Voyager III Pro with Linux?

[sfgreenwood]

I'm thinking about buying a Voyager III Pro so I can replace my laptop and desktop at once. They don't seem to be reviewed much here at all but has anyone had any experience with it with Linux, particularly with the docking station? I would probably be running Manjaro or Xubuntu.

 

[oodles2do]

I've just got my desktop PC from PCS with no OS and installed both Windows and Ubuntu on it. I've got an Intel i5-6600 and an Nvidia GTX 970 and have had a lot of issues getting Ubuntu to recognise and use my GPU. The Voyager only has integrated graphics so you should be fine . Just make sure that the Linux distro you're going to use supports Skylake processors. I think you need kernel 4.3 or higher, and Ubuntu 16.04 has kernel 4.4.

And if you want to dual book with Windows then make sure Windows is installed first. This makes this much easier as Linux can provide a grub screen where you choose to boot into Linux or Windows. The other way around and Windows ignores everything else.

 

[[email protected]]

I also have the Voyager 3 Pro and Ubuntu 16.04. The problem I had was that it wouldn't shutdown properly. It would just hang on the splash screen, but never shutdown and I would have to press tyhe button manually to power off. After days of googling I found the solution:

For me, the solution was to upgrade the kernel. I used 4.5.3 on Ubuntu 15.10 (anything greater than this will crash the OS after login) And 4.7 RC3 works on Ubuntu 16.04.

The forum with this answer is here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/508...89239?newreg=eed923da78d14926a74bb187cb0decef

 

[patwig]

I have the Voyager III Pro also. The issue with shutdown seems to have been resolved in the latest kernels. (e.g. 4.7.x, 4.8.x)

However, there is an issue with ACPI in this model when using PC Specialist's BIOS and a Linux OS. The battery is not detected, so there is no battery meter and no automatic OS shutdown if the battery is about to run out. I'm also not convinced that suspend works properly, since I can still hear the fan and HDD running while the machine is supposedly suspended. I would not want to put the laptop away in a bag while "suspended" in that manner! These are about the only obvious problems I can see with running Linux on this machine (with a recent kernel).

There was a Linux kernel bug report raised about the battery meter issue with this specific notebook chassis, but it was closed as having been fixed by a BIOS update, which was issued by another reseller that uses the same chassis. I messaged PC Specialist to ask whether they could provide the same update, and I was told that they would provide it, but I am currently still waiting for that.

So, for anyone considering buying a Voyager III Pro to use with Linux: If a working battery meter or properly working suspend is very important to you, then it is probably worth avoiding this model until it has been confirmed that these features will work.

It's otherwise quite a good Linux laptop so far.

The SM951 NVMe SSD works. (Works out of the box with *buntu 16.10. The stock 16.04.1 installer does not detect it, but it is possible to build custom installation media that will install 16.04.1, if you want to do that. Your mileage may vary with older/other distros.)
The ME936 module works.
WiFi works.
Bluetooth works.
Ethernet works.
On-board audio works.
HDMI output works (both audio and video).
Webcam works.

The most important keyboard hotkeys work, some others do not:

• The touchpad enable/disable hotkey (Fn+F1) doesn't appear to do anything.
• Fn+F2 seems to put the screen into power saving mode until the mouse is nudged or a key is pressed (not sure whether that is what it's meant to do).
• Volume up/down + mute hotkeys work (Fn+F3, Fn+F5, Fn+F6)
• Keyboard brightness hotkey (Fn+F4) works, independently of the OS. The keyboard brightness returns to default after power off.
• The external/internal monitor switching key (Fn+F7) is detected in the OS as a Meta+P keystroke. Not mapped to anything by default.
• The screen brightness hotkeys (Fn+F8, Fn+F9) don't do anything and aren't detected as keystrokes, but the brightness can be adjusted in software.
• The camera hotkey (Fn+F10) temporarily enables/disables the webcam (the camera device disappears from the output of lsusb). No feedback is given when you do this, so it looks like nothing is happening.
• The airplane mode hotkey (Fn+F11) does not appear to do anything.
• The sleep hotkey (Fn+F12) does not appear to do anything.

For me, coming from a ten year old Core 2 Duo laptop with quite a whiny fan, the Voyager is very quiet in terms of fan noise. To my ears, it's effectively silent when the CPU is under light load, unless I am sitting in an exceptionally quiet room. When it does ramp up, it's more of a purr than a whine, which makes it rather tolerable.

The screen is a bit disappointing. Quite noticeable dithering. When I view photos on it, they sometimes remind me of bad inkjet prints with banding issues. Other times it's less noticeable. I would have preferred an IPS panel, but that was not an available option.