft key doesn't.
Wireless was a piece of cake.
It took me 30 minutes the first day I had my HDX 18 to add my network printer with my CD yes it was not on Vista even though a new HP AIO.
Under Ubuntu I had my printer printing a test page in only 2 minutes.
After I installed the HPLIP toolbox.
I will post more soon and hope to read others experiences.

 

I am running Ubuntu 8.10 on my HDX16, but for some reason I can't get the Nvidia driver to install.

 

It automatically told me there were 2 choices to download and one recommended. Check out Hardware drivers under system and administration. I used version 177.
An alternate is go to applications and add/remove search under all and for drivers it will pop up as a choice.

 

Does your sound have the popping and crackling sound that most HDX owners seem to get?

 

No I have not experienced that yet.
Mostly played with the 18 thus far and only a little with the 16.
Winpatrol (Scotty) the guard dog sounds funny on the 16 when barking on launch.

 

Just a quick observation and note.
On Vista after booting and surfing with Firefox my 4Gb ram is at 47% free.
On Ubuntu Linux and surfing with Firefox my ram is at 90% free!!!
That was a BIG surprise.

 

Yeah, I saw the two choices it even asked for my password but it didn't install the driver. I tried again last night and it worked. Go figure.

 

Great news and keep us posted on your experience.

 

WOW!!! That is insane....try some other browsers and see if they use 90% as well....??

 

I edited the post that is MSIE 47% free ram Vs Firefox 90% FREE!!!

 

Does firefox now support vista 64?

 

I'm running Firefox on Vista and Ubuntu Linux 64 bit versions.
It runs as a 32 bit application (X86) under Vista.

 

I think the FF 64bit version is still beta right? The website for it doesn't seem to look very legit.

http://www.mozilla-x86-64.com/

I don't know why mozilla.com wouldn't just host it themselves on the same site....

 

Hates BSOD,

How do you like your HDX16? Other than size, do you notice any major differences?

 

It is really nice.
Compared to the HDX18 it's like a sports car.
While I would say the HDX18 is more of a GT or grand touring.
The keyboard is the same, the display is awesome too, and due to it being smaller it feels sturdier in that it does not flex as much.
I guess if it had an SSD, and HD combo as well as a quad maybe I would have bought two, but I just could not pass on the HDX18 as a desktop replacement.
Dollar for dollar the HDX18 is a steal Vs the competition and the HDX16. One pays a premium for it being smaller.
We benefit by having a bigger system and getting dual HD's as well as some more desktop.
If you have any specific questions pm me. I have not touched the 16 much since the 18 got in my hands Monday am.

 

Thanks that's all I wanted to know. I figured it's the exact same as the HDX18 just smaller. I may pick one up down the road. Since we can't seem to get the spare HDD caddy kits, I would probably order the HDX16 with the dual drives, than transfer the second drive to the HDX18...

It would be nice to have matching laptops. I also am thinking about HP's little mini notebooks, those seem pretty cool as well..

 

Vistabad,

My pleasure. The HDX16 has only one HD.
It is nice having matching laptops.
I am also thinking of a mini in the future.
Strictly for travel.

 

ahhh thanks, I guess it's too small for dual's...

oh well....guess I will have to wait for the caddy kits to come out...

 

Hello all,

Just thought I'd add my $0.02. I got an HDX16t aka HD16-1100 I think (64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GBytes RAM, NVIDIA graphics, etc.) for my daughter and set it up to dual boot Vista and Debian Testing.

Vista runs like ... well ... Vista.

The Initial Debian install went fine but the stock kernel (some flavor of 2.6.26 I think) doesn't have drivers for the wireless card/chipset. So, I built and tested both 2.6.27.14 and 2.6.28.3. None of these are completely satisfactory.

With none of the kernels does suspend to RAM work. Oddly, while on many laptops the graphics are the problem, for the HDX16 it appears the disk drive is the problem. At least, on resume X and the desktop come back, the clock is running, hitting <Enter> at a shell prompt gets a new prompt, but the console is spewing messages about not being able to talk to the disk and anything that results in disk access fails (like, say, trying to run 'ls'). Haven't had the guts to try suspend to disk.

With all three kernels the keyboard beep is silent. I checked that "pcspkr" (also tried hda_pcsp I think it's called) is loaded and "PC Beep" is unmuted and at full volume). BTW keyboard beep seems to be an issue for Vista too although the symptoms are different. I use "sticky keys" and with Vista at login the beep is insanely loud. After login it's silent. But back to Linux ...

With the Debian stock 2.6.26 kernel and the 2.6.27.14 kernel other sound is fine (i.e. Audacious, etc.) but with 2.6.28.3 I get no sound whatsoever. I typically run the pulseaudio daemon but have also tried just straight ALSA. Neither works under 2.6.28.3 although audio programs _act_ like sound is working fine (i.e. no hangs or error messages or anything, just no sound).

Of all of these the suspend issue is the most irritating for me but I have trhe vague impression suspend on 64-bit SMP is a bit dicey anyway. If anyone has any ideas I'd be glad to hear them though my daughter has the machine now so it may be a few days to a week before I can try anything out. Mostly I just wanted to add my, sadly, less than perfect experience with Linux on an HDX16.

