Arch Linux

edoardo849

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2016-11-06

Posts: 2

Website

[SOLVED] KabyLake - Razer Blade Stealth audio problem

Wanted to share a solution for an audio problem found on the new Razer Blade Stealth (Intel’s KabyLake CPU 2016) with Windows dual-boot.

The Problem: no audio from speakers, cracking noises and bad audio quality on the headphones, especially when using the touchpad.

Debugging: Installed every possible Linux distro (Arch, Ubuntu… everything) with all Kernels from 4.4 up to 4.8, but problem remained, so not distro-related. Tried to modify Alsa settings and PulseAudio, nothing worked. I got a hint when it worked fine after the first installation and then stopped working after booting to Windows.

The solution: If booting to Windows, just do a complete shut-down (no restart). This solves the issue: it’s a hack but it works.

Also and not related: Antergos Gnome is so far the only Desktop environment that works out-of-the-box with a retina display: it doesn't have any scaling problems seen on KDE or Unity.

SyXbiT

Member

From: Seattle, WA

Registered: 2008-06-28

Posts: 177

Website

Re: [SOLVED] KabyLake - Razer Blade Stealth audio problem

Thanks for the post. The Razer Blade Steatlh with KabyLake seems like a great machine. Could you provide a mini-review on it (specifically with respect to Linux) ?
Does everything work correctly (now that sound is fixed). Do you have the QHD, or 4k screen? How is HiDPI working? What's battery life like on Linux. I've always found Linux on laptops to be far less battery efficient.

edoardo849

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2016-11-06

Posts: 2

Website

Re: [SOLVED] KabyLake - Razer Blade Stealth audio problem

So I'm a software dev and experimented with Ubuntu a lot, although had a MacBookPro as my main machine. As a machine, I can say that I don't see any particular change in the RBS if compared to the build quality of an Apple device (plus, it's more powerful and less expensive). Full thumbs up there: I have the entry-point model (QHD).

As for Linux, I've tried Ubuntu (Unity, KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, Mint...) but had problems in scaling on all of them and quite a few bugs. Was tempted by Arch with Manjaro but couldn't even start the bootloader. Then tried Antergos with Gnome and I was blown away. HiDPI works out of the box and it's quite stable: also the KillerWireless works even with the bootloader so no need to buy nasty ethernet adaptors there.

I do have to say "quite" stable: the webcam is still buggy on some apps (Hangouts) and there are issues when you close the lid (better to press the power button to suspend first). Apart from this, being used to rebuild the kernel after each Ubuntu release, I do have to say I'm quite bored by the stability of Antergos ;-)

Battery usage is quite ok actually, haven't tested against Windows but it's a solid 5-6 hours with real usage (Spotify, Vim, 20 tabs open, the usual shebang...). Overall for me it's a buy, I've waited 6 months for the RBS to be available in the UK and I'm not regretting the choice.