Debian Buster on Helios 500

PredatorHelios500

I've had my Helios 500 for almost a year, all the while patiently waiting for the Samsung 2tb EVO+ NVME drive and Debian 10 (Buster) to be released. I was encouraged all the time by the Ubuntu on Helios 500 page at Octoperf https://octoperf.com/blog/2018/09/02/acer-predator-helios-500-mods/ suggested Linux would work okay.

I installed from a LIVE USB to the EVO+ drive using a wired connection. I did not have to use backports for wireless as iwlwifi in the repos worked fine. I did experience the sound issue where headphones are always detected as present even if they are not. I fixed it using the Octoperf information. All the Fn-f# keys seems to work except airplane mode and suspend. Haven't gotten the program keys to work yet (or tried to).

As I had Windows 10 on the factory 512GB NVME SSD, I am dual booting. Had to change the windows drive to AHCI mode for this. Had a dual-boot system running and even got the hard disk working as a shared NTFS hard drive.
You CAN have a working dual boot system with Secure Boot turned on (but continue reading). This took several tries to get working just right so it reads easier than it was.
 
What caused some trouble was installing the NVIDIA driver. Seemingly borked the system at first. Took me longer than it should to realize it was because I had Secure Boot turned on. I had been enabling/disabling Secure Boot while getting Windows to work alongside Linux and just kind of forgot about it. At this point I would have to toggle Secure Boot off each time I wanted Linux and toggle it on each time I wanted Windows. Unacceptable. So I disabled Secure Boot for Windows 10. I can now boot into both OS'es without it no problem. There apparently IS a way to add the signature from the NVIDIA driver to the Linux kernel's key database using mokutil so dual-booting with Secure Boot should be possible. But my first attempt failed at using MOK failed because I didn't know what the MOK menus wanted and it's hard to focus with kids bugging you to play.

What doesn't work?

FANS. So far I have yet to have anything work with fans. Work in progress tinkering with fancontrol.

SOUND. The hdajackreset workaround is ugly.

xbacklight doesn't seem to work.

There's some AHCI_BIOS errors thrown during boot.


Anyway, i9 laptop with 64GB RAM, 2TB NVME SSD with linux, and 512GB NVME SSD with Windows using a 1TB shared NTFS drive.... SWEET! This was what I was planning on doing when I bought it. I like maxing out a rig and then hoping it lasts for about 10 years before my next purchase. Quite happy with the Helios 500.

PS just upgraded to Windows 10 1903... make sure you go and turn off all the ***** they install. Was slowing down the whole machine making gaming lag like crazy. Removed and turned off a bunch of (offensively bad... FU MS) default settings and machine runs well again.

xapim

PredatorHelios500 said:

I've had my Helios 500 for almost a year, all the while patiently waiting for the Samsung 2tb EVO+ NVME drive and Debian 10 (Buster) to be released. I was encouraged all the time by the Ubuntu on Helios 500 page at Octoperf https://octoperf.com/blog/2018/09/02/acer-predator-helios-500-mods/ suggested Linux would work okay.

I installed from a LIVE USB to the EVO+ drive using a wired connection. I did not have to use backports for wireless as iwlwifi in the repos worked fine. I did experience the sound issue where headphones are always detected as present even if they are not. I fixed it using the Octoperf information. All the Fn-f# keys seems to work except airplane mode and suspend. Haven't gotten the program keys to work yet (or tried to).

As I had Windows 10 on the factory 512GB NVME SSD, I am dual booting. Had to change the windows drive to AHCI mode for this. Had a dual-boot system running and even got the hard disk working as a shared NTFS hard drive.
You CAN have a working dual boot system with Secure Boot turned on (but continue reading). This took several tries to get working just right so it reads easier than it was.
 
What caused some trouble was installing the NVIDIA driver. Seemingly borked the system at first. Took me longer than it should to realize it was because I had Secure Boot turned on. I had been enabling/disabling Secure Boot while getting Windows to work alongside Linux and just kind of forgot about it. At this point I would have to toggle Secure Boot off each time I wanted Linux and toggle it on each time I wanted Windows. Unacceptable. So I disabled Secure Boot for Windows 10. I can now boot into both OS'es without it no problem. There apparently IS a way to add the signature from the NVIDIA driver to the Linux kernel's key database using mokutil so dual-booting with Secure Boot should be possible. But my first attempt failed at using MOK failed because I didn't know what the MOK menus wanted and it's hard to focus with kids bugging you to play.

What doesn't work?

FANS. So far I have yet to have anything work with fans. Work in progress tinkering with fancontrol.

SOUND. The hdajackreset workaround is ugly.

xbacklight doesn't seem to work.

There's some AHCI_BIOS errors thrown during boot.


Anyway, i9 laptop with 64GB RAM, 2TB NVME SSD with linux, and 512GB NVME SSD with Windows using a 1TB shared NTFS drive.... SWEET! This was what I was planning on doing when I bought it. I like maxing out a rig and then hoping it lasts for about 10 years before my next purchase. Quite happy with the Helios 500.

PS just upgraded to Windows 10 1903... make sure you go and turn off all the ***** they install. Was slowing down the whole machine making gaming lag like crazy. Removed and turned off a bunch of (offensively bad... FU MS) default settings and machine runs well again.

Glad you finally got it tweaked to your needs and i hope the guides you provided will help everyone else with the same plans as you had