Helios 500 Ryzen edition under Ubuntu 18 experience

Sfinx
Sfinx Member Posts: 11

Tinkerer

edited November 2023 in 2019 Archives
Hi.

Great laptop with powerful CPU & GPU. As I've replaced the SSD with Samsung Evo 2TB so having not bad storage speed too :
hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing cached reads:   23542 MB in  2.00 seconds = 11785.97 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 8002 MB in  3.00 seconds = 2666.72 MB/sec

Ubuntu 18.x installed ok with minor issues:

  • no sound working (headset shows always inserted), fixed by hdajackretask
  • for wifi to be working you must use recent kernels (4.19)
  • resume after suspend always shows garbage noise at the screen so you have to disable ALL power savings and lid events
  • blanking the screen (after some idle period) jsut making all cpu's stuck at 544MHz without any chance (cpufrequtils) to revert them back. Battery charge became mad after screen blank - charge LED switching off but battery continue to charge and percentage indicator shows some unrelated value. Yes, you have to disable screen blank too ;)

And I'm lacking Caps Lock LED (WTF !!!???) and SD card reader - seems like this is real problem for Acer to make this available in modern €2k laptop. So it was great fun to update the BIOS - Acer have only one option for this - under windows  :s  

Answers

  • Sfinx
    Sfinx Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    N.B. Starting from BIOS v1.06 you cannot disable Secure Boot anymore - the appropriate option is always inactive. Seems like bug or intentional Acer behavior.
  • PredatorHelios500
    PredatorHelios500 Member Posts: 74 Devotee WiFi Icon
    edited October 2018
    Sfinx said:
    N.B. Starting from BIOS v1.06 you cannot disable Secure Boot anymore - the appropriate option is always inactive. Seems like bug or intentional Acer behavior.

    I have i9 Helios 500. I disabled Secure Boot while I still had the 1.06 BIOS. I now have the 1.14 BIOS. My Secure Boot option is still disabled and it still gives me the option to enable it. I didn't try enabling and then disabling for fear that I wouldn't be able to go back. But at least for me it was possible to upgrade to 1.14 while keeping Secure Boot disabled.

    Anyway, thank you for your post about Ubuntu. I haven't yet made the switch to Linux but it's coming. I'm also planning on getting the 970 Evo 2tb drive (actually two for RAID1) so I was doubly interested in your post.


  • techiesmart
    techiesmart Member Posts: 4 New User
    Well, predator Helios 500 Ryzen is one of the best laptops among others, but the issue like with the secure boot disabling should be looked to remove for the more smooth experience.
  • Sfinx
    Sfinx Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    edited October 2018
    Sfinx said:
    N.B. Starting from BIOS v1.06 you cannot disable Secure Boot anymore - the appropriate option is always inactive. Seems like bug or intentional Acer behavior.

    I have i9 Helios 500. I disabled Secure Boot while I still had the 1.06 BIOS. I now have the 1.14 BIOS. My Secure Boot option is still disabled and it still gives me the option to enable it. I didn't try enabling and then disabling for fear that I wouldn't be able to go back. But at least for me it was possible to upgrade to 1.14 while keeping Secure Boot disabled.

    Anyway, thank you for your post about Ubuntu. I haven't yet made the switch to Linux but it's coming. I'm also planning on getting the 970 Evo 2tb drive (actually two for RAID1) so I was doubly interested in your post.


    My Helios is AMD based (P61 model) not Intel which means - they have different BIOS'es. Latest BIOS for P61 is v1.06. The previous v1.05 allowed to disable Secure Boot but not the 1.06 which is weird and confusing.
  • Sfinx
    Sfinx Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Well, predator Helios 500 Ryzen is one of the best laptops among others, but the issue like with the secure boot disabling should be looked to remove for the more smooth experience.
    I do not care too much about Secure Boot as it can be avoided in several ways. More frustrating is poor (I mean totally absent) Acer Linux support for this not bad laptop.
  • Red-Sand
    Red-Sand ACE Posts: 1,892 Pathfinder
    Sometimes a BIOs wont allow changing secure boot until a BIOs supervisor password is set.
    - Hotel Hero
  • Sfinx
    Sfinx Member Posts: 11

    Tinkerer

    Red-Sand said:
    Sometimes a BIOs wont allow changing secure boot until a BIOs supervisor password is set.
    Sure the password _was_ set in v1.05 and all was ok until upgraded to v1.06
  • nsandersen
    nsandersen Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    edited June 2019
    > N.B. Starting from BIOS v1.06 you cannot disable Secure Boot anymore

    Does that mean hibernation will not work in ubuntu (assuming it works anyway, seems very flaky) - I think it doesn't support signed swap partitions or hibernation files?
  • fireedo
    fireedo Member Posts: 2 New User
    any good news? I still have these issue(s) (display error after screen of, even in gaming while screen flash or something my display will be error, cpu freq 500Mhz the solution to unplug and plug the power adapter)
    this should have be a great laptop for linux OS but until now still no hope