Slimbook Executive, long-term report 5

Updated: October 18, 2024

We must talk about my Slimbook Executive laptop, again. Well, we don't really have to, but it's been about three months since I last talked about it, and the whole purpose of these reports is to assess the quality and usability of the machine and its operating system in real-life conditions, long term. I won't repeat myself too much as to why, how or when. TL;DR: I have a Linux-only productivity machine, and I use it in earnest for all sorts of things. So far, it's been working beautifully, on all levels.

The hardware is excellent. The ergonomics are sweet - great case, great keyboard, nice audio, fantastic, crisp display. Kubuntu 22.04 LTS, which I use as the operating system of choice, has also been behaving remarkably well. Few bugs or issues, superb workflow and looks, and I've been doing pretty much everything I can. Even some gaming, although the bulk of that (testing) is reserved for the Slimbook Titan machine. Well, let's see what happened since June. After me.

Teaser

A problem, what!

Yes, we have a new issue, and it's mega-annoying. For some reason, my Super key suddenly stopped working. This happened after I installed Inkscape. Coincidence or not, the key simply went dead. At first, I thought it was just the system menu. Indeed, in the past, the Plasma desktop would have the bug whereby activating the menu via the Super key simply wouldn't work anymore, and you would have to reassign the relevant shortcut to get things going. The whole thing is a bit vague. Alt + F1 is the default combo, but Super will also work on its own, even if you assign something like Super + Space for the menu - or even if you don't. Weird, but I had no reason to complain so far.

Now though, anything Super simply didn't work, at all. Dead keyboard? Sounded unlikely, so quickly into the laptop's lifetime. Also, I've never ever seen a keyboard go bad. Well, as my next step in the troubleshooting sequence, as you may recall, I had a tutorial on how to remap my keyboard (something I had to do on a different machine). I thought, well, let's see what sort of event the Super key triggers. Now, as it turned out, the key didn't register at all. Nothing. Looking at the system log, I saw these messages:

exec kernel: [39104.531160] atkbd serio0: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xf8 on isa0060/serio0).
exec kernel: [39104.531177] atkbd serio0: Use 'setkeycodes e078 <keycode>' to make it known.

Reading around, the only thing I could find was a systemd bug report, although I'm not 100% convinced this is related. But then, given the fact there does not seem to be any Wayland-native key remapper tool, and if there is, I'm not aware of it, and the fact systemd brings zero value to Linux machines at home - it has its uses in the Enterprise space, my feeling is that the issue above is indeed one of the "modern" software afflictions.

I didn't really want to debug this. I absolutely loathe issues of this kind. So I let the machine be. Didn't touch it. Roughly half an hour later, without any intervention of my behalf whatsoever, the Super key came back alive, and the problem hasn't recurred since. Why? No idea.

Another problem, what!

A few days ago, I was listening to some music. To be more precise, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, so we're talking a composition that's about 45 minutes long. I let the "song" play in VLC, and then, for no good reason, the desktop brightness suddenly dropped to 0 (the laptop's lowest level). I thought this might be a power-saving method, that half-state between active and fully turned off screen, but no. When I moved the mouse cursor again, the screen remained dim. I had to manually increase the brightness. Why? No idea. But my guess is, considering the earlier issue and now this one, something naughty went into one of the kernel releases, and my spotless hardware support has now become less spotless. The story of every single Linux installation I've used over extended time. Ever. Very sad and annoying.

And then, the printing decided to misbehave for a bit

I tried to print a few documents to my B215 printer, sitting on the same LAN segment. First, the Slimbook acted as though there was no printer at all, nothing configured. Then, a minute later, it show the printer correctly. Then, I sent a couple of documents into the printing queue, but nothing happened. I opened the printing applet, and saw this:

Printing

It's an ugly, nerdy message. It's wrapped nicely in the top part of the window, but below, the Status Message line has no nice formatting, so you need to scroll right, a lot. Styling aside, the text is typical nerd stuff that no ordinary human can understand:

No destination host name supplied by cups-browsed for printer [name], is cups-browsed running?

What is this supposed to be mean? What do words like destination host, cups, browsed [sic] mean to ordinary people? Nothing whatsoever. Pure technobabble. The solution to this issue is to restart the above-named service with systemctl. The more I use modern systems, the more I hate them. Things like UEFI, Secure Boot, GRUB 2, fwupd, Wayland, IPv6, systemd just keep interfering with my normal everyday usage. No benefit. None. Would-be enterprise ideas dropped onto the home users with ZERO regard to usability. And even then, there's built-in infinite obfuscation and complexity, because why design normal, simple tools like back in the day when you can have ultra-complex solutions that no one can debug? Simplicity is the essence of philosophy. What we have nowadays is the absolute opposite.

Other things, day-to-day use

The two annoying issues aside, the laptop works great. The performance is solid, there's no excess heating, the battery charge holds its day of work (four hours hi hi, I'm joking, I know a full work day is three hours if you do any sort of intellectual stuff). No, the battery actually manages more than that, 6-7 hours. Very neat.

Kdenlive

Sometimes, the Samba connection to a Windows machine might get borked - the Slimbook would say it can't connect, but then successfully do so 2-3 minutes later. Meanwhile, connectivity among Windows machines on the same network works just fine, and the hosts are all reachable (and correctly mapped). Dolphin also keeps weird locks on files, sometimes. If you say cut a file from the Slimbook and paste it in the Samba share rather than copy & paste it, then you cannot delete the file in Windows later on. The timeout is so great you need to practically reboot the Slimbook (or the Windows) machine to be able to remove the file.

The issue with Android phone connection also remains. Namely, plug in your phone, allow all the relevant bits and pieces, and Dolphin will simply refuse to show the phone contents. It will complain about the device being busy or MTP or whatever. But then, keep the phone plugged, close Dolphin, open it again, and boom, everything works great now.

Conclusion

I don't have too much else to share here, but hey, it's been an eventful three months period! Various hardware-related bugs, Samba and Android annoyances, side by side with excellent feel, great looks, solid speed, and overall, good productivity. I mean, you may think I'm being grumpy or unhappy, but no. I love the Slimbook Executive, it's proper fun, and every time I pick it up, physically, or open the lid, I'm pleased with the sharpness and clarity and vibrancy of colors of its screen. Hasn't gotten old yet, and that's a good sign.

The issue of randomness and erraticity of the Linux distro world remains, and it's the biggest future threat to the adoption and viability of Linux at home, so to speak. Not among nerds. Among normies, if they ever end up using Linux. The thing is, people expect their systems to behave one way, good or bad. They do not want changes, and they need any surprises. And if their operating system suddenly does something untoward, they will get angry and resentful.

By and large, the severe lack of any production-grade QA in the Linux world makes long-term commitment to the operating system (and all its various distros) difficult. So, a person decides to use it now. Great. A year later? The Super key stops functioning. Those kind of things are killers, and must not be allowed. Sure, most modern operating systems are quite fragile, badly tested, and of low quality. But that's no excuse, and certainly not the norm we ought to strive for. Looking at my Slimbook Executive, the machine has fared quite well in the past year. It's a thoroughly enjoyable laptop. I hope things stay that way, especially on the software front.

Cheers.