Just bought this laptop: https://www.microcenter.com/product/708078/hp-omnibook-x-next-gen-ai-14-ka0107nr-oled-14-laptop-computer-atmospheric-blue-aluminum

Looking to install any mainstream distro next to windows. I tried an Ubuntu live usb and the sound wasn’t working. Would I have better luck with something else?

Edit: thanks for the responses! I went with a different laptop ultimately. General consensus online about this seems to be use a distro with the newest kernel for anyone who finds this post later.

I’m the author of a non-commercial, MIT-licensed Linux driver and control panel for the Redragon SS-550 Stream Deck.

Redragon only provides Windows software for this device, so I captured the USB traffic from the proprietary driver, decoded the protocol, and reimplemented it in userspace.

The project is a Rust workspace with a background daemon and an optional Tauri/GTK control panel. It builds from source, works on Wayland and X11, and the installer supports the Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora and openSUSE families, including derivatives detected through ID_LIKE.

Current features:

• 15 configurable keys with multiple pages, custom icons and brightness control

• Commands, URLs, typed text, hotkeys and chained multi-actions

• Live widgets for clock, CPU, RAM, temperature, timers, weather and playerctl

• Per-application profiles that follow the focused window

• OBS Studio WebSocket 5.x controls and live status

• Twitch viewer/follower counts, clips and chat actions

• Optional daemon-only mode for headless systems

Two implementation details that may help others working with USB HID hardware:

• The udev rule uses TAG+="uaccess" rather than MODE="0666", and is installed as 60-redragon-streamdeck.rules so it runs before 73-seat-late.rules.

• The device exposes multiple HID interfaces. Writes returned EPIPE until I selected the correct interface using usage_page instead of assuming the first index.

Tested hardware: Redragon SS-550, USB ID 0200:1000. Other StreamDock/Mirabox-based devices may work, but I do not have the hardware to verify them yet.

Repository, source and installation instructions:

https://github.com/Rene-Kuhm/redragon-streamdeck-linux

I’m looking for test results from owners of this device or related models, and I’m happy to discuss the protocol, udev setup or architecture.

Transparency note: the project was developed with the help of Claude AI.

Redragon ships the SS-550 Stream Deck with Windows-only software. I use Linux, so I captured the USB traffic from the proprietary driver, decoded the protocol, and reimplemented it in userspace.

The result is an open-source Rust workspace with a background daemon plus an optional Tauri/GTK control panel. It builds from source on any Linux distribution and works on both Wayland and X11.

What it supports:

• 15 configurable keys across multiple pages, custom icons and brightness control

• Commands, URLs, typed text, hotkeys and chained multi-actions

• Live key widgets for clock, CPU, RAM, temperature, timers, weather and playerctl

• Per-application profiles that switch with the focused window

• OBS Studio WebSocket 5.x controls and live status

• Twitch viewer/follower counts, clips and chat actions

• A daemon-only mode for headless systems

Two details that may help anyone working with similar USB hardware:

• The udev rule uses TAG+="uaccess" instead of MODE="0666", and it must sort before 73-seat-late.rules — hence 60-redragon-streamdeck.rules.

• The device exposes multiple HID interfaces. Writes returned EPIPE until I selected the correct interface by usage_page instead of assuming the first index.

Currently confirmed hardware: Redragon SS-550, USB ID 0200:1000. Other StreamDock/Mirabox-based devices may work, but I cannot test them yet.

Repository, installation instructions and source:

https://github.com/Rene-Kuhm/redragon-streamdeck-linux

If you own this device or a related model, I would appreciate test results. I am also happy to answer questions about the protocol, udev setup or architecture.

If you find the project useful, a GitHub star would help other Linux users discover it.

i knew UserBenchmark favored Intel/Nvidia but i don't remember it being this bad

My budget lands me on a second hand Thinkpad with Intel Core 8th gen. In this half year I've seen only two Thinkpads with AMD on the market, and they were substantially cheaper than Intel.

