The Final Zone project

With Hans' help, an old bug related to ACPI impacting majority of HP laptops running on any Linux distribution is finally resolved on both kernel 5.4.2 and 5.3.15. Some models may have an odd issue on boot like hp_wmi: query 0xd returned error 0x5 due to a too small buffer passing in for HPWMI_FEATURE2_QUERY. A fix is on the way for the next update and a test kernel from scratch-build is available (make sure to download first as the scratch build gets erased in a few days).

Thanks to Takashi Iwai, sounds linux contributor from SUSE, restoring the functionality of LED mute button is set via /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf options snd-hda-intel model=,hp-mute-led-mic3 Note the comma as the HP Envy x360 Ryzen series have two sounds controllers. The patch for the Linux kernel is already submitted and awaits for review.

 Majority of HP hardware running on Linux and even Microsoft reported an issue related to a non-standard compliant ACPI. Notable message below repeats at least three times on the boot: 4.876549] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT, Field [D128] at bit offset/length 128/1024 exceeds size of target Buffer (160 bits) (20190215/dsopcode-198)  [ 4.876555] ACPI Error: Aborting method \HWMC due to previous error (AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT) (20190215/psparse-529)  [ 4.876562] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.WMID.WMAA due to previous error (AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT) (20190215/psparse-529) The bug is a known for years from which Linux kernel team are unable to fix without the help of vendor i.e. HP. Here is a compilation of reports: BIOS error: The BIOS in this system is not fully ACPI compliant. ACPI BIOS ERROR (blue screen) on startup   ACPI bad works with Linux    The good news is some errors seems harmless. Unfortunately, such errors displaye...

If you own an HP laptop equipped with AMD processor, you may find out the auto-rotation will not work as intended. It turned out that sensor is missing a driver not currently available on Linux kernel using the lspci -nn command from the terminal 03:00.7 Non-VGA unclassified device [0000]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:15e4]     That driver in question is AMD Sensor Fusion HUB . Unfortunately, researching it turned out harder even on AMD own website . Bug is already filed without answer yet from one of AMD representative.

Thanks to the tips from Peter Hutterer , the author of libinput and libwacom , enabling the configuration of the stylus for the HP Envy x360 Convertible is very simple. Create a table file i.e. elan-264c.tablet in this example using this template and look at the dmesg output like: [    3.014612] input: ELAN0732:00 04F3:264C Pen as /devices/platform/AMDI0010:00/i2c-0/i2c-ELAN0732:00/0018:04F3:264C.0001/input/input15  Now the name is found as an ELAN device, include the following information # ELAN touchscreen/pen sensor present in the HP Envy x360 Convertible 15-cp0XXX  [Device]  Name=ELAN 264C  DeviceMatch=i2c:04f3:264c  Class=ISDV4  Width=14  Height=8  IntegratedIn=Display;System  [Features]  Stylus=true  Touch=true  Buttons=0 Copy the new created file to /usr/share/libwacom/ path. Gnome Shell will automatically detect the new tablet file and display the new information. Below is the...

I bought a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 560 4GB to replace the broken Nvidia GTX 460 v2 after a long years of service. It is then my first ever dedicated AMD based video-card for a desktop. The boot sequence on Fedora 27 hit a problem: a plain blank screen suggesting the card is not yet supported. Looking at Phoronix website revealed one of possible requirement missed: LLVM 5.0 which is currently not available to Fedora repository save a failed built . I filed a bug report to address the issue. Hopefully that will land on time for the official release of Fedora 27.

Since applying fix related to the ACPI from Linux kernel (future 4.8.0) , ASUS kernel laptop runs smoother on Gnome Shell inside Fedora 24 Design Suite. Based on the following observation: The delay of pluggin on/off the power is gone. Without the fix, it took about ten seconds before the system switched the status. Power management has drastically improved.  Closing the lid will automatically suspend the laptop. Multimedia control now works on all applications. Brightness control properly works. For Fedora users having similar issue with X550Z (also F550Z on some countries), a COPR repository is created for that purpose until upstream release the fix version on the kernel. Other distributions can look at the patch and provide feedback for testing and improvement. A big thanks to Peter Wu and Lv Zheng for investigating the issue which turned out bigger than expected: the discovery of new ACPI scheme on some modern laptops .

Following previous topic , testing the build kernel 4.8.0rc4 with the patch related to ACPI EC allow unlocking the functionality of hotkeys. For the first time, ASUS X550ZE has nearly full functionality from keyboard in Linux operating system (Fedora in my case) on par with Microsoft Windows 8.1 and 10.  Hopefully other laptops having similar problem will regain that access. For that learned experience, that bug turned out more complex than expected revealing a different ACPI scheme used in Microsoft Windows 10 and a bad practice from BIOS vendor. It also shows how some vendors ignore standard procedure thus making harder to find the problem. The important lesson is the cooperation between users and developers exchanging knowledge and discovering new elements never seen before. One day, vendors will open themselves approaching the kernel community to improve their products. Now the hotkeys saga comes to the end, the next step is the support of AMD hybrid graphic card. This...

Resuming for the previous topic , with the help of an Arch user and one of kernel maintainers, it turned out the failure of hotkeys functions [Fn] is due to a Linux ACPI bug. Further investigation revealed a bad practice from BIOS vendor and unexpectedly a new challenge in Linux kernel world as quoted: However this report indicates us another gap (except the enumeration order gap): If the namespace EC (DSDT EC in short) is not ready, EC access availability can be kept using the ECDT EC. In Linux, that requres _Qxx control methods to be registered for the ECDT EC. I have never seen a Linux EC driver version doing this before, _Qxx registration is only invoked in acpi_ec_add(). So this bug indicates a gap for Linux. Essentially, what is initially a bug related for non-functional hotkeys for ASUS X550Z laptop revealed a much more deeper issue related Linux ACPI. It is the first time I reached that level of testing in kernel world with the help from upstream kernel. A built kernel...

I upgraded the Asus X550ZE to Fedora 23 Beta Design Suite. So far, the majority of hardware is functional except the Fn hotkeys and the poor power optimization. For Fn hotkeys, after looking at all possible solutions, it turned out majority of Asus X series laptops is affected due to the lack of proper documentation of wapf function found within asus-nb-wmi module from the kernel. The ball is on ASUS to make hotkeys functional and provide needed information. The second case related to poor power optimization is due to radeon driver. In addition, the lack of functional hybrid driver only make the laptop running on R7 265 GPU for performance while the R5 230 is permanently disabled for better power saving. It will be a while before Linux kernel will support hybrid graphics for Dual AMD Radeon.