mint 18.1 (wifi problems, keyboard problems) (Octane)

[qqdc]

ANSWER SUMMARY: You need kernel 4.8 or later to work with the AC-8265 wifi card in the Octane. Most linux distros are still on 4.4 or earlier, so you will need a wired ethernet connection to do the initial updates before you can get wifi working. However Ubuntu 16.04.2 (released in Feb) should work out of the box. Mint 18.2 will too, and is due end-June.
----------------------------------------------------------

The mint 18.1 (aka Ubuntu 16.04 + some updates) install, from usb drive, looked to be going really smooth, and quick. (This is my first SSD machine.) But it has hit two notable problems so far:

* Keyboard sometimes not working. This appears to be this Ubuntu bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/1386005 Every 2nd reboot it starts in "quiet splash" model, and I can input the encryption key, and boot works. However I also seem to be mis-typing passwords at least half the time. Might just be that I need to get used to the new keyboard...

* No wifi. I've been through the bios and there seems to be no switch to turn it on/off (I did disable boot from ethernet - could that be related?) At this point I'm not even able to confirm there is a wifi card in there! (But the spec says "INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0", and I'm sure PCS couldn't have missed testing it.)

I found https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...on-Defiance-II-17-3-quot-getting-wifi-working which referred to https://askubuntu.com/questions/729212/install-intel-ac-8260-wireless-drivers-offline That is from a year ago, so shouldn't be the same bug. But I'll try tomorrow connecting over wired ethernet, and then add an update here if installing latest updates fixes things.

Oh, I wondered if I might be in aeroplane mode. Fn+F11 does nothing (the aeroplane light stays off). Is aeroplane mode a bios thing, or a Windows thing; and if the former is there a way to confirm its current state from within Linux?

BTW, the only Fn key that works is Fn with 1, which toggles between normal-level of fan and a loud roar.

 

[qqdc]

UPDATE: wired ethernet worked fine. Updated all packages. Reboot and both problems remain. Enabled nvideo proprietary driver, and intel-microcode. and kernel 4.4.0-77-98. Reboot, and both problems still there.

So, I've updated to the 4.10.0.20 kernel (See http://linuxbsdos.com/2016/12/19/how-to-upgrade-the-kernel-in-linux-mint-18-1-from-4-4-to-4-8/ for how to do this.)
First problem still there, but now I have all the wifi networks listed, and working!

As for my mis-typing problems: I think the touchpad ought to be smaller and in the centre of the keyboard. At the moment it is half under my right hand, and the ball of my hand keeps knocking it. If I lift my hand up and to the right to avoid it, I'm typing awkwardly.

 

[qqdc]

Just an update, for anyone considering installing Mint 18.1 on a recent PCS machine: almost everything I've tried to have worked so far. I upgraded to 4.10.0.20 kernel, I chose proprietary nvidia drivers, and all the codecs. (Unless otherwise stated, "working" means out of the box, default installation, except for those choices.)

flv, mp4, m4v are all playing. mp3 and ogg are playing. Speakers and headphones work. A wacom tablet with stylus worked, including pressure sensitivity.
My external drives worked, including prompting for the decryption key. USB drives also fine. SD card from camera worked.
The FN keys for brightness and volume and mute are working, and also for display/LCD (F2 and F7 - though they might have been doing the same thing). (HDMI connection to a TV worked).
USB mouse and USB keyboard worked immediately when plugged in.

I can't get any bluetooth devices to be detected (tried headphones, and speakers). Tried the default "blueberry", and then tried installing "blueman".

ipad won't work properly. This is because Apple seem to deliberately break it with each ios release, and I made the mistake a few months back of upgrading to ios 10.2. There are some complex build instructions for compiling latest libimobiledevice, which is supposed to work. Hopefully they will be in the deb package soon.

I can't test the Display Ports, or the USB type-C ports.

CPU is 7700K, 4.2Ghz, with GTX1070: I benchmarked with Ungine Valley: "Extreme HD" it did 68.7 fps (14.1 to 120), 2875 score. (1920x1080, 8xAA, full screen). (132.1 FPS, 5527 score, on 1280x720 AA windowed.) With "Heaven" on the extreme preset it did FPS=98.1, Score=2372. 1600x900 8xAA windowed. From what I can tell, those scores seem reasonable, for no overclocking.
The peak GPU temperature I saw was 84° (CPU in the mid 70s). The noisiest fan level never triggered; if I used FN+1 to toggle maximum fan on then the GPU temperatures dropped to around 70° within 2 or 3 minutes. (I thought there was supposed to be some fan settings in the bios, but I cannot see any.)

