Ubuntu 18.03 installation on envy - No touchscreen and no fingerprint scanner

[sanctimon]

Hey all,

I am running Ubuntu from an external USB hard drive (I have not tampered with the Windows installation or EFI partition - the external drive is set up as removeable, even though the installation is permanent.

Ubuntu 18.04 generally works well, but it does not recognise the fingerprint scanner anywhere. The touchscreen does not work either. Here are the outputs of

lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0781:5591 SanDisk Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0a2a Intel Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04f2:b655 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

and

xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              	id=11	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                   	id=3	[master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard             	id=5	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=6	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                               	id=7	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                               	id=8	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP Wide Vision HD Camera: HP Wi         	id=9	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            	id=10	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP Wireless hotkeys                     	id=12	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP WMI hotkeys                          	id=13	[slave  keyboard (3)]

Is there any way to make these work with Ubuntu 18.04?

[WAWood]

@sanctimon 

I'm sorry, but we here are not equipped to provide detailed Linux support.

HP only warranties their PCs for usage with the OS that comes preinstalled. IF you replace that with Linux, or add a Linux OS, then you assume full responsibility for maintaining that -- as HP provides Linux assistance only on Redhat and then only to commercial customers.

Any hardware that does not work will then range from simple (if there are Linux drivers available) to impossible (if there are NO Linux drivers available) to fix.

Since HP does not provide Linux drivers, your best bet for Linux support is to contact the support forum for the Linux distro you are using -- in this case, the Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/

Folks on Linux support forums have experience using a vareity of machines with Linux and know a lot about driver and installation issues. You will be able to get sound and detailed help there.

Good Luck

[sanctimon]

Well, this is rather disappointing, to say the least.

I feel that there is a distinct difference between supporting an OS and being able to provide a smidgeon of useful information that could help in that direction.

I am aware of the various Ubuntu-related forums - thank you for the tip.

What would help in order to make my investigation easier would be the following:

1. What is the specification of the touchscreen on this Envy model? Perhaps there are drivers, perhaps there are none, but knowing the manufacturer and the interface (usb? other?) will help me in my research.

2. What is the specification of the fingerprint scanner? Manufacturer and interface will again come in handy. 

Unfortunately, this is information that is not readily available on the HP site and I was hoping that the support forum might be able to provide some insight.

[sanctimon]

[dmoisset]

Hi, I was able to get the touchscreen working in 18.04 by tweaking the acpi code... you can find what I did here:

https://github.com/dmoisset/hp-envy13

I haven't found yet if the fingerprint scanner is supported

[sanctimon]

That's a pretty amazing effort. I'll get right on to it with Mint Linux.

[sanctimon]

You have actually solved my other problem which prevents newer Linux distros from booting. I have implemented it onto Mint and it works great (although I still don't know exactly what it does; I am assuming it forces a different mode on the MX150 graphics card. Is there a way to overcome this by installing proprietary nVidia graphics? Have you tried this?)

I read your instructions on compiling the touchscreen acpi and I was not clear on what I have to do.

I understand you have a file on github that needs to be compiled, but I am unclear as to which file it is and where I must compile it.

Any additional help will be welcome!

Thank you.

[dmoisset]

Hi,

You have actually solved my other problem which prevents newer Linux distros from booting. I have implemented it onto Mint and it works great (although I still don't know exactly what it does; I am assuming it forces a different mode on the MX150 graphics card. Is there a way to overcome this by installing proprietary nVidia graphics? Have you tried this?)

The booting fix (the grub parameter) is is independent of using or not the proprietary nvidia drivers... I'm using those, but this parameter affects how the kernel initializes the hardware based on the bios info (i.e. the ACPI tables). The ACPI tables for this laptop have some OS dependent code, that fail to initialize the video properly when they don't recognize the OS.

I read your instructions on compiling the touchscreen acpi and I was not clear on what I have to do.

You have to download all the files in my repository, and run (from a shell in the directory where you downloaded the files) the commands stated in https://github.com/dmoisset/hp-envy13#touchscreen-support and you'll get a file copied into /boot. After that, you'll have to configure your bootloader to use that file as an ACPI table. Instructions for Ubuntu are on that README, but if you use a different distribution of Linux it may be different.

Let me know if it worked for you!