Helios 500 Ryzen edition under Ubuntu 18 experience

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

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Sfinx

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

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

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

PredatorHelios500 said:

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

techiesmart said:

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

Sometimes a BIOs wont allow changing secure boot until a BIOs supervisor password is set.

Sfinx

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

> 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

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

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