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).

A year passed since owning HP Envy x360 15 2500u now running mainly on Fedora Design Suite now on its 31 release. The Design Suite is based on Fedora Workstation running on Gnome Wayland by default. The touchscreen works as intended and feel more responsive. Tweaking Firefox 70.0 However, due to a bug related to the GTK toolkit , using a stylus can cause crash on some applications. The fix is available and will be a matter of the time of an update . Sometimes, the touchscreen failed to work due to an issue related to ACPI only HP can address. The current workaround is to reboot the laptop. The LED Mute button works as intended with the help of a veteran SuSE developer. The quality of audio is adequate with seemly minimal loss  for a laptop once over-amplification is applied via Tweak application. At the time of writing, the majority of Ryzen APU powered laptop has yet to get the gyroscope function needed to auto-rotate the screen and other features like disabling keyboard o...

As announced on Fedora Magazine , Design Suite 31 is now available for users like graphic artists and photographers among them. Notable update is the availability of Blender 2.80 featuring a revamped user interface. Other applications are mostly improved stability. Users with touch screen devices will notice an improved performance from the Fedora Workstation from which Design Suite is based. Due to a bug related to desktop environment (Gnome Shell running on Wayland), using a stylus can cause applications to crash so the workaround is to run on Gnome on Xorg until the fix lands on a future update. Full details published on the wiki section .

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...

The HP Envy x360 Convertible powered with Ryzen 2500U turned out an impressive laptop for Fedora 29 despite some issues like lack of accelerometer driver for Linux kernel and some ACPI related problems seemly affecting majority of HP laptops. AMD recently released ROCm 2.0 enabling the support of Raven Ridge Mobile for the first time. The installation has to be clean (remove beignet and pocl)  and requires additional dependency not found on Fedora repository, pth located on COPR . Once completed and rebooted, rocminfo should runs as follow: /opt/rocm/bin/rocminfo  =====================     HSA System Attributes     =====================     Runtime Version:         1.1 System Timestamp Freq.:  1000.000000MHz Sig. Max Wait Duration:  18446744073709551615 (number of timestamp) Machine Model:           LARGE...

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...

The Fedora version on kernel 4.19.3 includes a patch allowing both stylus and touchscreen to properly run on AMD processor based HP touchscreen thanks to the combined effort from Hans , Lukas and Marc for finding the root cause and testing the fix. A few scary moment on HP Envy x360 15-cp0xxx Ryzen 2500U was a conflicting IRQ handling due to possibly booting on Windows 10 used to get all feature parity to Linx counterpart i.e. Fedora 29 in this case. Fortunately, power off somewhat did the trick. Since then, both stylus and touchscreen run without a hitch. A minor issue was the Gnome Settings does not display information of both devices due to the missing data from Elan driver thus meaning no configuration possible like assigning buttons and no possible way to test touchscreen. Additionally, Gnome Shell assumed the battery still at 1% capacity and the bug is filed for that reason . Detected Stylus displayed with incorrect battery status Nevertheless, the stylus with some co...

Revisiting the previous blog and freshly reinstalling Fedora Design Suite due to a busted boot, I look at the official guideline from AMD Driver for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 and write a way to improve the process of installing on Fedora 29 in this example. Extracting the tarball contains the following: amdgpu-install amdgpu-pro-install symlink to amdgpu doc folder repodata folder RPMS folder containing rpm package Executing the command ./amdgpu-install -opencl=pal --headless sadly failed on Fedora on that line: ./amdgpu-install -y --opencl=pal --headless Last metadata expiration check: 0:30:51 ago on Mon 19 Nov 2018 07:13:43 PM PST. No match for argument: amdgpu Upon closer look, the script failed to created a temporary repository on /var/opt/amdgpu-pro-local probably explaining why amdgpu metapackage name failed to display. Someone should investigate and provide a fix. At least, we find out Fedora support is available but unofficial. Due to its design, Gnome ...

The Raven Ridge APU is very capable processor to handle OpenCL inside some applications like Blender, Darktable and Gimp. Unfortunately, the current implementation from Mesa, clover, stuck to 1.3, is not supported. AMD released their driver 18.40 with OpenCL2.0+ targeting only Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Cent OS 6.10 and 7.5 in addition of Ubuntu LTS. The good new is the former rpm format can be used on Fedora. The graphical part of Raven Ridge is Vega 8, basically a cut-down of Vega56 or Vega64 meaning choosing either driver for RX Vega . The instruction is provided for extracting the rpm files but here is  some requirements for OpenCL: kernel-devel (provided by Fedora repository) amdgpu-dkms dkms libopencl-amdgpu-pro opencl-amdgpu-pro-icd Once done, applications needing OpenCL will automatically detect the driver located on /opt/amdgpu/lib64 . Blender will list as unknown AMD GPU and Darktable will enable it. OpenCL from official AMD driver enabled on Darktable ...

