Folks,

I suspect I know the answer to this is no having done some Googling around, but one lives in hope...

I bought a really nice little HP Envy Laptop for my partner to run Linux on. It's got an AMD processor and Radeon graphics card. I've not bought anything with AMD for years, but this was a great price and is, potentially, a fab laptop.

However, after trying Mageia, open Suse (and just now Debian on a Live stick with Legacy mode enabled) I cannot get the machine even close to booting into Linux after installing seemingly successfully I just get protection faults, kernel panics, freezing, start job pending for for udev, dependency failed for HOME and other messages I've never encountered before.

Dopes anyone know what the situation is with Radeon Card and/or HP Envys?

This thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ed-4175560572/

Makes me feel I have bought a pup.

I would settle for any KDE based distro right now if it worked.

Many thanks!

Hi...

Out of curiosity, did you give Kubuntu a try? Also, take a look at the information here and here for help for dealing with UEFI.

Regards...

Hi,

I didn't try Kubuntu, no. Is there any reason to think that would be more successful? (Sorry if that sounds sarcastic, it's not meant to.)

The issue is not to do with UEFI though. That side of it works just fine.

Other than you were wanting something with KDE, no. But it might be worth a shot.

Regards...

DiBosco,

There is some very detailed information from Michael Jones on the HP Envy 15-ah150sa model which should help you and others in this position:

http://www.mikejonesey.co.uk/linux/hp-envy-15-ah150sa

MJ has actually managed to get this laptop to run Debian, but only after a LOT of hard work.

If you do not feel up to doing a lot of command line work involving firmware modifications and messing about with a more recent kernel then I suggest that you return the laptop and get something that is more Linux friendly.

I believe that a BIOS update may also be needed.

You can obviously contact MJ for further info if you wish.

amdgpu driver:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/75625...n-ubuntu-16-04

Thanks for that, Beachboy, I had seen that and downloaded Debian Jessie which didn't work. Although I then retried it after having read that article and installed in failsafe and it kind of worked for a couple of boots until I updated the kernel which borked it. And wifi didn't work.

I'm trying Mageia Cauldron which might have more up to date drivers. Although that goes against that article (or something else I read somewhere) saying slightly older kernels probably work better.

Returning the laptop is a non-starter as I wiped Windows. I've done hundreds of computers with laptops over the years and never had any issues remotely like this. It might just have to sit in a corner until Linux catches up.

Update: Mageia 6 kernel panics. Bum.

DiBosco,

Since you have wiped Windows, I would recommend contacting MJ and ask him for his advice:

http://www.mikejonesey.co.uk/contact

He has managed to get Debian to work (see attached photo), so I am pretty sure that you can do the same after a lot of tweaking of BIOS, firmware, drivers etc.

MJ is using kernel 4.4.5.

I guess you noticed that power-saving modes have to be disabled in order for wifi and sound to work?

Good luck with your efforts.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Try Manjaro Linux, also, just worth a shot.


https://manjaro.github.io/download/

Actually, Jessie 8.5 works with the old kernel other than wi-fi. If you use the later kernel that will work with the wi-fi, it falls over in a heap! I've written to Mike to see whether I can have his kernel which I assume would solve the issues. I have a machine that is six months older than his, so I am betting it already has the later BIOS.

DiBosco,

Please keep us posted.

Mageia Cauldron gives me some success. I can usually boot into it and wi-fi, sound etc works. Sometimes I get a kernel panic or it gives a message that it is trying to fix a recursive fault and to reboot.

I think that booting with either wi-fi already working and configured or an Ethernet cable plugged in makes it more reliable.

I wonder whether it's because the very latest graphics drivers in Mageia 6 RC are more up to date that it making it far more likely to boot and more reliable. I can even go in and out of suspend sometimes with this version.

In the end it was easy to fix...once you knew how!

Apparently this laptop has SSDTs which are incompatible with Linux, so you need to add

acpi_no_static_ssdt as a kernel parameter at boot

To do that:

Just edit /etc/default/grub

And add/edit (as applicable) the line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="blah blah"

Then run

update-grub2

All as root, obv.

Thanks for the update and solution. Interesting problem.