HP Spectre x360

Posted Dec 1, 2016 19:28 UTC (Thu) by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375)
Parent article: Linux on the Mac — state of the union

If you want a reasonably high-powered portable/convertible with Thunderbolt 3, I'm pretty happy so far with my new Kaby Lake-based HP Spectre 360. Fedora 25 handles everything so far, including touchscreen, wifi, sound. Using an inexpensive ($70) USB-C docking station I can connect a 4k monitor, Ethernet, and other devices - on Fedora! (There are some occasional glitches with the monitor which I haven't figured out. I don't know if it's the hardware, Fedora, the docking station, or the monitor. Probably the docking station, since I don't seem to have problems when using a plain USBC-to-HDMI converter.)

It's not the fastest machine you can get, but Kaby Lake / 16G / 512G PCIe SSD is pretty decent; the price is fair (I found a $195-off coupon, but it's not bad even at list); and I like having a very lightweight 13" convertible I can carry everywhere, and hold in my hands for more than 30 seconds.

(Be careful you don't unintentionally buy last year's model. Those might be worth considering if you get one on sale: It does have extra connectors compared to this year's model, including HDMI, but it doesn't have Thunderbolt 3 or Kaby Lake.)

HP Spectre x360

Posted Dec 2, 2016 2:05 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (2 responses)

My guess? The USB Type-C docking station uses MST for the display connector(s), while the USB-C to HDMI converter just adds a regular HDMI port. So most probably it's a driver, not a hardware, issue.

HP Spectre x360

Posted Dec 2, 2016 2:20 UTC (Fri) by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375) [Link]

Quite possible. The flakiness seems to happen after sleeping or display blanking timeout, IIRC. After which the Display setting window thinks the external monitor is enabled - but it isn't. At which point the only thing I can so is unplug the monitor and plug it into the USB-C to HDMI converter, and then it's usable.

I can try to observe more carefully if someone tells me what information they want me to gather.

HP Spectre x360

Posted Dec 6, 2016 18:39 UTC (Tue) by jani (subscriber, #74547) [Link]

The HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type C spec is brand new. I suspect it's DP Alt Mode with a DP-HDMI converter.