Unbearable Linux issues on work laptop
from Sunny@slrpnk.net to linux@lemmy.ml on 13 Nov 13:14
https://slrpnk.net/post/15169504

Hi there folks!

I’ve used Linux for a good while now, but have no idea how to troubleshoot the current issues I’m having with my laptop at work. Let’s begin.

The laptop at hand is a HP EliteBook 845 14inch Notebook G10. A standard work laptop, with Windows pre-installed from It. This PC is “new” in the sens that I just got it from IT.

Laptop specs:

Other notable settings:

FYI: These issues have been the same across multiple distros and DEs. I’ve tried, Bluefin, Aurora, Red Hat Workstation and now running OpenSuse Tumbleweed (KDE+Wayland).

The issues:

  1. The first noticeable issues were that the laptop fans are considerable louder when running Linux. I assume there is some preinstalled HP software to control this on windows, as they are completely silent on windows, but constantly noticeable on Linux.

  2. The second issue at hand is that the USB-C port doesn’t seem to charge the laptop properly. The laptop randomly dies after being on for a while WITH THE CHARGER PLUGGED IN. Very odd. This happens with both normal charger and the office charger (which is also the connection to external screen).

  3. Waking up from sleep is a terrible experience. The pc makes everything super slow and laggy. Opening a single application can take up to multiple minutes. The PC has to be restarted for this to be fixed. This happens on both X11 and Wayland.

  4. Connection to external monitor also seems to be causing issues and slowing the system down. Especially after pc has been in sleep mode.

These are the main issues I’ve ran into in only a couple of days trying Linux on this laptop and I don’t know what the causing issue is, or if the laptop simple isn’t ‘made’ to run Linux(?).

Would highly appreciate any tips or troubleshooting tips for this. Would love to be able to run Linux on the work laptop!

Edit 1: Now trying Ubuntu, so far so good! Will keep post updated.

Edit 2: Ubuntu seems to do well with this hardware/laptop.

#linux

threaded - newest

Im_old@lemmy.world on 13 Nov 13:24 next collapse

Just as a test, can you try ubuntu? It looks like you tried “enterprise” distros, may be worth with a more generic one, maybe they have a different set drivers.

Also, can you try running lspci command, maybe it shows any devices it doesn’t recognize (so you can investigate those specifically). Pretty sure there is also a gui app about drivers, but I’m not familiar with kde.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 13:36 next collapse

I will try that now, thanks 👍

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 14:05 collapse

Here is the output of lspci, but from a fresh Ubuntu 24.04.

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14e8
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14e9
00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ea
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ea
00:02.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ee
00:02.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ee
00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ea
00:03.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 19h USB4/Thunderbolt PCIe tunnel
00:04.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ea
00:04.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 19h USB4/Thunderbolt PCIe tunnel
00:08.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ea
00:08.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14eb
00:08.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14eb
00:08.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14eb
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 71)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 51)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f0
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f5
00:18.6 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f6
00:18.7 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14f7
01:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8852CE PCIe 802.11ax Wireless Network Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: KIOXIA Corporation NVMe SSD Controller BG5 (DRAM-less)
c3:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Phoenix1 (rev c5)
c3:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio Controller
c3:00.2 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 19h (Model 74h) CCP/PSP 3.0 Device
c3:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b9
c3:00.4 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15ba
c3:00.5 Multimedia controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor (rev 63)
c3:00.6 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 17h/19h HD Audio Controller
c3:00.7 Signal processing controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 164a
c4:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ec
c5:00.0 Non-Essential Instrumentation [1300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 14ec
c5:00.3 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15c0
c5:00.4 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15c1
c5:00.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Pink Sardine USB4/Thunderbolt NHI controller #1
c5:00.6 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Pink Sardine USB4/Thunderbolt NHI controller #2
Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show on 13 Nov 13:28 next collapse

The laptop is certified to run Ubuntu 22.04, so try that out.

Although they do mention:

Standard images of Ubuntu may not work well, or at all.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 13:36 next collapse

Thanks, trying it now!

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 16:50 collapse

So far so good! Have tested the system for a little while now, and have not been able to run into the same issues as before - so this might have solved the issues I’ve been having. While Ubuntu is not my first choice of distro, I will choose it any time of the day over Windows!

Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de on 13 Nov 17:18 collapse

You could also wait a few weeks or months and then put the latest version of the distro you’d prefer on your USB stick and just boot from it to see if your issues have been fixed

mvirts@lemmy.world on 13 Nov 14:22 next collapse

Have you looked through the kernel logs? dmesg will usually show something relevant when wakeup from sleep is malfunctioning, and may show something about the USB charging as well.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 16:39 collapse

I have not. If the issues remain on Ubuntu i will check for sure. Thank you.

Wolf314159@startrek.website on 13 Nov 18:03 collapse

Let this be a lesson to you then. Checking the logs should be your first troubleshooting step, not installing a variety of distros until one “just works”. Good luck.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 21:14 collapse

Definitely! I was also distro-hopping a bit for fun and to see what would fit my workflow - so it didnt cost me anything extra really.

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 13 Nov 15:01 next collapse

I have an HP zbook. Fan did that a few times, almost like it didn’t recognize power control and defaulted to a higher fan speed. Booting to windows and then back to Linux fixed it. Not sure why.

Is the office and thee charge rated at enough wattage, and is the USB cable a heavy duty power cable intended for the machine or some cheap cable?

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 16:37 collapse

Interesting, i could try installing windows again to see if that should do anything; but so far so good on Ubuntu 24.04.

Not quite sure about the cable, but I would assume it’s a good one(default with the screens) as we have hundreds upon hundreds of these screens.

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 13 Nov 22:38 collapse

I meant the USB power coming from dock to charge port on laptop. If you mean USB (thunderbolt) out for display then it migtht not be bidirectional for power. My HP has a USB-C thunderbolt but the power cord has the USBC and barrel power in one plug since the USBC can’t charge the laptop.

Frederic@beehaw.org on 13 Nov 15:56 next collapse

I’d try MX 23 AHS version too. And use kernel 6.10 as 6.11 has suspend/resume problem, especially with mediatek wifi card.

I have a mediatek wifi card and need to unload it when suspend.

What wifi card do you have?

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 13 Nov 16:38 next collapse

I’ll check this, but this does happen also when not on wifi. I can only use my hotspot for wifi - as my company doesnt allow “uncertified” laptops to access their wifi.

Shareni@programming.dev on 13 Nov 17:26 collapse

The xfce in the current MX has issues with waking up as well. When power manager suspends it, it would often wake up to a black screen and requires either a logout or to apply a xrandr config. Same issue doesn’t happen when suspending through systemctl

Frederic@beehaw.org on 13 Nov 18:08 collapse

Using it for months/years and never had a problem with it, AMD/Radeon here

Shareni@programming.dev on 13 Nov 18:56 collapse

MX, ThinkPad t480, intel+Nvidia (no matter which drivers): close screen to suspend causes it, and it’s not happening in other DE’s. Can’t be bothered to try out xfce on another distro just to confirm. I made a post when I was trying to fix it for myself.

The final straw were the Bluetooth headphones though. Most of the time I’d have to manually select them 20 times as the output device so it sticks, and then it’d switch back to the speakers as soon as the call starts. Or I’d hear the other person through the correct device, but the they couldn’t hear me on Skype, but could on Google meet.

MX was pretty reliable otherwise.

Goingdown@sopuli.xyz on 13 Nov 18:39 next collapse

Also check your bios version. I had similar problems with usb-c and fans on HP Elitebook, they were fixed with bios upgrade.

Edit: I also had troubles waking from sleep. They were caused by wwan/lte modem, I disabled it on bios and now sleep works flawlessly.

AndrewZabar@lemmy.world on 13 Nov 21:44 next collapse

In my experience with new hardware, it’s always been Ubuntu that works it perfectly where everyone else is like “what’s that? I don’t know that hardware”

A while back I got a new laptop and the audio hardware would only work with Ubuntu which is fine because that’s what I was already using on the previous hardware. Ubuntu with KDE is a very solid setup.

dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml on 14 Nov 12:14 collapse

the distros you tried were… adventurous, to say the least, none of those would even occur to me. the my rule of thumb is:

  1. fedora - for the newest hardware, you qualify big time, especially if RH was an initial choice for you
  2. ubuntu - middle of the road, best for the majority of users, excluding newest or really old hardware
  3. mint/debian - for older hardware

everything else is for hobbyists and/or special use cases, not for people expecting to do actual work.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 14 Nov 12:36 next collapse

I did actual work on openSUSE Tumbleweed for nearly eight years. It was completely reliable. Now I do actual work on Endeavour OS and so far it has been completely reliable. It has far exceeded my expectations.

isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca on 14 Nov 18:02 collapse

Debian testing is ok for newer hardware, if you’re more technically inclined.