The Final Zone project

 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...

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 .

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...