Finally, the only complex config I've needed is to be able to type in the disk decryption key during boot-up (the first of the two problems in my original post). As root: edit /etc/default/grub. Remove both quiet and splash, leaving "" for GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. Then save it and run "update-grub".

 

[Tony1044]

Just an update, for anyone considering installing Mint 18.1 on a recent PCS machine: almost everything I've tried to have worked so far. I upgraded to 4.10.0.20 kernel, I chose proprietary nvidia drivers, and all the codecs. (Unless otherwise stated, "working" means out of the box, default installation, except for those choices.)

flv, mp4, m4v are all playing. mp3 and ogg are playing. Speakers and headphones work. A wacom tablet with stylus worked, including pressure sensitivity.
My external drives worked, including prompting for the decryption key. USB drives also fine. SD card from camera worked.
The FN keys for brightness and volume and mute are working, and also for display/LCD (F2 and F7 - though they might have been doing the same thing). (HDMI connection to a TV worked).
USB mouse and USB keyboard worked immediately when plugged in.

I can't get any bluetooth devices to be detected (tried headphones, and speakers). Tried the default "blueberry", and then tried installing "blueman".

ipad won't work properly. This is because Apple seem to deliberately break it with each ios release, and I made the mistake a few months back of upgrading to ios 10.2. There are some complex build instructions for compiling latest libimobiledevice, which is supposed to work. Hopefully they will be in the deb package soon.

I can't test the Display Ports, or the USB type-C ports.

CPU is 7700K, 4.2Ghz, with GTX1070: I benchmarked with Ungine Valley: "Extreme HD" it did 68.7 fps (14.1 to 120), 2875 score. (1920x1080, 8xAA, full screen). (132.1 FPS, 5527 score, on 1280x720 AA windowed.) With "Heaven" on the extreme preset it did FPS=98.1, Score=2372. 1600x900 8xAA windowed. From what I can tell, those scores seem reasonable, for no overclocking.
The peak GPU temperature I saw was 84° (CPU in the mid 70s). The noisiest fan level never triggered; if I used FN+1 to toggle maximum fan on then the GPU temperatures dropped to around 70° within 2 or 3 minutes. (I thought there was supposed to be some fan settings in the bios, but I cannot see any.)

Finally, the only complex config I've needed is to be able to type in the disk decryption key during boot-up (the first of the two problems in my original post). As root: edit /etc/default/grub. Remove both quiet and splash, leaving "" for GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. Then save it and run "update-grub".

I am all for choice but this is still one of the things holding Linux back from the mainstream on the desktop.

And all you usually get is - try a different version but to your average Jill and Joe User that's not what they want or need - they want to boot to install media and have the basic functionality of things (like WiFi and Bluetooth) working out of the box.

I know the hardware vendors can do more but still. It still needs to be easier.

 

[qqdc]

The two problems I had were because I was using latest hardware, and because I chose to encrypt all disks (not a default option in the install). Don't do those things if you want the easy life.

Personally, over the past 10 years, I've always had more trouble getting new hardware to work with Microsoft OSes:
* Our Microsoft machine also couldn't read from the ipad - it spent a few minutes doing an upgrade, that allowed me to get the most recent files off, but anything older than 2 months it choked on.
* I've had trouble with video and audio formats before - I often end up having to install some dodgy-looking 3rd party video player that wants to play ads, or keep nagging me to upgrade to the "pro" version. My ipad required a paid app to play all my video formats.
* Does Windows even come with secure disk encryption? (By the strictest definition the answer is definitely "no" - if a 3rd party cannot audit the source, then it has to be treated as insecure.)
* The same Wacom tablet still doesn't work perfectly under Windows. Cannot tell you why. It is closed source, so people with the itch cannot scratch it, so I am not optimistic it will ever fully work.

(I have many more examples of hardware that has worked first time, literally plug and play, with Linux, and has required complex installation, and messing around with drivers, on Windows.)

Executive Summary: all the choices suck, but I choose Linux 'cos it sucks least.

 

[Tony1044]

The two problems I had were because I was using latest hardware, and because I chose to encrypt all disks (not a default option in the install). Don't do those things if you want the easy life.

