Arch Linux

ilembitov

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 124

HP Envy 13

Hi, all

I just bought HP Envy 13 a month ago and was waiting for Ubuntu 11.04 to release - thought, I'd get less problems that way. Turns out, I'm outta luck, so I'll probably have to get back to Arch Linux - in my experience maintaining a heavily-modified system is easier with Arch.

So, I wanted to ask for an advice from those who run Arch on this machine:

1. vga_switcheroo. From what I have googled, each instruction seems to be model-specific. Could you point to something relevant to HP Envy 13?

2.Synaptics Clickpad. All the guides in Google cover the right-click issue. That's not a problem for me - you just tap with two fingers and it's two clicks. What's worse is drag'n'drop - it doesn't recognise it.

3. webcam - doesn't work.

4. A lot of people talk about BIOS issues with Envy machines. Like, thermal sensors are not ACPI-compliant, so Linux can't talk to them - that results in overheating. Is that true?

Thanks for any advice you might have.

stupidSheep

Member

Registered: 2011-05-08

Posts: 1

Re: HP Envy 13

Hi

I just stumbled over your post on Google.

I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 with Hp Envy 13, I didn't test any of the following things on 11.04.

You can upgrade your BIOS, but you need a working Windows installation to do so (to be honest - i don't find the download link on the HP). My Envy is still alive (not overheated, cooling fan is regulated by Linux), it even shutdown once because it got too hot (I put it in my bag and it was still running... / I think 90° C? But I am not sure of the message anymore - the message showed up at the next start and was still "in" BIOS).

Synaptics: I can do drag'n'drop, see http://linuxenvy.blogspot.com/2011/01/t … fixed.html
Switching between the graphic cards, see http://linuxenvy.blogspot.com/2011/01/t … phics.html
The blog is for HP Envy 14, but worked for my Envy 13 as well.

My webcam is working fine, in fact, I'm using it right now in Skype. I'm not aware that I did something special to get it working, as far as I remember it worked out of the box.

I hope it works on 11.04 as well, can you give a feedback if it worked or not? (Because I will change to Linux Mint 11 when it is released)

Regards stupidSheep

ilembitov

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 124

Re: HP Envy 13

Man, thank you a lot. I think, I'll try installing either ArchLinux or Ubuntu in a couple of days and I'll report back. Damn, that's really good news.