HP 15-AB253CL laptop -- Linux friendly/unfriendly?

[Horst]

I need a new laptop.  Would get one from Mr. O, but what I've seen at Computerbase in my price range only had those non-glare screens (not my favorite to work with on my photos)

I've seen a local offer for a  HP 15-AB253CL,  $600 (for a limited time) // see specs below

I PLAN ON SETTING IT UP AS DUAL/MULTI BOOT -- IS ANYONE AWARE OF ANY POTENTIAL PITFALLS with this model or maybe earlier ones of the HP Pavilion series?

 I haven't played with new hardware for many years... searched the web and forums and saw some people running into issues with Secure Boot...but didn't find any good or bad info for that  *specific*  model#

Here are some specs:

i5-6200U, 12GB DDR3L SDRAM / 1TB 5400 RPM  / optical R/W drive

15.6 FHD IPS WLED-backlit touch screen

HD Graphics 520 with up to 6191MB total graphics memory //  I saw a few posts concerned about the integrated graphics.  I am not a gamer, so I may not notice performance issues?

 - Horst

[Paul Merrell]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 3:40 PM, 'Horst' via EUGLUG
<eug...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> I need a new laptop. Would get one from Mr. O, but what I've seen at
> Computerbase in my price range only had those non-glare screens (not my
> favorite to work with on my photos)
>
> I've seen a local offer for a HP 15-AB253CL, $600 (for a limited time) //
> see specs below
>
> I PLAN ON SETTING IT UP AS DUAL/MULTI BOOT -- IS ANYONE AWARE OF ANY
> POTENTIAL PITFALLS with this model or maybe earlier ones of the HP Pavilion
> series?

I recall reading awhile back that all recent HPs are Linux-compatible.
But I don't know how realiable that information is.

Best regards,

Paul

--
[Notice not included in the above original message: The U.S. National
Security Agency neither confirms nor denies that it intercepted this
message.]

[Hippy Nerd]

I installed linux on a HP desktop last year, and I wasnt able to dual
boot, but I was able to install linux and run it fine, but I think the
problem was with the HP/windows boot system. I was able to run each
separately, but not dual boot.

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[Horst]

So Jamie,what exactly was the issues with dual boot (grub --or lilo :)

Where did it fail:  POST, BIOS, bootloader ?

You mentioned the "HP/windows boot system." -- did  df/cfdisk show any proprietary partitions? (not counting their openly accessible OS backup thing)

Also, thanks to Paul  !  Yes -- many of the posts I saw on HP sites sounded like Linux aware or even Linux friendly.

 - Horst

---

From: Hippy Nerd <hipp...@gmail.com>
To: eug...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2015 6:59 PM
Subject: Re: [EUGLUG] HP 15-AB253CL laptop -- Linux friendly/unfriendly?

I installed linux on a HP desktop last year, and I wasnt able to dual
boot, but I was able to install linux and run it fine, but I think the
problem was with the HP/windows boot system. I was able to run each
separately, but not dual boot.

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 5:52 PM, Paul Merrell <mar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 3:40 PM, 'Horst' via EUGLUG
> <eug...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>> I need a new laptop.  Would get one from Mr. O, but what I've seen at
>> Computerbase in my price range only had those non-glare screens (not my
>> favorite to work with on my photos)
>>
>> I've seen a local offer for a  HP 15-AB253CL,  $600 (for a limited time) //
>> see specs below
>>
>> I PLAN ON SETTING IT UP AS DUAL/MULTI BOOT -- IS ANYONE AWARE OF ANY
>> POTENTIAL PITFALLS with this model or maybe earlier ones of the HP Pavilion
>> series?
>
>
> I recall reading awhile back that all recent HPs are Linux-compatible.
> But I don't know how realiable that information is.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Paul
>
> --
> [Notice not included in the above original message:  The U.S. National
> Security Agency neither confirms nor denies that it intercepted this
> message.]

 :)

[Jim Kahn]

I remember a series of articles on I think Zdnet or techrepublic of an author installing a variety of linux distros and possibly Windows  (8.1?) on a series of laptops including HP brand.  There was a discusion I think of the HP boot system with UEFI which replaced bios system. You might search for and read the article(s) about the HP and any comments for some of idea of what the problem was and search to see if it has been solved. Also, can you get your hands on the one you are thinking of, try getting into the UEFI system and see if there seems to be any surpirses there. I haven't used a UEFI system yet,
Jim K

[Mr O]

Those "non glossy" screens you dislike just happen to be on HP's most reliable best built machines. If you want to make a sacrifice at least get an HP Envy. They are built much better than the Pavailion line. If the machine is going to be linux only you can easily disable secure boot and often disable UEFI and enable Legacy/CSM in any decent BIOS.

[Hippy Nerd]

I cant remember what the problem was, but I remember running linux
fine, and windows fine, but I couldnt get them both dual boot. I think
it had something to do with the HP restore/install. It ran ubuntu
really well, for a couple days...

[Stead Halstead]

I use an HP Elitebook and dual boot Ubuntu and Win 7 without issue. Over the years, I've found it easier to install Windows first, then Ubuntu. Perhaps Windows gets greedy and writes over the boot loader during install? I use grub.

[Horst]

Thanks to everyone who responded (including Mike whom I mildly pissed off with my glossy screen preference :)

All responses were very helpful.  I have my homework cut... there is lot to read up on UEFI...

The laptop to be retired is an eight year old Pavilion...no problems until recently...I guess I just lucked out.

 - Horst

---

From: Stead Halstead <stead.h...@gmail.com>
To: eug...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2015 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: [EUGLUG] Re: HP 15-AB253CL laptop -- Linux friendly/unfriendly?

