Guys, I’m really in need of some advanced help with my current laptop. I bought this, a Samsung Notebook 7 Force (Style S51 Pro on some countries, model NP760XBE) last october and since then I have been facing a series of really frustrating hardware issues. Back then, I was pressed by a lot of work, deadlines and college stuff, so I didn’t dive deep into trying to diagnose and fix the issues. But now I have the time and I’m invested in doing this because I can’t bear Windows anymore than I did for the last couple of months.
For a TL;DR version: I need ideas to find and document, and hopefully fix, issues with headphone jack sound output and keyboard backlighting.
I’m running Kubuntu 19.10 (a distro change is something that I’d be willing to try, although I’m so used to Ubuntu and its derivatives that I’d like to stick with them. The only demand really is KDE Plasma support as an official falvour because I really don’t like to manually install desktops environments on top of others – had some nasty experiences with this)
So, the issues are, in order of relevance for me (and goes without saying that everything works on Windows 10):
I really want to fix, at least, the headphone problem and the keyboard backlighting: they are the most important ones for me.
Or in the worst case scenario, at least document it extensively so I can forward this to developers in the hopes it gets fixed. Also, it would be nice to learn more about the system and understand why those things don’t work.
For a TL;DR version: I need ideas to find and document, and hopefully fix, issues with headphone jack sound output and keyboard backlighting.
I’m running Kubuntu 19.10 (a distro change is something that I’d be willing to try, although I’m so used to Ubuntu and its derivatives that I’d like to stick with them. The only demand really is KDE Plasma support as an official falvour because I really don’t like to manually install desktops environments on top of others – had some nasty experiences with this)
So, the issues are, in order of relevance for me (and goes without saying that everything works on Windows 10):
- the headphone jack won’t work. If you connect a headphone, the sound is veeeeeery low volume and heavily distorted. I’ve tried different distros, even Manjaro, thinking a rolling distro could provide me with more up to date software and fix this, I also fiddled with Pulse and Alsa and whatnot. The headphone issue is, by far, the most important for me. My workaround is a USB-C adapter, but the thing is way too cumbersome and far from ideal
- keyboard backlighting also won’t work, but I’m helpful: it did work on Fedora when I tried! So there is hope on this one!
- bluetooth headphones don't play nice with Wi-Fi. They work up until the point you are not using Wi-Fi. Apparently, crappy Intel drivers simply can’t handle the two radios at 2,4 GHz properly, so trying to watch a video online is a clusterfuck of disconnections left and right that ultimately make the bluetooth audio route as a fix to the headphone jack problem something not viable
- HDMI output won’t work at all. The system detects the HDMI event, presenting me with the dialog to select double screen and etc, but no matter what I do, in the end nothing gets displayed on the monitor/TV. Tested with different distros and I suspect it has something to do with Nvidia drivers (tryied the HDMI with integrated graphics as well to no avail)
- The BIOS is incredibly simple (it is really obtused anda carefully designed to prevent you from taking control of your hardware) and doesn’t let you change that Intel RST to AHCI, something that, as I understand, is necessary in order to Linux see my drive as a NMVe and not as a SATA (sdb) device. That really pisses me off because it is way faster on Windows
- The laptop has a fingerprint reader. I have zero hopes of driver support for this nor I care that much about typeing passwords to be honest, but still, I’m open to ideas
I really want to fix, at least, the headphone problem and the keyboard backlighting: they are the most important ones for me.
Or in the worst case scenario, at least document it extensively so I can forward this to developers in the hopes it gets fixed. Also, it would be nice to learn more about the system and understand why those things don’t work.