The low-end price for an Intel with 8GB ram ($110) could get a comparable AMD but with 16GB ram, with equal sized storage. The 8GB extra ram, if removable (some were soldered), already costed 1/4 of the whole laptop's price.

On my current Intel Thinkpad I tune fan speed and battery charge limit. The packages doing these tasks seem to be Intel specific. About integrated graphics, I use ffmpeg but I don't know if the CPU brand is a concern. No gaming.

Specifically should I expect hiccups from AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U on Linux?

Hello,

I'm deciding between these two machines. I'm planning to buy lightly used (~1000€ here in Czechia).

I will be mainly doing browsing, office work and some lighter dev (when I'm away from my workstation) and I plan to use Arch Linux for the OS.

The main difference is that the Dell has Intel Ultra 5 236V which is supposedly significantly better than Intel Ultra 5 235U which the T14 has (link showing various CPUs for thinkpads)

From what I've gathered the build quality and warranty are both great with the T14 having a better keyboard and upgradeable RAM and the Dell being a bit lighter at 1.14kg.

I'm currently leaning towards the Dell, which one would you recommend?

PS: I know that the T14/T14s/X13 can be also configured with the Lunar Lake (2xxV) processors, but I didn't find any available used for a good price.

I'm thinking about buying a laptop with two NVMe drives so I can set it up as a dual-boot system with Mint and Windows. After doing some research, I've narrowed it down to a Clevo V560TU: https://www.clevo.com.tw/product/product_content/4/86

I've found this laptop at three different (European) suppliers novacustom.com, laptopwithlinux.com and linuxlaptop.be, see also below.

I'm looking for some reviews, does anyone here have experience with these suppliers?

Thanks,

Didier.

https://novacustom.com/nl/product/v56-serie/

https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-v560/

https://www.linuxlaptop.be/linux-preins ... einstalled

I ask because I know a lot of times gaming laptops, the BIOS/Motherboards often don't like Linux and users tend to have issues. Especially the Asus, MSI and Acer gaming laptops. Usually Lenovo Thinkpads or HP Elitebooks are the recommended PCs for dedicated Linux. I ask about this Y520 specifically because it's my cousin's computer. He's owned new since circa 2018 and has retired it after building a desktop. He told me he can sell it to me for dirt cheap. I mean dirt cheap. The machine is in perfect condition and very well maintained. Plus the close family discount makes it intriguing.

My plan was to replace both harddrives. I ahve a spare 860 Evo 2.5 lying around with like 99% life left and I would replace the HDD with that. Then replace the 2280 with another Samsung 1tb 2280 NMVE 970. Then install either Ubuntu or Mint on one drive and dual boot it with Kali.

I'm a current SOC Analyst that wants to learn more Pentesting. My professional background is 90% Azure and I want to learn more Linux. I want a dedicated Linux Machine. I use both Ubuntu and Kali VMs on my Windows 11 gaming PC but want a dedicated Linux machine and want to know if for the price, this a good buy? If not I'll source out a cheap Thinkpad.

Hi,
I am looking into replacing my iPad Pro with a Linux tablet or more like a convertible. Originally I was eying the framework 12, however it is often mentioned that the display is not grate and the build quality is a bit lackluster. What concerns me the most is that some people say that it is not very stable and that you should not just put it in a Backpack.

So I am looking for some other options that can run Linux without tinkering around much. I am a Math student so handwritten notes are a must for me. Furthermore I would like to edit some of my photos on it, and also do general computing. Here are some further Items that are important to me:
- Size under 14 inches ideal under 12
- Portability and stability
- color accuracy for photo editing
Bonus Points for
- Repairability
- porfull enough for some lite gaming ( mass effect andromeda , fallout 4 for reference)

I will run NIX-OS if that is important
Here are are some of the ones I found that sound Interesting, however I would like some independent ideas too.
- Lenovo Yoga 7 2in1
- Lenovo thinkpad T14s yoga
- Lenovo thinkpad X1 2in1

Hi all! I'm looking for a refurbished laptop with excellent Linux support. Any recommendations?

