[CoLoCo] Dell Linux Support and Hardware bug woes

[Andrew Barney]

Thanks Andy,

I think you may have misunderstood some of the things i said, but you do
make one good point. The fact that i bought  Dell in the first place may
have a mistake, though at first it was a very good laptop in my opinion
actually. It's just this damned intel processor. More of a problem of
getting a cheaper model rather than a fleshed out good one as many people
with HP and Lenovos and Acer laptops all with similar processors with
baytrail era processors all have commented on my ubuntu bug that they too
have had the same freezing bugs. So my problem is not necessarily Dell
specific.

Actually my last laptop was an HP. It was ok. But to be honest i looked at
all the HP laptops at the time and i was not impressed. Which is why i
deiced to give Dell a shot. I have heard bad things about dell in the past,
but i've also heard good things, so it seemed like slightly risky but not
anymore than anyone else. I'll think about HP again in the future, but in
my opinion their quality over the years has significantly gone down. I
still remember when they merged with Compaq and almost overnight their
computers were crap. Compaq influence probably doesn't have an effect now
though. Though having said that HP still is my only printer brand of
choice. Their Linux drivers are top notch and they have good quality
printers in my opinion.

You comments make it seem like you think i bought this machine with
windows. I did not. I specifically bought this particular laptop because
dell pre-installed ubuntu on it. Though you are right that buying a windows
machine and wiping it is not all that difficult. (at least it was before
those newer windows-linked BIOS became popular).

Actually i have already updated my BIOS to the newest version thanks to the
suggestion in the Ubuntu bug tracker thread on the bug i originally opened.
It didn't change anything. I think there actually is a new BIOS update
thingy that i could have used from within Ubuntu, but i actually had
updated it from a flash drive as my EFI BIOS has some nice features about
it. This is the first computer that i've owned that has a EFI BIOS though.

And i'm actually already running Ubuntu 16.10. The newest Kernels have
gotten better over time. The freezes don't occur all that often anymore,
but occasionally. I probably will continue working with the ubuntu bug
people to test that patch (really just a hack-y workaround) and work to get
that incorporated into the upstream mainline kernel for all the other
people who have similar processors and have the same issue as me. I even
heard that people on Windows and Mac computers have been having the same
problems if you google "C-state freeze [insert mac or windows here]".

Thanks David,

I actually could use the dell restore utility to restore the exact dell
version of Ubuntu 14.04 with kernel 3.14 (i think that is the one) and that
would get me a nearly functional laptop, though honestly it wouldn't be
that much better than right now, plus i think it froze even back then, just
not as much as those older kernels were using a different C-state control
algorithm which apparently worked better on my hardware. I could also just
downgrade my kernel to one of those old kernels as well and just not update
it, but i think the current upstream kernel is working pretty well for me
despite having a hardware bug.


I don't really have any money for a new laptop at the moment, though if i
did since i'm not a typical user i think for me personally would be to ally
myself with a company that actually knows what they are doing hardware
wise, linux driver wise, and support staff. System76 is one that fits that
bill better than any others i've seen over the years. Though there have
been some driver issues in some of their older models that i was not
particularly excited to see some people having to deal with. But it looks
like they have gotten better over time.
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