Chris Laprise:
On 5/22/19 3:17 PM, Claudia wrote:
Thanks for all the info! All good news except for the part about
BIOS/UEFI feature support, which doesn't come as a surprise.
I understand that, for maximum certainty, one should look at high-end,
business-class, Linux-friendly product lines. However, this kind of
defeats the whole point of looking for a laptop with a low-cost
good-performance processor such as Ryzen. Those product lines are
pricy to begin with (relative to specs), and they rarely ever go on sale.
Also, it stands to reason that low-cost processors are usually found
in low-cost machines. I found a couple of lists[1][2] of laptops with
these processors. While there is a Thinkpad on the list, it looks to
be mostly consumer-level laptops (although I'm not real familiar with
computer makes and product lines so I could be wrong).
To be honest, I was kind of looking this[3] Inspiron 5575 with 2500U
available at Walmart for $350 (was down to $330 for a few days). After
upgrading the RAM and perhaps adding an SSD, it still looks like a
good deal for the money. Good enough to take a chance on, I think --
if it doesn't run Qubes, I'll just have to return it and look at some
higher-end models.
It sounds like you have an approach worked out.
If the low cost model doesn't run Qubes, then consider: Now that AMD is
being taken seriously for business laptops (where they used to be
extremely rare), there should now be more choices that are lower cost
_because_ they have an AMD processor.
FWIW, firmware compatibility isn't good on consumer models regardless of
the CPU vendor: Intel based consumer products suffer from it, too.
I did some quick searching, and Inspirons appear to have reasonably
good Linux compatibility, at least for consumer-level laptops.
Inspiron 5575 is even on the arch wiki[4] (which is definitely not
conclusive, but a good sign nonetheless, no?)
Dell is said to have a larger number of models that are _intentionally_
Linux compatible. Its worth checking their website to see if that model
(or any adjacent to it) are labeled as Linux compatible. The Dell
support page for Inspiron 5575 actually lists Ubuntu as a compatible
OS... a good sign!
For what it's worth, I took a Qubes installer USB to Walmart, and
tried it on a couple of consumer-level machines, although they did't
have any Inspirons on display. The only one that didn't work was an
older HP Pavilion with an A10 processor (it dropped to shell before
graphical installer came up), but it did work on an HP Graphite Mist
i5-8250U and one other machine which I can't recall at the moment.
(Note by "worked" I mean it made it to the final point in the
installer before you actually write to the disk.)
So, unless there are any red flags I'm not seeing, I'm leaning towards
giving the Inspiron 5575 a try.
Only red flag is consumer designation. As is often the case, Dell may
prefer to keep virtualization features turned off (and not provide a
BIOS screen option to turn them on) to avoid support costs.
Thanks once again for your comprehensive and helpful reply! Any
additional thoughts/advice welcome.
Good luck! And let us know how it goes and if you have any specific
questions.
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-5-2500U-SoC.258646.0.html
[2]
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/8v6e1u/list_of_ryzen_and_vega_amd_laptops_6302018/
[3]
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dell-Inspiron-15-5000-5575-Laptop-15-6-AMD-Ryzen-5-2500U-with-Radeon-Vega8-Graphics-1TB-HDD-4GB-RAM-i5575-A410BLU-PUS/212669685
[4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_Inspiron_5575
So I finally got around to doing this.
Qubes works and all the basic features are supported, VT-x VT-d, and so
on, as far as I can tell.
One major issue, hardware/firmware-wise:
1) It doesn't come back from suspend. The fan stops, but there are no
blinking lights (actually, no lights besides AC and caps lock), and
nothing I do wakes it. I have to long-press the power button, then press
again to turn on the machine. It's probably an ACPI issue, probably not
a graphics driver issue as there's no dGPU. I played around with
acpi_osi= and some basic troubleshooting but the odds of me being able
to fix it are slim to none.
Minor issues:
2) Buggy BIOS / ACPI impl. Dom0 kernel dmesg complains about "[Firmware
bug]" and ACPI issues. Though no noticeable problems except suspend. The
firmware's OS-less update-from-USB-drive feature seems broken, I tried
several times. Still might be able to update from fwupd, though. No UI
for managing secure boot keys, etc., it seems to only have the bare
minimum options.
So, it appears you were totally right about consumer-grade laptops and
buggy firmware. But suspend/resume is problematic even among
high-end/business-class laptops, too, isn't it? It's just something
Linux has never been good at.
3) USB qube isn't working. I installed with USB qube, and the microphone
shows up fine. But flash drives and the card reader don't show up. When
I plug in a USB drive, its LED blinks on for a fraction of a second,
then turns off (on other machines it stays on). No sign of it in lsusb
or lsblk in either sys-usb or dom0.
However, when I remove the qubes.rd.hide_all_usb kernel flag, it works
normally, so I think this is just a software issue.
4) Screen power management (turn off display) doesn't work, although I
had the same problem with a machine where suspend does work, and I think
I narrowed it down to a fedora/X11 issue. The display does turn off when
the lid is closed and lid-switch is set to "do nothing," though.
5) ...plus a few other minor issues probably not hardware related.
Right now I'm trying to decide if I can live without suspend. But, this
is such a common problem that I'm afraid the next one I trade it in for
would have the same problem, and the next one after that. Then I spent
twice the money and got nowhere. This issue is all-too-common on laptops
running Linux. It could be fixed (or broken) on any machine at any time
in a random kernel update, too, but who knows.
This is especially a problem because Xen doesn't support hibernation at
all (not to mention whether it would actually work), and Qubes doesn't
support Xen's "save VM state" feature, either of which I could live with
instead. So my only choices are "on" and "off."
Besides suspend being broken, I actually really like it, and you can't
go wrong for the price.
I think I'm going to try installing Ubuntu and testing suspend from
there, and also trying to update the firmware from fwupd, but I'm not
holding my breath.
So, any advice on troubleshooting suspend... or advice on what to do
next, I guess... would be appreciated. Ugh, this is totally frustrating.
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