I can happily report that this machine works well with Debian 11/Bullseye!
Reportedly, other options for a machine that is highly compatible with Linux include Lenovo, Laptop with Linux, Slimbook, Tuxedo Computers, System76, Purism, Pine and Framework.
Installing Debian on this machine poses a few challenges.
The only ports for external connectivity are USB-C ports (besides an audio jack). Your installation media (generally a USB drive) will have to connect via this interface.
The video card is not compatible with Debian 10/Buster’s default kernel. Therefore I suggest you use Debian 11/Bullseye instead.
The WiFi card requires the non-free firmware-iwlwifi package.
If you want to use the WiFi card during installation you will have
to make this firmware available somehow.
The SSD controller must be put into AHCI mode otherwise Debian will not be able to see it.
Subsequent use of the device has a few challenges of its own too.
The USB-C ports are the only connectivity for external monitors and other peripherals.
Suspend to RAM may require BIOS configuration.
I used a USB-A drive with a standard Apple USB-C to USB-A
adapter. Alternatively
you can use a USB-C drive. To make firmware-iwlwifi available
during installation I used a non-free installation image. I chose the
XFCE Bullseye release candidate non-free live
CD
but the significantly smaller non-free
netinst
would probably work fine too.
Start the machine with the USB drive attached and press F12 to boot into the BIOS menu. Make sure that the SSD controller is set to AHCI mode. Then choose to boot from your USB drive. (To do so you may then have to exit the BIOS menu and enter it again by pressing F12 again.)
Installation should proceed as a standard Debian installation.
I haven’t found any features that don’t work.
External monitor connectivity works fine from two of the three USB-C ports. I guess the other is not designed to output video. (I haven’t tried both ports at the same time but I don’t anticipate any problems.)
I use a StarTech USB-C to Display Port adaptor with a standard Display Port to Display Port cable.
X11 works fine. The only problem that I have noticed is that switching to the virtual terminals (Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc.) is flaky and running multiple X servers at the same time is flaky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it seems to hang but can be recovered by closing the lid (i.e. putting the machine to sleep) and then opening it again. Sometimes it hangs and closing and opening the lid doesn’t work; in those cases I have to reboot.
If I am in dual head mode (i.e. X is using the internal screen and an external screen) and I unplug the external screen then the driver seems not to notify X. X still believes two displays are connected. Subsequently it becomes impossible to switch to internal-only mode until I plug the external screen back in.
Only s2idle/freeze (which are both names for S0/suspend to idle)
and deep (S3/suspend to RAM) seem to be supported. (It’s possible
that disk (S4/suspend to disk/“hibernate”) doesn’t appear here only
because I didn’t make a big enough swap partition, but I am not sure.)
$ cat /sys/power/state
freeze mem
$ cat /sys/power/mem_sleep
s2idle [deep]deep mem)This is probably the variety of suspend that you actually want to use because it has extremely low power draw.
I disabled TPM, SGX, SMM, and Absolute in the BIOS (as described in a helpful Reddit post). I don’t know whether doing so was necessary. Enter S3 sleep with
sudo sh -c 'echo deep > /sys/power/mem_sleep && echo mem > /sys/power/state'You must not try to wake the machine by pressing the power button; that will put it into shutdown. Instead close and reopen the lid.
There is a bug
that causes high CPU usage when returning from S3 sleep until the
touchpad is touched. I had noticed that my fan kicked in around an
hour after waking but I didn’t understand why until I noticed my load
average was persistently above 1. I then spotted a mysterious process
called irq/51-CUST0001 in top. Searching for references to it led
me to the above-mentioned bug report.
I suppose the workaround is to just touch the touchpad!
freeze)This feature works but I doubt it reduces power draw very much.
Trackpad behaviour can be configured with xinput. Run xinput --list and look for the entry like CUST0001:00 06CB:76B1 Touchpad.
Use that string in the commands below.
To configure a tap on the trackpad to be registered as a left click run
xinput --set-prop "CUST0001:00 06CB:76B1 Touchpad" "libinput Tapping Enabled" 1For “Natural”, i.e. reversed, scrolling run
xinput --set-prop "CUST0001:00 06CB:76B1 Touchpad" "libinput Natural Scrolling Enabled" 1I haven’t tested Bluetooth thoroughly but it seems to work. Some useful notes follow.
bluetoothctlapt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetoothpactl load-module module-bluetooth-discoverpactl set-card-profile bluez_card.F0_1D_BC_FA_98_CF a2dp_sink
(to set back to “High Fidelity Playback”pactl set-card-profile bluez_card.F0_1D_BC_FA_98_CF <tab>
shows all possibilitiesBy default, when running on batter power the screen automatically dims and brightens depending on what is on the screen. It seems somewhat random, but it depends in a strange way on the brightness of what is already on the screen. I worked out how to turn it off:
Then the brightness must be controlled manually, for example
echo 40000 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness