[SOLVED] Santa paid me a visit ...

[GreyGeek]

and he left an HP 17.3" laptop. 12GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, i5 CPU, Intel iRIS xe GPU running Win10 Home. Completing the install only took 1.5 hours and I lost count of the number of reboots, and each one took at least 5-10 minutes. I didn't count how many times an install procedure counted up from 0% to 100% and then set at 100% for 5 or more minutes. This morning I spent two hours deleting adware and other bloat. Adobe is still up to their old tricks, just like McAfee, which is to not display their app in the "Add & Remove" section of the Control Panel. I'll consult with Chris Titus on that one. The rest deleted nicely.

Then I activated WSL2, which is a task I doubt that 90+% of Win10 users could do. Then I installed Ubuntu 20.04, but only the console. It is really fast, but there is not much to do in a console. I ran "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt install" and 281 packages were installed. Really fast, as you'd suspect for a console. I looked for the kdeplasma package but it wasn't installed. So, for grins and giggles I rand "sudo apt install muon", a KDE package. Down came the entire KDE Plasma desktop. Unfortunately, xserver or a display manager wasn't among them so attempts to start KDE failed. I deleted the Ubuntu 20.04 console.

My next task was to install KDE Neon in a Hypervisor. The HP BIOS had the CPU hypervisor enabled so I followed the instructions here to install the Hyper-V Manager. It involves the use of a script which is supposed to be put in a file titled "Hyper-V Enabler.bat". Following their instructions one ends up with "Hyper-V Enabler.bat.txt", but the last extension doesn't display in the file manager and I couldn't find a way to rename the file and delete the ".txt" extension, so the right mouse context never included "Run with administration privileges". So, I opted to use the second method, which is to download the bat file directly. That worked nicely.

Once that was installed I stepped through the instructions here to install KDE Neon on a 96Gb vdisk.
It runs really fast. I didn't use BTRFS and my "backing up" will be the VM "Save" option.

Win10 fast? Not so much. This is Windows. Average boot to working disk is about 4-5 minutes.
The Edge browser was so ad invested it crept along the web. I deleted it from the docker and the menus. I wish I could uninstall it but M$ won't let me. I installed the latest FireFox and it is blazing fast and light. No ads.

I am going to play with Win10 until the next Kubuntu LTS comes out, then I am going to wipe Win10 and replace it with Kubuntu.
I guess Win10 is OK if your time isn't valuable and you have nothing else to do.

[claydoh]

Yes, Windows 10 is still slow on an HDD, not so bad at all on an SSD. You don't have to hold your nose quite as long, lol, but updates and crap still take forever.
HP still seems to be on the bloatware gravy train
At least the Lenovo laptops have had very little to remove, just the Mcafee iirc.
My HP desktop had much more to de-crapify, I think.

Now, my Christmas toy is going to be a bit of a challenge, by design.
An Arm-based Lenovo 10e Chrome OS tablet for $99 on holiday door buster sale, an educational-focused device with only 32gb of emmc, no sdcard slot, and a single USB-C port. Simple and rugged.
Basically 1/2 to 2/3 of a Lenovo Duet 2-in1 Chromebook, depending on how you look at it.
I have a Linux rom that boots on the tablet, but graphics are mostly broken, so I may have to get my hands dirty and try building from scratch as the rom is designed for the Duet, and the 10e has a slightly different processor and graphics.
Sure, I should have saved for a Duet at closer to $300, but where is the fun in that? Plus, selling my old Chromebook has paid for the tablet, with enough left over for an OEM keyboard case (on sale of course)

[jglen490]

It's been a year since I got my HP Envy last Christmas! I kept Windows 10 for as long as it took me to register the warranty. Then I installed Kubuntu 20.04 on a new M.2 SSD, and the Optane drive (with Win10) went to the parts box. Now that the warranty is expired, the Optane drive can go elsewhere. I really like the HP Envy, even though I don't use the touch screen/tablet mode all that often, but the platform itself is really solid. I don't miss my desktop at all, and in fact the wife is using my prior desktop unit, as her old AMD A4 finally bit the dust.

[GreyGeek]

Claydoh, I like the way you think!
I would have built another system from parts but my hands shake too much to do that.

As a point of comparison, and to see if Neon had any hardware problems, I changed the BIOS to allow booting from a USB stick and booted a KDE Neon LiveUSB. From the USB stick KDE Neon was about twice as fast as the KDE Neon on my 10 year old Acer with 16Gb RAM, i7 CPU, and an SSD. I was amazed. This HP has only 12GB and an i5. The GPU is iRIS Xe, second generation. Fairly fast. I did encounter one problem. While Neon detects and connects to the Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Adapter and runs nicely, after a while it disconnects on its own and the access point list disappears as well. I tried some systemctl restarts of network services, but only a reboot brought the wifi connectivity back. Something to research!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I had to edit the BIOS to change the boot order so the USB stick could boot. After I finished experimenting around with the LiveUSB I rebooted back into Win11 (converted to 11 when I installed the Hyper-V) and was met by BitLocker, which refused to continue the bootup until I supplied the key, which I got from my M$ account.