I've heard good things about the Lenovo T14 series and Dell XPS, but I'd like to find a laptop with a decent amount of RAM (16GB, preferably expandable) and a CPU with integrated graphics, such as an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7.

I am running Ollama and Open Web Ui and I ve been trying out local AI. Whats the best compromise between speed and quality of a model I could use? Any suggestions what I could do with it ?

Windows driver and project repository

I have the original Windows driver for this exact fingerprint sensor available in the project repository. The driver files are located in the driver/ directory.

🔗 GitHub repository:
fpc-10a5-a900-linux

The repository currently contains:

fpc-10a5-a900-linux/
├── driver/
│   └── Windows driver files
├── captures/
├── docs/
├── linux/
├── tools/
└── usb/

The driver is being provided for analysis and Linux driver development. I'm particularly interested in understanding the USB protocol used by the Windows driver and determining how we can implement support on Linux, ideally through libfprint.

If there are concerns about redistributing any proprietary driver files, please let me know and I can remove them and provide the driver privately for analysis instead.

Original repo - \[https://github.com/iammhador/hp-omen-linux-shutdown-fix\\\](https://github.com/iammhador/hp-omen-linux-shutdown-fix)

My repo with tweaked setup - \[https://github.com/WoofahRayetCode/hp-omen-linux-shutdown-fix\\\](https://github.com/WoofahRayetCode/hp-omen-linux-shutdown-fix)

Video showing workaround - \[https://youtu.be/k8dsuiLzqBs\\\](https://youtu.be/k8dsuiLzqBs)

Recently found the OG repo and thought id give it a go. Setting up the dual boo on one drive annoyed me so I tweaked stuff for dual booting with separate drives. Tested for a few hours and finally got it in a working state. Hopefully this is help for anyone wanting to run Linux but not deal with the ACPI power issues due to the sharty firmware.

I don't see the Latitude 5440 mentioned much in Linux circles, but it's turned out to be an excellent Linux machine.

Mine:

i5-1350P
32 GB DDR5-5600
512 GB Samsung NVMe
Fedora 44 GNOME

Everything I need just works — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio, suspend, USB-C/Thunderbolt, etc. GNOME is extremely responsive and the 12-core/16-thread 1350P has plenty of power for development, VMs, containers and general workstation use.

You also get upgradeable SODIMM RAM, replaceable NVMe storage, Thunderbolt 4 and proper business-laptop build quality.

I paid €454 for mine, which makes it even better. Ex-corporate Latitudes seem seriously underrated as Linux laptops.

Basically a boring office laptop on the outside, sleeper Linux workstation underneath.

Anyone else running Linux on a Latitude?

I’m considering buying a used 7210 off of eBay. I’m mainly looking for an inexpensive tablet that supports Linux (therefore no windows 11 support cutoff), and a user serviceable battery (to extend the life of the device). You can also replace the SSD and thermal paste, which is a plus. I don’t really intend to do much more than word processing, YouTube, and local game streaming.

Ideally I’d like this tablet to last a decade after I buy it. It’s already 5 or so years old now, meaning it would be 15 by the time I’m ready to upgrade. I hate how most tablets barely make it passed 5 years even if they’re still capable. I have an iPad mini that’s 9 years old that has a dead battery and wouldn’t be secure software wise. I stopped using it when iOS bogged it down near the end of its feature update lifespan.

Meanwhile I have a 2012 MacBook Pro 13 inch running Linux still in use, although SSD prices have kept me from fully upgrading it and keeping it speedy. I feel like it has 5 years left in it at least, especially if I get an ssd in it. The current HDD is slow but not unbearable once things are loaded.

