Experiences with Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) on Librem 13v2?

Software
1

Has anybody experiences how good the Librem 13v2 notebook works with the new Ubuntu 18.04?

Any pitfalls, any hints?

THX :slight_smile:

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2

First hints for live boot using an Ubuntu 18.04 live boot USB stick:

  1. Press ESC during boot to get boot medium menu (when the white square appears right after switching on or rebooting)

  2. Choose your USB stick

  3. If you see an error message like “Missing parameter in configuration file.” and “gfxboot.c32: not a COM32 image boot”:

    Press key (you will see the options then

    Enter “live” or “live-installation” to boot or install Ubuntu

Then continue as usual.

3

I have installed it on my whole drive (nVME), from live disk. I chose the LVM option, other than it taking forever to boot, its perfect.

4

On my purism librem 13v2 (US keyboard) I have now

  • updated my coreboot firmware to 4.7-Purism-4 (within PureOS)
  • reset my SSD (deleting PureOS) and
  • installed Ubuntu 18.04
  • by creating just one ext4 partition (that contains the boot, root, home and cache file folder inside)
  • with both micro switches switched on (enabled wifi, BT, web cam, micro)

without problems.

I know this is not encrypted but it is just for testing purposes.

What works:

  • All hardware components seem to be recognized.
  • The problem with the “|” key is solved (did produce the wrong character when pressed)
  • Fast boot process (takes about 20 seconds incl. auto-login)
  • Fn key does work to switch wifi on/of (airplane mode), change display brightness, mute/unmute, switch the keyboard light on/off
  • web cam works with cheese

Open issues:

  • closing the lid activates the suspense mode but the power consumption is still to high
    (loosing 50 % of battery capacity after 9 hours). This is a known problem of the purism firmware settings (coreboot).
    See also: Battery drain while suspended

  • the coreboot “BIOS” did not ask for my SSD password to unlock the SSD (hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass mypassword /dev/sda). I had to live boot from USB and remove the password again with

    sudo hdmparm --user-master u --security-unlock mypassword /dev/sda
sudo hdmparm --user-master u --security-disable NULL /dev/sda

    Note that this is not an Ubuntu problem but a gap in the coreboot firmware.

1 Like
5

Hey folks… Does Ubuntu 18.x beat the 16.x LTS? I am hoping it does. Because I can’t stand it after using 12.04 LTS for years.

Thanks. (and I mean the OS in general, not Librem specific, but for day to day use)