Sharing some experiences about running Fedora on an HP Elitebook 850 G5 laptop.
Right now this document is only half-way finished. Hopefully I will find time to provide some more information.
I first was using Fedora 29, then
- upgraded to Fedora 30 => same experience
- upgraded to Fedora 31 => same experience, almost everything is OK
- upgraded to Fedora 32 => same experience, almost everything is OK
I will try to keep this document up to date.
Basic functionality is working (kernel 5.8.13-200.fc32.x86_64) :
- WIFI
- Keyboard, keyboard backlight and shortcuts
- Touchpad
- Mouse button (to steer the mouse pointer)
- Adaptive brightness (as weird as with Windows)
- Webcam
- HDMI external port (up to 4K)
- Thermal sensors
- Thunderbolt 3 port
What is not working :
- Fingerprint sensor
- Mic mute button
The laptop configuration was like this :
HP EliteBook 850 G5
CPU Intel i7-8550U
Windows 10 PRO
Webcam + IR
15.6 inch UHD Anti-Glare LDE
8GB (1x8GB) DDR4 2400
512GB PCIe NVMe Three Layer Cell Solid State Drive
No Near Field Communication (No NFC)
Intel 8265 ac 2x2 nvP +Bluetooth 4.2 WW with 2 Antennas
No WWAN ??
Fingerprint Sensor
No Active SmartCard
3 Cell 56 WHr Long Life
45 Watt Smart nPFC Right Angle AC Adapter
C5 1.8m Sticker Conventional Power Cord SE/FI
3/3/0 Warranty EURO
No vPro AMT supported
DIB HP Basic Carrying Case
Country Localization SE/FI
Dual Point with numeric keypad spill-resistant Collaboration SE/FI
EU RED Pictogram Label
Core i7 G8 Label
HP 1 year Priority Management Service for PCs (1000+ seats)
HP 3 year Next Business Day Onsite Notebook Only Hardware Support
HP Operations Service
The laptop was delivered to me in the end of January 2019.
Short summary of hardware configuration :
- RAM : 8 GB
- Operating system : Windows 10 Pro
- Storage : 512 GB SSD
- Display : 15.6" inch screen (resolution 3840x2160)
Upgrade I made :
- RAM : 32 GB
- Operating system : Fedora
- Storage : 1 TB SSD
- WWAN LTE : Huawei ME906s bought in october 2020 for ~30€
The computer came with Windows 10 Pro installed with 3 partitions :
- EFI (360 MB) + hidden partition maybe for Windows restoration (128 MB)
- Windows C:\ (~475 GB)
- Restore tools (915 MB)
Just split the C:\ in half (~235 GB) to install Linux.
Here is the steps to reduce C:\ volume :
- In Windows, right click on Start menu logo > Disks Management
- Right click on C:\
- Reduce this volume, by default it's set on half its size
- Accept the changes and reboot
Download Fedora 31 Workstation Live x86_64 and write it on an USB drive.
If Windows was pre-installed, secure boot is enabled and you will get "Image did not authenticate", preventing you to boot any other OS.
Here is the steps to disable secure boot :
- Boot the computer
- On the boot screen displaying HP Logo "Sure boot by HP" press F10
- Go to Advanced > Secure Boot Options
- Choose Legacy support enabled and secure boot disabled
- Press F10
- Yes to save the changes
- Computer boots on a warning screen, you have to enter the displayed code :
- Press Num lock
- Enter the code
- Press "Enter"
- Computer reboots with secure boot disabled
Here is the steps to boot from the USB drive :
- Boot the computer
- On the boot screen displaying HP Logo "Sure boot by HP" press F9
- Choose the USB UEFI entry
Proceed with usual Fedora installation :
- Review the partition scheme (default/automatic was fine)
- Launch the installation
- Reboot
User creation will be at first boot.
Here is the partition table :
[edouard@hp850g5 ~]$ lsblk -o NAME,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,FSTYPE
NAME MOUNTPOINT LABEL FSTYPE
nvme0n1
├─nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi SYSTEM vfat
├─nvme0n1p2
├─nvme0n1p3 Windows ntfs
├─nvme0n1p4 Windows RE Tools ntfs
├─nvme0n1p5 /boot ext4
└─nvme0n1p6 LVM2_member
├─fedora-root / ext4
├─fedora-swap [SWAP] swap
└─fedora-home /home ext4
The EXT4 file system is used with LVM, ie default partitionning scheme from Fedora.
It seems that by default, Fedora (or systemd) is not sending the right kind of signal this machine is waiting for reboot. To fix that, you need to add the type of signal at the boot options. Here are the steps, first add reboot=efi at the very end of the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= :
sudoedit /etc/default/grub
You should have this content :
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .\*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="resume=/dev/mapper/fedora-swap rd.lvm.lv=fedora/root rd.lvm.lv=fedora/swap rhgb quiet reboot=efi"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
Then you need to regenerate grub2 actual configuration file¹ :
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg
Then to validate that's has been taken, you reboot and check cmdline :
cat /proc/cmdline
You must see the reboot=efi there.
[¹] If for any reason you are not using EFI and secure boot, the right output file is /etc/grub2.cfg.
The shortcut button to mute sound is working fine but the LED on it doesn't switch on to indicate its state.
To activate the LED, create a file to /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf with the following content :
options snd-hda-intel model=mute-led-gpio
Reboot the computer (or unload/reload module snd-hda-intel).
Powertop utiliy is a great tool to fix some power consumption issues.
sudo dnf install powertop
sudo powertop
In tunables section a few setups by default are bad. Select them and press space bar to activate them. Press ESC to exit. Then enable powertop service at boot to make these changes permanent :
sudo systemctl enable powertop
Voilà !
To have more control over performance, the Gnome Shell Extension CpuFreq is perfect. With this extension you can check the actual frequencies and choose which governor you want (powersave, performance etc).
I prefere to disable TurboBoost, because I don't really see any difference on performance. But with TurboBoost off, fans are off too !
I rebooted the laptop and went into the BIOS. From there it was possible to download and install a newer version of the BIOS.
Actual version of the BIOS :
Version: Q78 Ver. 01.12.00
Release Date: 07/28/2020
cf :
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-elitebook-850-g5-notebook-pc/18491276
How to install it :
linux@laptop:~$ sudo lshw -sanitize > output/lshw.txt
[sudo] password for linux:
linux@laptop:~$
See the output in output/lshw.txt
linux@laptop:~$ lsmod > output/lsmod.txt
linux@laptop:~$
See the output in output/lsmod.txt
linux@laptop:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo > output/cpuinfo.txt
linux@laptop:~$
See the output in output/cpuinfo.txt
linux@laptop:~$ cat /proc/meminfo > output/meminfo.txt
linux@laptop:~$
See the output in output/meminfo.txt
linux@laptop:~$ dmesg > output/dmesg.txt
linux@laptop:~$
See the output in output/dmesg.txt
linux@laptop:~$ sensors > output/sensors.txt
linux@laptop:~$
See the output in output/sensors.txt
Original version of this document was forked from eriksjolund (thanks). I've found this link on reddit.
Gentoo wiki also have some information here.