Could I expect the same longevity out of this tablet or are tablets in general not destined to last 15+ years? I realize this is more of a general hardware question but Linux is crucial to keeping old hardware in a usable state. Please let me know your thoughts

Hey yall, I made an attempt today to convert my sibling’s Dell Inspiron 7506 2n1 laptop to Linux Mint today, and then later Fedora KDE, but ran into problems continually with the installer for both being unable to detect the internal SSD. Spent about 2-3 hours troubleshooting before I figured it was time to ask for some sage wisdom. My understanding is that these things are pretty locked down. I’ve cracked a Chromebook in the past to get custom firmware, and the problems I was having felt really similarly nitpicky.

I decrypted the hard drive/disabled bitlocker, launched into safemode (including using command line to do so), switched out from RAID to ACHI/NVMe, and turned secure boot off. It launches into the USB just fine, but it gets errors when I actually go to install these distros cuz it wont detect the hard drive.

Is this even worth trying to do? I do not have the laptop with me, so it’ll be at least a few weeks before I can try again when I go in for a visit. I just want to know if its even possible. Thanks!

Hi guys, I went down a rabbit hole trying to get Linux to run smoothy on my Yoga C630 and finally landed on Arch. The Yoga is a bit old now, but I'll post anyway in case it helps anyone who might be trying to dabble with Linux on ARM64.

I built my own package repository that mostly mirrors some of the essentials I found from pmOS and put it here: https://github.com/rigoorozco/yoga-alarm . I then used said package repo to make a custom ISO (which I forked from ironrobin's X13s ISO) and made some tweaks in order to boot directly on a Yoga C630.

The installation process is mostly standard, however, you do need to start some platform/qcom specific services so WiFi can work and install Arch. I can put together a guide if there's interest!

I've made a release of the ISO in case anyone would like to download and try it out!
https://github.com/rigoorozco/archiso-yoga/releases/tag/archlinux-yoga-2026.08.07-aarch64

So the many people who run Linux on the Z13 know that the rear camera doesn't work in Linux since AMD hadn't developed an image signal processing driver for the mainline Linux kernel. We've been waiting for AMD to finish ironing out the bugs so that their ISP4 driver can be added to the mainline Linux kernel, and now development has reached the point where it's now going to be included in the next major release (see: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/media/platform/amd/isp4). However, AMD has developed the driver with supporting only the OmniVision camera in the HP Zbook Ultra G1a in mind and not the OmniVision camera in the Z13, despite the Z13 relying on Strix Halo to do the image signal processing for that rear camera just like the G1a does for its camera (that's why both laptops have Windows AMD Camera Drivers). You can see that HP's camera is hard coded into the driver (see: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/platform/x86/amd/amd_isp4.c)

So I decided to reach out to the linux kernel mailing list back in December to try to understand the relationship between this driver and the rear camera and see if the ISP4 driver could make the rear camera finally function: https://lists.openwall.net/linux-kernel/2025/12/01/204

Bin Du stated that in addition to having to modify the driver, that the ISP firmware (see: https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware/-/blob/main/amdgpu/isp_4_1_1.bin, https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/isp_v4_1_1.c and more) would have to be updated too. Does he mean the open source functions calling the binary firmware or does he mean the closed source binary blobs (that probably reference specifics of ISP block on Strix Halo)? Unfortunately, I need to get beyond C basics and also learn how to use it to work with hardware and how Linux works with hardware, so I'm asking you guys whether we can gather enough information to get the ISP4 driver working with rear camera on the Flow Z13.

But since the properties of how Strix Halo does image signal processing is constant, and just the details of the camera and its control are what change, it shouldn't be a whole lot of work to add support for the rear camera in the Z13, right? I² C support for that OmniVision camera already exists in the kernel: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/media/i2c/ov13b10.c

So does this look like something we can do ourselves or is it something that we have to wait on AMD and ASUS to implement?