Linux on Recoil ll

[josvaz]

Hi everybody. Today I received my Recoil II and I was able to install last kde neon (ubuntu 18.04 based), and after that I was able to install the patched kernel from https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200787 and now I have the trackpad working perfectly!!

Only one problem: the keyboard backlight, in addition to not being able to be configured, stays on when the laptop is suspended! And the same goes for the front light... I think that could be a problem for battery consumption...

If there is something I can do to help resolving these issues please tell me

 

[Stephen M]

Glad to hear it is going well and the patch worked. The backlight is a common issue and there is no definite solution but if you trawl the threads on the Linux forum there are some suggested fixes, although they vary with different laptops. I have yet to try fixing it on my Octane as happy with the blue colour it stays at.

 

[comp]

Hi everybody. Today I received my Recoil II and I was able to install last kde neon (ubuntu 18.04 based), and after that I was able to install the patched kernel from https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200787 and now I have the trackpad working perfectly!!

Only one problem: the keyboard backlight, in addition to not being able to be configured, stays on when the laptop is suspended! And the same goes for the front light... I think that could be a problem for battery consumption...

If there is something I can do to help resolving these issues please tell me

I'd like to buy this laptop, but I'd like to wait for Linux support. So now with the kernel patch the touchpad works perfectly. Any other problems? Screen flickering for example.
Can you write the exact specs of your machine?
Thank you in advance

 

[josvaz]

I'd like to buy this laptop, but I'd like to wait for Linux support. So now with the kernel patch the touchpad works perfectly. Any other problems? Screen flickering for example.
Can you write the exact specs of your machine?
Thank you in advance

Mine is Recoil II Pro inside the "next day" section: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers-for-next-day-delivery/799/

Things to keep in mind with linux:
- You will need to add "noacpi acpi=off" to the boot options in grub to boot from a live distro to install or test it
- You need an updated kernel and firmware... Ubuntu 16.04 based distros seems to fail
- The touchpad problem: probably will be fixed in "official" kernels in the future, but at the moment you need to install patched kernels, so live distros for example you will no have touchpad.
- About the touchpad, I feel it a little bit buggy in linux. Accidental clicks or movements occur when I am writing, and "auto disable" options from KDE seems no to work.
- The backlight of the keyboard... You cant customize it, and it stays on when you suspend the laptop. I disabled the backlight from bios to prevent this problem.
- Battery life: about 2 hours with normal use (wifi, 70% brightness...)

 

[Oussebon]

- About the touchpad, I feel it a little bit buggy in linux. Accidental clicks or movements occur when I am writing, and "auto disable" options from KDE seems no to work.

Just to ask, did you test the touchpad out in Windows too with all drivers and the laptop's control centre software installed? To be sure it's just Linux and not the hardware that's faulty

 

[ubuysa]

Just to ask, did you test the touchpad out in Windows too with all drivers and the laptop's control centre software installed? To be sure it's just Linux and not the hardware that's faulty

IMO this is excellent advice for all those buying a PCS build to run Linux. They will come with Windows already installed and it would be use to use that Windows system to thoroughly test (and even stress) the system before installing Linux....

 

[josvaz]

IMO this is excellent advice for all those buying a PCS build to run Linux. They will come with Windows already installed and it would be use to use that Windows system to thoroughly test (and even stress) the system before installing Linux....

Thanks for the advice. In my case the touchpad is working without errors in windows.

The problem with accidental clicks and movements was there for me in other laptops (Sony Vaio, Acer, Asus...) so I asume that is a common problem in linux. Only one laptop (Asus N550JK) did not have those problems in my experience (in fact it has been by far the best notebook I've had in terms of Linux support)

 

[josvaz]

Something that may be interesting for debugging the backlight and front led problem: when the laptop is suspended without AC power, the front led poweroffs (and backlight on keyboard stays power on), but when you suspend the laptop with AC power connected, both ligths stay on....

I will try to find what is going on, maybe we find a solution to at least power off/on the front led

 

[sonik14]

Does anyone obtain the laptop with 144Hz screen, use Linux and have no problem with flickering?

 

[markh]

Would that necessitate including the windows OS in your specs or is there a trial version included even if you select no OS required? I'm worried about this very thing as am new to Linux, but don't want to spend the extra £s on windows.
Thanks
Mark

 

[markh]

Sorry last post in response to ubuysa's last comment above

 

[Oussebon]

Would that necessitate including the windows OS in your specs or is there a trial version included even if you select no OS required? I'm worried about this very thing as am new to Linux, but don't want to spend the extra £s on windows.
Thanks
Mark

It's a full but unlicenced / unactivated version of Windows. Activating it with your own licence key, or formatting the drive to get rid of it to install Linux, as you prefer, is easy.

Do test the laptop out with the 'test' copy of Windows to make sure everything works fine and you're happy with it before wiping the laptop and installing Linux.

 

[comp]

Any news about the touchpad issue? It will be released in a specific version of the Linux kernel?

 

[Oussebon]

This guy said:

* If you want a working touchpad, I advise you to wait. You can follow progress on the issue here: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200787 - I've been working on figuring out what's going on, but I don't really know what I'm doing and I haven't had much help yet. Some people have posted a bounty for someone to fix the bug, which might help - but it's not solved yet.
* So far the flickering issue has only been observed on the 140hz screen. The user who reported it didn't get back after I suggested some things, so I don't know the state of that.
* The keyboard backlight isn't configurable. I know how to fix that and I'm working on writing something to talk to it, but it's not a high priority for me. You can get it to stay blue by using the BIOS, which is fine.
* The fan issue was just my laptop and PCS fixed it.

I'm still running it as my Laptop with Linux on it, but I'm using an external mouse. The battery life isn't great, but it's fast and everything else works very well.

So I'd suggest checking the bugzilla thread as a starting point

 

[josvaz]

Any news about the touchpad issue? It will be released in a specific version of the Linux kernel?

I tested kernels 4.16, 4.17 and 4.18 and all of them have the issue. I only was able to get the touchpad working with the 4.15 patched version.

Edit: ok, good news! I saw the last updates in https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200787 and it seems that it will be available in 4.19: "Just installed the latest official 4.19.0 Release Candidate v8 and it has this fix merged in there. Thanks again Simon."

In other terms, after installing tlp in linux, I have now 4 hours of battery with 25% brightness and the keyboard backlight poweroff and normal use (software development). Before installing it, with same config, only 1 hour...

 

[sonik14]

Something that may be interesting for debugging the backlight and front led problem: when the laptop is suspended without AC power, the front led poweroffs (and backlight on keyboard stays power on), but when you suspend the laptop with AC power connected, both ligths stay on....

I will try to find what is going on, maybe we find a solution to at least power off/on the front led

1) I have also spotted that issue. It occurs to Windows. Is there any solution?

2) Regarding last post, how did you manage to turn off the keyboard lights?

3) Sorry for asking again, but is there anyone with 144Hz screen here, using Linux?

Update about my issue:
The flickering has occured in Windows also, so I ve sent it to PC Speacialist with RMA. The whole procedure has cause me such a trouble.
Because the flickering occurs occasionally they are unable to spot the cause of the issue and I am two weeks without laptop.
So I am asking for anyone who has bought this laptop with 144Hz and gpu 1060 so as to verify that the issue is only on me and not a general compatibility problem with the 144Hz screen.

4) Last one, did anyone bought the laptop with the new types of chargers (120V vs 180V)? Are they lighter than the 150V I bought? Does anyone know why they changed them?

Update touchpad/gpu/flickering issue:
With kernel 4.19 the touchpad works perfectly for me.
The proprietary driver nvidia-dkms-390 for this kernel does not work.
So you need to install a newer one, but they are not proprietary yet.
After the upgrade to kernel 4.19 I faced a weird issue. Either nvidia was not able to be recognized if I was using ubuntu-drivers autoinstall, so I could not plug in the external monitor.
If after that I was installing again manually nvidia like apt install nvidia-390, then there were broken parts of the installation even when having purged before reinstalling.
So when managed to install nvidia drivers, then I have the external connection, but I nvidia settings do not launch.

Last but not least, the flickering dissapears when I use as boot param nomodeset. In this case, I am not able to use external monitors also.

 

[qqdc]

I had (*) Mint 19 on a Octane V with a 144Hz screen. I didn't see any flickering. GTX 1070, with the nvidia drivers installed. Though I was still at the point of setting the OS up, and hadn't got as far as any real usage yet.

Actually, I was wondering how I can tell it is a 144Hz screen?! Is there some test I can run to prove it is updating at 144Hz?

BTW, I didn't have any touchpad problems. (Mint 19 is apparently using kernel 4.15, so that must be why it was fine.)

(*: I had to send it back due to bad backlight bleed - but you could see that problem even in the bios screen, so that was definitely a hardware issue, and not due to any OS or driver issues.)

 

[Oussebon]

Nvidia / graphics control panel and check screen resolution and refresh rate settings.

The Octane has gsync on its 144hz screen, so it will be a different screen to the 144hz non gsync Recoil. Also the Octane chassis is Clevo, and the Recoil is Tongfang. And the Octane has S-series (desktop) CPUs, while the Recoil has -H series (laptop) CPUs with different motherboards/chipsets. And the GTX 1060 is a different Pascal chip too to the 1070 iirc.

So it's not too surprising the issues you had are different - though ofc disappointing you've had issues with the screen at all

The touch pad Linux issue is only affecting Tongfang chassis (Recoil, and presumably Vyper, Fusion) and not Clevo chassis (Octane, Defiance, and most of the others).

 

[Galzzly]

My plan was to get some flavour of Linux dual booted on my Recoil II, as it's easier to use for work. Tried out the live CD's (or more specifically live USB) for Ubuntu (hit the trackpad issue that's already been outlined here, and also found that the keyboard didn't work), and tried Fedora (didn't even get to the desktop).

I was looking for some distros that run the 4.19 kernel out of the box, so I could possibly get working straight out the box, and there really aren't many to choose from. The main 'big player' is OpenSUSE.... I'm sure I'll find some time to try it at some point. Just need to grab the latest version and create the USB boot.

 

[Galzzly]

Ok, so I couldn't get OpenSUSE to boot either the Live GNOME USB or the installer so leaving it for now. I'm a little disappointed that I've not got it running, as I wanted to make sure I had everything set up.

Does anyone have any tips for at least getting something running at working smoothly? If push comes to shove, I'll spend some time one evening with a USB keyboard and mouse, and look at booting Ubuntu again.