Cheers
Dr. Dent

 

Hi all,
I am a new member. What made me register was this specific thread.

Well I own an hdx16 1050ev and I am a linux user (Ubuntu Jaunty). Everything seems to be working fine but I still can't get my remote control to work. Sometimes it works. Some others not. I really don't know what is going on. It might have to do with the bios not starting the ir receiver sometimes.

Have you got it working? Any suggestions?

Regards

PS>The times it works, I am able to use it even to select the OS in the grub list so I don't think it is a kernel thing. When working on Vista it always work.

 

Hi guys. Well, I'm new here and well, some stuff in my HP HDX16-1358CA just doesn't seem to work. Speakers on the laptop isn't working. Headphones on work though. Card reader isn't working with memory stick (pro) duo and that's basically it. Any help please?

 

I received my HDX18t a few days ago and so far I'm pleased with this one. The first one they shipped had thermal issues and would shutdown after a few minutes.

First thing I did was make recovery disks for Fistula, um.. Vista and then install XP. I slip streamed the HDX drivers and service pack 3 into a fresh OEM Copy of XP. The install went without a hitch. Winders got a whopping 100G of the available Terabyte of disk. Winders is only used for gaming in my world. Half-Life 2.

Installing Fedora 11 -

I downloaded and burned Fedora 11 x86_64. It installed without issue. Suspend and Hibernate work flawlessly. (This is a first for me) The soft keys for volume, mute, and wireless work fine. The mediasmart soft-keys currently do not. They are generating key presses as can be seen in xev. I'll have to map them to something useful when I find the time.

In all, I'm very impressed with the HDX. It runs very cool, both cores (T9900) idle at ~36C and ramp up to about 56C under heavy load. The Nvidia idles at ~50C and ~72C under load. Typical for the 9600m.

Sound Under Fedora -

Sound play back with video (Youtube, mpegs etc...) and dvd's is flawless. The speaker does make a random pop now and then when I'm not playing anything. Go figure. Sound in some games, Doom III for example, pops and basically sounds like crap. Running these programs with pasuspender fixed the problem. Fedora 9 had similar pulse audio problems on my desktop and Sony Vaio.

The remote does squat and I haven't looked into the fingerprint reader yet.

I'll have more later

 

just received my hp hdx 16t last week. i immediately wiped the vista + hp malware stock OS, and installed ubuntu karmic. overall i'm very disappointed. i was wondering if anyone has had other experiences with linux other than ubuntu and would like to report them. i wonder if it's worth trying another dist.

with this, every time i inserted a DVD / CD the drive would disappear from system ... and the network would delay with name lookups for about 4-5 seconds. after about a day of trying to fix this and finding no solution i downgraded to jaunty.

with jaunty, those problems above are gone ... but now, when i download torrents, my network crashes ... and i get random lockups when connecting USB devices.

like i said i'm pretty disappointed. i just bought this laptop and now i'm faced with either dealing with these serious usability issues for going back to vista (!). i'm starting to winder if i should have let apple bend me over one more time.

 

<Ooops. Wrong forum. Sorry!>

 

hi guyz I'm having problem with hp hdx16 ubuntu 9.4 and sound... nothing seems to be working, I hacked around few files, browsed through sound prefs nothing seems to work! help!

 

I guess I can help you with that one... Use this command to edit the alsa-base.conf file...

This should open alsa-base.conf file in the console...
Just add the following line in the end...

I have an HP HDX 16 with Ubuntu Jaunty installed! And this method perfectly worked on my system! Dunno what it actually does, I guess Ubuntu core doesn't recognize our speaker or sound card at the startup... This add-on configures the ALSA mixer according to the Altec-Lansing Speaker or mayber\ Intel HDA Sound driver at start-up...


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. They say true love happens only once! For me it has occured three times!!!
1- You know who!
2- My HP HDX
3- Ubuntu Linux

 

Now I have got a big problem fellas!
My NVIDIA 9600M drivers are not being installed/activated!

Here is the deal...
When I use System-->Administration-->Hardware Drivers it sure gives me an option of two drivers. After I click on Activate, the driver starts downloading and it remains stuck at zero! And then after some time, another message appears, saying that the backend has crashed. And onwards the nothing works...
Here are the images. Please have a look if you can...



Will be glad if anyone could help me!

 

Hi, just installed Mandriva Free 2010 rc2 x86_64 on my HDX18 1180US. So far, have only had to download and install the wireless drivers by hand, not native to the Free version (supposed to be on the One ver. though). Was able to set up my wireless networked Officejet Pro Premier 8500 in just a few minutes. Volume and Treble/bass soft buttons work. Both Touchpad and usb wireless Logitech Micro work. Sound works fine. Video works fine in native 1920 x 1080 resolution. Haven't been able to get a Blu-ray movie to play yet. But xvid dowload tv shows play fine. No driver for the finger print reader yet, only used it as a convenience to log into windows anyways.

Am very pleased with this installation of Mandriva 2010. It works better in rc2 form than many other distributions in their final form.