Any Linux tips for Clevo?

Hello,

I am a new owner of a nice Eurocom Sky X9 laptop. Since I run Linux on it, I've found some issues.

The backlight control does not work. Apparently some compatibility issue between the BIOS and the kernel driver. I can work around it though since xbacklight works.

GNOME does not turn the monitor off when going idle or when locking the screen. This is quite annoying and I have no idea how to work around it. Basically GNOME uses xset to turn the screen off which just makes it go black but the backlight is still on. The mouse is also visible. No idea if I can make it use RandR which does work.

Aside from those two issues, anyone have any tips? Applications and whatnot?

 

this is why I never use Linux, even in today's age, they don't work great on laptops. Something has to not work.

 

I mean, both issues are not really that big of a deal. Turns out the latter is an Nvidia driver bug.

 

I know, but to me every function HAS to work properly before I switch to Linux, that includes the keyboard hotkeys and functions and brightness.

I remember even 3 years ago when I tried Linux Mint on an old laptop, the same issues as you mentioned, brightness up/down didn't work and the FN keys didn't work

I know it's a driver thing since manufacturers don't support linux but man, I wish they can do something to make these things work on laptops

 

@bloodhawk uses Linux on his P870DM if I remember correctly, maybe he can help.

 

Yep, Gnome with Scientific Linux and CENTOS . I re-purposed my drives into the desktop though
For the most part everything was working, i have the 4k Panel and brightness control didnt work with the BIOS i was on at that time. But i never used used the internal display and idling worked just fine with external monitors.

Other than that , didnt have any issues if i remember correctly, had to go back a few kernels on CENTOS, otherwise the NVIDIA drivers were freaking out.

 

I was wondering how is the linux support now for clevo ? still issues ?

 

besides the issues i mentioned, works fine. battery life is lower though. subwoofer may or may not be working. i broke my fedora installation so no testing for now.

 

Strangely, I had a case where a HP laptop worked better on Linux than Windows; the headphone jack does not work at all in Windows

 

funny you mention that. On my clevo, the toslink port always lights up under windows but on linux it only lights up if i select it through pulseaudio.

Also, the transition period when unplugging headphones is instant. In windows it takes a while for the speakers to activate.

Also it turns out both issues that I mentioned in the beginning are issues with the nvidia driver. Nouveau works fine(well, not performance wise).

 

To restore backlight controls, append the option acpi_backlight=vendor to the kernel option line in /etc/default/grub and we're done. Regenerate the grub configuration by running:

sudo update-grub


And you're good to go after a reboot. The update-grub command above assumes you're on Ubuntu. Other distributions may require another variant to update the grub configuration.

 

Doesn't seem to help. That's with the proprietary driver. The open source nouveau driver works. Too bad it's a little unstable.