[Paul Merrell]

It's been nice seeing some conversation on this list. It's been a long time ...

Paul

[Paul Merrell]

By the way, be sure to download and install VBox from the VBox web
site rather than using the version that's in your distro packages. The
version on the VBox site has some capabilities that's lacking in the
version distributed via the package management systems. Can't remember
exactly what the features are, but IIRC USB support is one of them.

[wxl]

On Saturday, December 19, 2015 at 3:40:02 PM UTC-8, Horst wrote:

I PLAN ON SETTING IT UP AS DUAL/MULTI BOOT -- IS ANYONE AWARE OF ANY POTENTIAL PITFALLS

Kinda dissenting opinion here, but I think that dual boots are often replete with potential pitfalls. It's not like they can't be dealt with, but in my opinion, it's largely more trouble than it's worth. Often times it is the case that a person wants to use a particular piece of software in the second operating system rather than use it full time. In this case, Wine or a virtual machine will usually take care of the situation. Virtual machines have really advanced to the point that you can have several operating systems running on a machine without a huge amount of resources and still more or less have a near-native experience. You can have sound, external devices, all sorts of networking options, etc. etc. etc.

At our workplace, for example, we have a legacy database that we run in a VM. Works fantastic, and the entire company uses it. The greatest thing is that we can use it at the same time as all of our wonderful Linux tools. Having to boot into a different kernel would not serve us very well. 

That being said, I know that HP is, in general, rather Linux friendly. A [search][1] on their site pulls up several thousand pages matching the keyword Linux. Oddly, they don't seem to be [sponsoring][2] much contributor to the kernel, however. Of course, neither does Ubuntu, so that doesn't mean too much. You may want to look at [Linux on Laptops][3] and [The Linux Documentation Project][4] for more specific information.

[1]: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/search/search-results.html?ajaxpage=1#/page=1&/cc=us&/lang=en&/qt=linux

[2]: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation/who-writes-linux-2015

[3]: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/hp.html

[4]: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HP-HOWTO/hp-hardware.html

[Hippy Nerd]

Yes, it can be a pain to do the dual boot thing, but in the real
world, some things will never work on linux, but you still need to be
able to use your computer.
Another way you can avoid the dual boot is to have 2 disks, one with
windows, but that means taking one drive out, to install the other.
Wine and VM are ok solutions for some folks, but not everyone.

[walter lapchynski]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Hippy Nerd <hipp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, it can be a pain to do the dual boot thing, but in the real
world, some things will never work on linux, but you still need to be
able to use your computer.
Another way you can avoid the dual boot is to have 2 disks, one with
windows, but that means taking one drive out, to install the other.
Wine and VM are ok solutions for some folks, but not everyone.

Yes, agreed. We've been able to work some magic here, but I have encountered things in the past that are just not workable. It's worth looking into though, for sure. To the OP, if there's a particular piece of software that you're trying to make work, do ask!

[Mr O]

I agree with wxl on VMs. Modern CPU with enough RAM will run things at what seems native. I run a Win7 virtualbox image while connected to a linux box with NoMachine over wifi and the performance is near native. Super handy when I only need one or two apps here and there. My dedicated gaming machine is Windows only. No dual boot anywhere. VM or native.

--

[wxl]

On Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 4:30:07 PM UTC-8, Paul E. "Marbux" Merrell wrote:

It's been nice seeing some conversation on this list. It's been a long time ...

Yeah, well, the majority of online EUGLUG activity seems to happen on [IRC][1]. Admittedly, the conversation tends to be of a far less practical nature than this particular discussion, but I believe, largely, we're open! :)

It's also notable that euglug.org doesn't mention the mailing list at all. Maybe this is something we should remedy? Or are we trying to hide the mailing list for some reason? :)

[1]: irc://irc.freenode.org/euglug

[Horst]

Thanks polka.bike (what  a great domain name !!!)

Point about VMs well taken -- In General  (at my work environment, all the ailing, odd-ball hardware is gradually being virtualized)

However, in the past, and for personal use on stand-alone machines, multi-boot worked really well for me: I would partition the HD to dedicate a good chunk of the HD for personal data, and keep a limited space for different OSses and their apps.  That way I could mount my data to whatever OS I was running (on VMs, I found it cumbersome to access host data from the virtual guest OS... my work-around was to fire up a sshd on the host . It's OK to laugh at this approach since I admit having lived under a rock for a half+ decade)

Also, thanks for the references, though it seems like the most recent ubuntu on

   http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/hp.html

is  Ubuntu 11.04 ... as so often in the RealWold... just stumbling through it  is the best we can do... but then, that's how we move forward :)

Switching gears, and not sure who brought it up (sorry) -- But I do agree, this email list s/b on euglug.org

Not sure when this popped up on euglug.org, but the the following statement is incorrect: "In lieu of a mailing list, we've got our own  bla bla.."

I am adding Larry to the bcc to let him chime in....................Horst

---

From: wxl <w...@polka.bike>
To: EUGLUG <eug...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: knoblauc...@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, December 21, 2015 10:30 AM
Subject: [EUGLUG] Re: HP 15-AB253CL laptop -- Linux friendly/unfriendly?

[wxl]

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 10:39:28 PM UTC-8, Horst wrote:

Switching gears, and not sure who brought it up (sorry) -- But I do agree, this email list s/b on euglug.org

Not sure when this popped up on euglug.org, but the the following statement is incorrect: "In lieu of a mailing list, we've got our own  bla bla.."

I'm sure you have already noticed, but [fixed][1].

[1]: https://github.com/euglug/euglug_org/commit/230e55ef6de846db219fa7dac53df9628d30036e