I’m worried about the HP firmware-bios thingy. Does it call home?
It’s for these kinds of reasons we should be demanding open source firmware from major vendors or only buying hardware from vendors that already have open source firmware (System 76, Tuxedo, etc).
Congrats! Your laptop will be even happier with a lighter but still nice-looking desktop environment like Xfce and you even have an Ubuntu flavor around it: Xubuntu.
I’ve run cinnamon on some pretty anemic systems and it was quite snappy. But I’d also been able to upgrade the memory so if it’s not upgradabe that may not be as good
I’d recommend Linux Mint with the XFCE desktop over Xubuntu, because they’re mostly the same thing but Mint doesn’t use Snap packages by default while Ubuntu does and Mint is better suited for desktop usage due to their various nice little config tools.
Be aware that some tools might be in conflict with each other. I recommend auto-cpufreq + thermald. You could add TLP to the mix, but then you need to configure it carefully to avoid conflicts.
I was referring to the spectrum computer, which can’t run Linux. It wasn’t about people on the Spectrum, which are probably all of us, in some fashion?
We use HP EliteBooks and EliteDesks extensively at work. I even used to set them up in my old job, and as far as I’m aware, it doesn’t connect to the Internet or “phone home” by default (although that could’ve changed in recent models). In any case, one of the nice things about the HP BIOSes is that it’s very configurable - you can disable the automatic BIOS update checks, network adapter etc. I forget if there was an option to just disable the network stack, but what you could do is configure the UEFI network settings so that they’re invalid - ie, set it to a random static IP + random DNS etc (eg: 0.0.0.0) so that it can’t connect even if it tried.
Reddit death > installing mint on my second PC > realising I can run most of the games I play and installing mint on my main PC > start learning Rust as a first foray into programming in a long time > realise I want to go back to uni and study info tech to get out of my shitty marketing job > get a shitty second hand laptop off my parents that struggles to run windows and install endeavourOS to try something different.
It really is a slippery slope. When does it end???
The next step, you’re handwriting a fixit code because said ancient one off laptop won’t compile linux from scratch properly and some stupid piece of essential hardware is blocking your efforts to get to the shell first time.
You still have yet to get through some pis, then a couple of OSX boxes, a Windows VM on proxmox or when you find something in particular you want that’s easier in that direction. Then move into kubernetes.
You’ll end up with a couple of everything living their best life.
realise I want to go back to uni and study info tech
I highly recommend it! College as an adult who’s been in the workforce is way better than college as a kid fresh out of highschool. Great opportunity to make some more friends, do some cool college activities, plus there’s lots of good opportunities for student pricing on stuff if you have a .edu email and its a brilliant change of pace.
It ends when you write an AI better at configuring Linux than you are, but is also very good at soothing your pride… The latter is the infamous “alignment problem”
My slippery slope started with buying an old laptop off my company and deciding to install Ubuntu on it. Now all of my devices run Linux, I switched to Android with a FOSS ROM, degoogled myself in almost every way, and I run Nextcloud on an old laptop. Feels great to really own my devices and data.
Nope, I’ve checked and I don’t have any PulseAudio, JACK, or other audio packages that could interfere. This install has only ever used PipeWire for audio.
Could be kernel related, I don’t know. That’d be quite over my head, but I’ve had this issue using both the standard linux kernel and the zen kernel.
I didn’t see anything in journalctl’s logs that relates to audio as far as I can tell.
Reinstalling alsa utils twice? Interesting and weird.
Want to know what’s even more fun? I need to re-install alsa-utils thrice now after properly enabling pipewire.service like I did on that other comment thread :P
Nope, I’ve checked and I don’t have any PulseAudio, JACK, or other audio packages
Ok good. We should be able to rule that out.
Could be kernel related, I don’t know.
What version? The command uname -r will give it to you. More info here
Also… If you run dmesg do you see any audio related devices or errors? I should’ve thought to ask about that last time.
Want to know what’s even more fun? I need to re-install alsa-utils thrice now
Whee!™ Are we having fun yet lol
That is seriously bizarre.
Did I ask what audio hardware chipset you’re using?
It should show up in dmesg output. Or alternatively look up your motherboard specs and get it that way. Assuming you’re using the built in motherboard audio and not a separate card.
Hey don’t apologize for offering free help to a stranger online! It’s much appreciated. uname -r returns “6.7.0-zen3-1-zen”, but like I said I had this issue with the standard Linux kernel as well.
Nothing stands out to me when I run dmesg in terms of errors. I’m not sure which part is the audio hardware chipset, so here is the output relating to audio. I’m running both the built-in CPU audio and GPU audio through HDMI.
Edit: Forgot to add my ALSA and Pipewire packages. For ALSA I got:
Hm. Nothing really jumping out then. I am racking my brain trying to think of anything else to look at.
Dumb question but… Shouldn’t headphones be plugged into the headphone jack, not line out?
Headphones typically have a lower impedance than, say, an amplifier.
I’m just wondering if the audio hardware checks load impedance for audio out to prevent issues and the headphones are reading too low (tens to hundreds of ohms instead of, say, 10k-100k ohm or whatever) for a line out.
I don’t know how that explains reinstalling alsa-utils twice or thrice to fix it until the next reboot. So I guess my theory isn’t all that great.
Does it make a difference if you unplug the headphones before rebooting?
Ubuntu GNU/Linux is not entirely FOSS, as it ships with non-free software by default. If you’re committed to FOSS principles, I would recommend Debian GNU/Linux instead.
However, it’s important to note that Debian GNU/Linux is not recognized by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as a completely FOSS distribution. This is because Debian includes non-free firmware packages for those who need them.
From a security perspective, this is acceptable, as the Linux kernel won’t load these packages unless the corresponding hardware is available. Debian ships with Free Software by default, and I would suggest giving it a try if possible!
It’s essentially the same as Ubuntu, but more freedom-respecting.
Completely FOSS isn’t completely self-sustainable either in the real world - you’d need to be using something like RISC-V with coreboot and a completely open hardware stack with zero proprietary firmware blobs in the mix + not to mention running a fully self-hosted email/cloud stack. And if you’re using a mobile phone - even a dumb one or a pinephone - then you’re not fully FOSS. I’m not aware of anyone who’s fully FOSS out there, except maybe RMS?
TBH, once stop running Windows, everything gets easier. And if your running Ubuntu or Mint, it’s not even that painful to start and hardware more or less just works.
Debian is nice for servers, but it’s a little out of date for desktop. YMMV, welcome to the club and ignore the snobs ❤️
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