[claydoh]

For the RTL8821CE, try rtl8821ce-dkms. it may work better. I had problems on my PC with this card, but mostly bluetooth as I seldom use wifi as it is wired. I ended replacing the card.
There is also another driver option, that is fairly easy to install: https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce

Full hardware support for RTL8821CE is in kernels 5.12 and up, so Neon should have theoretically better ootb support for it when Ubuntu updates the LTS kernel to 5.13, in February-ish

[GreyGeek]

Thanks for the tip, Claydo, I think I'll need it..,

Yesterday I decided to run a LiveUSB of Neon on the new HP laptop. The HP wouldn't boot off the USB port until I entered the BIOS and changed the boot order. I did that. Except for the wifi disconnecting randomly, and requiring a reboot to turn it back on, it ran very well. Your tip should fix that because I am currently decrypting the C: drive. Why? Because since changing the boot order every time I boot up BitLocker asked for my encryption key and the only option available to stop that request appears to be decrypting the HDD. I can find no option to tell it to accept the new BIOS setting and generate a new key. Apparently the update to 11 wasn't complete and with winver my Win11 states the version is 21H2 (OS build 22000.372) but drilling down through the Control Panel several things list the OS as Version 10.


That did it. BitLocker, a mixed OS environment and MS Account problems with my Minecraft Launcher which isn't in my account despite an email from the Mojang transfer process saying it completed successfully.

I've had enough of Win10-11.

I'm tired of wearing handcuffs and having my hands spanked. I'm tired of having vital information concealed from me and available through obscure options. People complain about using the terminal in Linux but the only way to get anything done is to use Powershell or Windows terminal in WinXX or the "Run Window". I had begun to think about which anti-virus is better, Kaperskey or McAfee or Defender, a decision I hadn't had to make running Kubuntu or Neon. Port scans showed that my router firewall (DD-WRT) kept WinXX equally well secured as it does my Acer install of Neon.

I'm wiping WinXX off that 1 TB HDD and putting Neon on it.
The decryption is done, and so am I ... with Windows.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the incessant and time consuming "updates".
Updates before you shut down. Updates after you boot up. Updates after you log in. Updates when you do something. Always with "You're xx% there" and ending with "You're 100% there", which stays on the screen for several minutes.

[Snowhog]

Well, you know, with Windows you have to 'update the updates before you can update.'

[MoonRise]

Snowhog, I know that was to be funny, but that really isn't too far from the truth. They even cause some programs to not function until you update.

[claydoh]

Don't forget the updating while you shut down, and updating when you boot, so that you can update the updates, so you can update.

That happened once, I had for some reason been in the Windows Insider thingy and of course hadn't booted Windows for something like 6 months.

[jlittle]

I'm wiping WinXX off that 1 TB HDD and putting Neon on it.
The decryption is done, and so am I ... with Windows.

I suggest making a note of the Windows activation key before wiping Windows. You might have to install a utility to get it.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the incessant and time consuming "updates".
Updates before you shut down. Updates after you boot up. Updates after you log in. Updates when you do something. Always with "You're xx% there" and ending with "You're 100% there", which stays on the screen for several minutes.

As well, that chore doesn't cover installed software. Lots of software wants to run their own updates, and nag the user about them. Packaging tools like chocolatey and cygwin help, but you have to keep doing their updates.

If one really has to run Windows, running it in a VM is gratifying because the update nonsense just churns away in its window while you use the host OS normally. There is a learning curve (at least there was for me) but IIRC GreyGeek you've used qemu/kvm in the past.

[GreyGeek]

I greet you all from my shiny, new KDE Neon 5.23 installation on my shiny, new HP 17-cn1xxx laptop. I also found out who Santa is ... my son and daughter-in-law. Who woulda known?

Snowhog, I think you are under estimating the number of updates required to do the update.
jlittle, Ya, I'm familiar with QEMU/KVM and may install Kubuntu's next LTS release in it to try it out, but other than that I don't have a need for a VM.

I split the 1 TB HDD into three partitions, two BTRFS, one for the ROOTFS and the other for BACKUP. The 3rd is a 25GB swap partition just in case. I've got my "native" IPV6 protocol from Hurricane Electric running nicely on my wifi's MAC address using 192.168.11.100. Thunderbird email is up and running and contacts have been imported. IMAP pulls down my emails from the server so I didn't have to export/import them. But, after I installede FF95 I had to import my links. I am going to preserve my sda SSD from the Acer and put it into a USB HDCADDY.

The iRIS Xe in this box is about 3X faster than the GT 650M in my Acer. Both wallpapers are the same Starship jpg, but the visual difference is stunning.

Gotta go. The Wife V1.0 and I are going to watch some Hallmark Xmas love movies.

[GreyGeek]

I got up this morning and walked gingerly to the new HP laptop and turned it on. I had imported a large quantity of my data and packages yesterday and was anticipating completing the job today. When the desktop appeared I fired up FireFox and .... it couldn't find the Internet! IPV6 wasn't working without an Internet connection.

Checking the Network Manager I saw that ALL the access points (usually 30-40) were absent. Nothing was showing. Restarting the Network Manger did nothing. Rebooting, I got partial internet connectivity back. Only the 2.4GHz connections were listing EXCEPT for my "GreyGeek". I connected to my GS10 hotspot (72Mb/s) and got a good connection. I installed the rtl8821ce dmsk file and rebooted. No connection.

TMP or EFI? I turned both of them off in the BIOS (there was no "Legacy" option in BIOS) and attempted to install Neon any way possible to avoid TPM and EFI. All attempts failed. (I'm leaving out a lot of stuff here,but essentially with TMP and EFI disabled or hidden they appeared to still be controlling any installation attempt.) Defeated, I turned them back on and did the usual GPT install with the 315Mb /boot/efi unformatted grub-bios boot install, and created 468GB of BTRFS as ROOTFS attached to "/", and 444 GB of BTRFS as BACKUP unmounted, and 24GB as a swap partition. After boot up I was able to connect to my access point. It stayed up for maybe 30 minutes before disappearing. "Oh well", I thought, "I'll just connect to my phone hotspot".... No joy.

I'm posting this from my Acer.

Luckily, my time isn't worth anything and I have nothing else to do.

PS: Something else I learned while working on this laptop is that it does NOT have an eth0 port. Too bad. That would have allow me to solve my problems.

[Snowhog]

GreyGeek From claydoh's post #5:

Full hardware support for RTL8821CE is in kernels 5.12 and up, so Neon should have theoretically better ootb support for it when Ubuntu updates the LTS kernel to 5.13, in February-ish

But still, sucks to be experiencing any issue with a spanking new laptop.

[GreyGeek]

During my first install of Neon I tried the dkms of rtl8821ce. It worked just like rtl8821ce... on for 15-20 minutes and then gone.

Adding to my previous post:
My wifi connection was gone. Not only that, there was no trace of rtl8821ce on my system. I did find rtw88_8821ce and so for grins and giggles I modprobed it. BINGO! There be Internet! Now, to load stuff and make as many changes as I can before it dies again.

PS: The wifi connection lasted about 30 minutes and disappeared, along with all the other accesss points. However, the rtw88_8821ce mod and its associates are still loaded.

I took a look at the modinfo for rtw88_8821ce and there were no parm's shown. And, rtl8821ce is not on my system.

EDIT-EDIT: An hour and a half later I make the following observation: After a fresh boot, when the network manager internet connection dies and access points are no longer supplied, I can do "sudo modprobe rtw88_882ce" and the manager pops back to life, only to die again 30 or so minutes later. Using "sudo modprobe -r rtw88_882ce" to remove the module from the processes and then reinstalling it again does ... nothing. So, to continue to use this laptop I'll have to reboot and run modprobe every 30 minutes or so. This is about how often I had to reboot Win95 back in 1997, before I switched to RH5.0.

[GreyGeek]

Good news and bad news.
The first good news is that I remembered the USB3.0 Eth0 dongle I used when my Acer was wounded by lightening. The Acer healed itself and I stored the dongle. I remembered and retrieved it from storage. The HP does not have an Eth0 port. There is only two USB3 ports on the HP ... standby for Raptor engine static fire test ... BEAUTIFUL STATIC FIRING!! ... so if I plug the dongle in I am left without any free USB3 ports.

I plugged in my rarely used 1to4 USB3 expander dongle and put the Eth0 dongle in the expander. I used it for sneaker net transfer of my files and settings. So, if push comes to shove I can run a cat6 cable from my cable modem to my HP via J hooks along the ceiling and use Eth0 for my Internet connection. The Eth0 gives me 350Mb/s.

The second good news is that I used the method described here. So far my wifi connection has been running over two hours without disconnecting. It remains connected even under load. The rtl882ce and the rtw88_882ce drivers connected for only 20 minutes or less before disconnecting. I used the dkms driver in the repository and it disconnected in the same time frame.

The bad news is that my wifi connection is to the wifi inside the cable modem. I can not see my "GreyGeek" & "GreyGeek5G" connections from my Buffalo 600N router that uses the DD-WRT firmware and firewall.
The modem 2.4GHz connection gives me a speed of around 35Mb/s. The 5GHz connection gives a speed of 135Mb/s. BUT, I have no access to its inner settings.

So, even if my wifi driver fails I now have options to maintain an Internet connection. I can continue with the setup and configuration of my HP-17cn1xxx laptop.