Nearly one month later, HP Envy x360 Convertible 15  powered by Ryzen 2500U is running smoother on kernel 4.19.0 with someissues: The LED for the mute button failed to work suggesting a possible ACPI issue. An unfortunate oversight from HP for not including a led for Num Lock button.  The touchscreen function failed due to ACPI bug related to a mis-configuration of tables . Sadly, it affects all HP Envy touchscreen series equipped with AMD processors. Workaround made by an Arch user exists and no upstream Linux maintainers has picked up yet for clean up and improvment. The side effect would be an unfortunate false impression HP touchscreen with AMD processors is horrible. The gyroscope needed to automatically rotate the screen depending of the position is broken possibly due to ACPI bug. On the positive side, I was impressed by the modular adaptability  of HP Envy x360 upgrade wise thanks to the excellent HP documentation . The board can be replaced with the pow...

Fedora 29 Design Suite is available for downloading with latest stable release  applications including Gimp 2.10.6 among the features . On the bad news side, Blender 2.79b on Fedora 29 has broken user interface due to compatibility issue related to python 3.7. Workaround will be installing from the flathub directory . Next release will be interesting considering the structural change for the incoming Fedora 30 with the advent of flatpak packages.

Replacing the 1TB 7200rpm HDD with a well reviewed  Samsung 860 EVO 1TB HDD turned out a drastic improvement in term of speed caught me by surprise. Noticeable effect was the nearly five seconds boot straight to the login screen and the response time of opening and closing applications. Envy x360 Ryzen 5 feels snappy now. On a side note, Windows 10 has a nice app called Windows Hello to authenticate with face similar to facial recognition founds on Android device. A similar open source application called howdy is available but not packaged for Fedora yet. 

My ASUS X550ZE reached its end of life due to hardware power issue after getting a lot of abuse. From that experience, I have learned a lot about dual Radeon graphic processors working in the open source world and I followed AMD graphic development since then. Enter HP Envy x360 Convertible 15-cp0xxx Ryzen 5 marking the return to tablet PC. I originally intended to buy the Ryzen 7 version for more performance but the specification is very similar with only a sightly more powerful graphic processor as the difference on Ryzen 5. The model uses a 1 TB hard disk drive with 8 GB DDR4 RAM and I plan to upgrade to a 1TB solid state drive ( Samsung Evo version looks suitable). Installation  Installing Fedora 29 Beta Design Suite was very smooth after shrinking the partition of Windows 10 and keeping Secure Boot enabled by default. Post installation  Some revealing issues: Touchscreen and stylus mode is broken due to acpi bug preventing proper detection. AMD Raven, the...

What a surprise to see 1000 download of Fedora 28 repository for Scribus Unstable! Thanks a million.

For users finding Scribus 1.4.7 lacking in features notably the complex text layout for Asian languages, Scribus 1.5.4 is available via COPR repository from Fedora 26 (soon reaching end of life) to Rawhide.   Additionally, a snapshot for the future 1.6.0 ( currently 1.5.5 ) is also available for improving the experience to upstream.

South Island (Hainan) and Sea Island (Kaveri) functional with RADV Running Fedora 28 Design Suite post beta shows a nice surprise: Vulkan with RADV is fully functional on both South Island (Hainan) and Sea Island (Kaveri) cards on ASUS X550ZE laptop. amdgpu driver is needed to enable the feat in combination of boot parameter (cik.amdgpu_support=1 cik.radeon_support=0 si.amdgpu_support=1 si.radeon_support=0) Vulkan smoketest running on RADV Some minor issues need be to addressed like occasional glitches. Otherwise the performance is stable enough for dail use.

Following the previous blog and some investigation, it turned out the kernel package from Mystro256 COPR repository based on agd5f kernel branch (one of AMD developers) resolves the blank screen issue. That could trigger a problem for users having a new AMD graphic hardware so perhaps a warning should be written on the release. Perhaps having one of contributors be part of kernel team bringing these improvement until those patches arrive to the mainline kernel for a better user experience. Past the issue, the desktop experience with Radeon RX 560 was tremendously improved compared to the retired GTX 460 v2. Gnome on Wayland on Fedora runs smooth showing how far the open source amdgpu driver went through compared to previous years. That was also the opportunity to run a vulkan based smoke test demo on RADV, which is a counterpart of glxgears. Overall the card is excellent once missing software are installed.

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.