Ubuntu 20.04 on HP 15s-du00094tu — A review from noob!
A few days ago my old laptop of 7 years died. The battery died 2 years ago, and now the keyboard and the mouse died. So, I had no choice but to buy a new one. My old one being a Lenovo, I decided to buy a HP laptop. The model number is 15s-du00094tu. A budget offering available in India which have pretty decent specs, and I not being a PC gamer is just happy with it.
My old laptop came with Windows 8 (yes, the notorious windows 8), Being tired of it, I shifted to Ubuntu 18.04 on my laptop, Ubuntu 18.04 was awesome. It worked smoothly on my Lenovo laptop(that time 5 years old) and I fell in love with it. So, when I bought the new one , I was always going to install Ubuntu.
After getting the laptop I dual-booted Ubuntu 20.04 alongside windows 10. I know, some people will not be happy about it, as Windows is just a crutch and I will go back to windows after facing the first problem in Ubuntu. But I had my reasons. I wanted to install Jurassic Park : Operation Genesis (I am broke, can’t buy Jurassic World Evolution) in the windows part so i needed it, Also, as windows 10 came pre-installed all the hardware were working fine with it.( Also the layout of a document I received from my teacher,got completely messed up in LibreOffice of Ubuntu, But was perfect in LibreOffice for Windows)
So after installing Ubuntu 20.04 i booted in it. The booting was fast and the laptop felt snappier after boot. The Yaru theme looks awesome, and the build-in dark theme looks really cool. I also loved the blurred effect on lockscreen and log-in screen. All the regular apps was working fine. Ubuntu 20.04 is the best. I don’t know much about the technical changes that was done in 20.04 compared to 18.04 but to a normal user , Ubuntu rocks! Just love the convenient use of sudo apt-get and online community with clear answers.
But then I came across the problems! May be it is because my Laptop is one of the latest release, not all hardware drivers were available in Ubuntu. The fingerprint sensor did not work at all. I tried every solution available on the internet but failed to make it work. The font and UI was too small to see, but that I fixed easily with the fractional scaling option of the display. The brightness Hardware buttons are not working. Not a big issue, as I can manage just fine with the virtual brightness slider. But the biggest problem was the bluetooth is not working at all.
Whenever I open the bluetooth settings, it shows no bluetooth adapter found. My laptop has a realtek 8723de wifi and bluetooth combo adapter whose drivers are not available for linux. Yes, I have came across the https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/archive/extended.zip link in the community, but at the day of writing, as far as I know, that repository is removed from github. Also, the wifi works out of the box in ubuntu, which I guess did not use to work before. I hope, the problem with realtek bluetooth drivers will get fixed in future.
There is another problem I am facing In Ubuntu 20.04. When the Lid is closed of the Laptop, it doesn't hibernate, So the battery gets drained. Also the battery drains a bit faster. I have not searched any solution for this , but I hope I will get some.
So for me, Ubuntu 20.04 is a good OS but little bit of broken systems is stopping me to use it as my daily driver OS. I am relying on Windows 10 much more which is also a really good OS in my opinion.