Personally, over the past 10 years, I've always had more trouble getting new hardware to work with Microsoft OSes:
* Our Microsoft machine also couldn't read from the ipad - it spent a few minutes doing an upgrade, that allowed me to get the most recent files off, but anything older than 2 months it choked on.
* I've had trouble with video and audio formats before - I often end up having to install some dodgy-looking 3rd party video player that wants to play ads, or keep nagging me to upgrade to the "pro" version. My ipad required a paid app to play all my video formats.
* Does Windows even come with secure disk encryption? (By the strictest definition the answer is definitely "no" - if a 3rd party cannot audit the source, then it has to be treated as insecure.)
* The same Wacom tablet still doesn't work perfectly under Windows. Cannot tell you why. It is closed source, so people with the itch cannot scratch it, so I am not optimistic it will ever fully work.

(I have many more examples of hardware that has worked first time, literally plug and play, with Linux, and has required complex installation, and messing around with drivers, on Windows.)

Executive Summary: all the choices suck, but I choose Linux 'cos it sucks least.

Ok...I will respond to some of that.

Latest hardware - I've hit some issues but it's rare.

Disk encryption...why would that cause problems with hardware and/or drivers? I've used many forms of encryption over the years such as BeCrypt (awful), BitLocker (ok if you trust MS won't sell out backdoors to the TLA agencies) and TrueCrypt to name just three. None have ever caused me hardware/driver issues so not sure how that computes.

And again with the FUD - the ability to externally verify something is not the same as saying it doesn't exist.

What do you mean by anything over two months it choked on?

VLC media player - has all the CODECS you want and more

WACOM tablets suck donkey balls. I had one that worked for years on Windows Vista and 7 but completely failed to work on OSX. However it would quite frequently just stop and require the software removing and reinstalling. Yet I have others (I'd have to check the vendor as I forget off hand) that have worked flawlessly for all that time and continue to on Windows 10. But yeah...must be Windows.

Seriously - YOU choose Linux (and for the record I have servers running it here too, as well as running a CentOS VM) but I refer to my initial point - your average, non technical user, does not want to install an OS that they then have to spend an age finding fixes for on forums that generally have some of the most unfriendly users (even Linus is a ranty, sweary, <insert your own wording here> when things aren't going how he wants to control them*) I've ever encountered.

They want to buy a Dell/HP/A.N. Other that they unbox, connect to their WiFi and get going with. Whether you like the ethos of MS or not**. Whether you like closed source or not. You cannot really argue the fact that Windows does that.

*Yes - make robust points but he verges of egregious bullying and swearing is rarely needed in those situations
** No - I don't particularly like a lot of the direction MS has taken/continues to take but lets at least deal with facts and steer away from the whole "crappy bloatware I last used 20 years ago that must still be crappy bloatware" attitude that tends to be pervasive in the anti-MS world (I know you didn't say that - I am generalising).

 

[Stephen M]

It depends what you use the computer for, if you have a lot of software that is need of drivers then Linux can be a chore but for basic user it is not a big problem. I have run several distro on a number of machines and only encountered one problem that took an age to fix and that was common to the particular GPU being used on the Optimus VII. Ubuntu worked out of the boy on my intial Voyage and it only needed one driver change for the GPU to be fine on my Octane, I have also put things like Salent (good for old machines), Mint and Fedora on to Compaq laptops without problems. Linux can be awkward at times but is much better than a few years ago and even for non technical users not a major issue. I also find that printers, scanners etc work out the box fine on Linux.

 

[qqdc]

@Tony1044: My post was intended to be useful for people thinking about installing Mint on their shiny, new, bleeding-edge, PCS hardware (and should be relevant for any similar Ubuntu- or Debian-based distro). Holy war discussions would be best carried out in another forum, and I've really nothing to add beyond the executive summary in my previous message

 

[Tony1044]

@Tony1044: My post was intended to be useful for people thinking about installing Mint on their shiny, new, bleeding-edge, PCS hardware (and should be relevant for any similar Ubuntu- or Debian-based distro). Holy war discussions would be best carried out in another forum, and I've really nothing to add beyond the executive summary in my previous message

Funny...since when did responding to your comments become a "holy war"? All I did was just that - respond to your comments.

I am genuinely glad you got it working ok but my point still stands - Linux [on the desktop] has no future for the masses until it becomes an OS that can be installed by your average, non technical, user trivially in 99.9% of cases.