Updated: November 20, 2024
Let me define deja-vu for you. In my fourth Slimbook Titan article, I used the following sentence: I'm writing the fourth long-term usage report for this laptop much sooner than I normally would. Now, here, my sixth Slimbook Executive article (those be two different laptops, mind), I am going to use that sentence again, with just a slight variation: I'm writing the sixth long-term usage report for this laptop much sooner than I normally would. Why? Because fresh problems, that's why.
A brief recap before we dive into the full story. I have two Slimbook machines. Both are quite nice. The Titan is intended to be a beefy system, focused on gaming, and I'm trying everything I have on it, to make sure I'm ready for the final transition off Windows sometime in the near future. Now, the Executive is a productivity machine, used for the 99% everyday stuff. Because it has no discrete graphics, only the integrated bit, overall, it's behaved quite impeccably until very recently. More or less in parallel to the Titan, it began exhibiting some hardware-related errors, which point to bugs in the kernel. Annoying, pointless, but here we are. Follow me.
Keyboard problems, ACPI errors
The Executive was a peach until my fifth review, when I mentioned a few totally avoidable issues. One of them was my keyboard Super key suddenly not being recognized anymore, until it was again. The problem is back, even more severe now. The entire keyboard suddenly became scrambled! I had to reboot to get it back.
Along the way, I discovered a few ACPI errors, and found a thread on Tuxedo's GitHub, which uses similar chasses and kit to Slimbook for their branded Linux laptops. In a nutshell, the issues all revolve around kernel and firmware updates, systemd, the usual crop of modern suspects. And the ACPI table vomit:
ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [^^^^NPCF.ACBT], AE_NOT_FOUND
(20230628/psargs-330)
Initialized Local Variables for Method [_Q83]:
Local0: 00000000be7f12c5 <Obj> Integer 0000000000000000
No Arguments are initialized for method [_Q83]
ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.PC00.LPCB.EC0._Q83 due to previous error (AE_NOT_FOUND)
(20230628/psparse-529)
Why this all of a sudden? Beats me. But my perfectly working laptop's spotless record is now ruined.
Not that it doesn't work. It works all right, but I now have issues and the deep sense of uncertainty
tainting my user experience, because zero-QA code gets pushed into my system.
All right, so how did I resolve this then?
My "healing" process may look like Voodoo to you, but it is not. It comes to IPv6 networking, exactly like the Titan. This is an educated guess, as I didn't want to bother with hours and hours of debugging CPU instructions like it's my paying job, but I believe I'm right. Let me elaborate.
First, we probably have new firmware that brings in new functionality. Only that functionality is probably not 100% relevant to my network card, more a family of cards, me thinks. The specific functionality is triggered only under certain conditions, namely when IPv6 networking is active (and here, a specific subset of conditions). Combine that with the kernel bug I referenced in the Titan report, combine that with the overcomplicated and fragile nature of systemd, which means there's a cascade effect whenever you have a problem with one of the "events" in your system, and your box will exhibit ugly behavior. Freezes, keyboard nonsense, and more.
So I disabled IPv6 - GRUB and kernel module blacklisting. Fast forward a dozen reboots and several weeks of use, the kernel log is clean of BIOS errors (this could also have been fixed with a subsequent update), and the keyboard bug has not recurred. You could say, it's all a coincidence. But it's not. Not when two different machines seem affected by a rather similar problem, and all issues go away with a single solution applied on both systems.
Furthermore, it's a win-win situation. Even if the issues had been resolved by Voodoo magic, I'm no longer using the meaningless IPv6 protocol on my Slimbook Executive, and so it's one less pointless and overcomplicated technology to worry about.
And now, everyday use
With the useless annoyances dusted away, I can go back to focusing on fun and productivity, and using my lovely, lovely laptop with pleasure. The Exec is a splendid machine, from an ergonomic perspective, with a phenomenal case, display and keyboard (when it works, and now it does). Performance, battery life, and the smooth, sleek elegance of Kubuntu 22.04 are top-notch. Instant suspend & resume, clear audio, excellent responsiveness. Lovely jubbly.
Conclusion
It is critical that one's experience with a computer is mostly positive, and that it starts on a positive note. You sort of build "credit" with it, in that you're more likely to tolerate an odd problem here and there than if the early results were mixed, or negative. For example, when my Titan exhibited the freezes, I was way more annoyed, and I remain less confident in its long-term prospects. I simply cannot get past the initial hurdles.
With the Executive, the keyboard issues and the new crop of errors are extremely annoying. They aggravate me so. This is mostly because a pristine record has been ruined, and for no good reason. Just random nonsense, because Linux is essentially 10,000 different things, cobbled together with no regard to one another. Your kernel runs in the data center, and it runs on your laptop, and the two use cases have nothing in common. It's amazing that such technological flexibility exists, and that it's even possible, but that also means any problem that may be, whatsoever, can manifest on your hardware, just because a patch for use case #3,444 will also affect use case #6,777, with zero correlation among them, and of course, zero testing whatsoever.
But then, once I got past the nonsense, my sense of stability and tranquility returned. I've not lost confidence in the Executive. Not yet, and hopefully, there never will be so many errors that I'm forced to completely abandon my serious Linux productivity endeavor (and go Mac, not back to Windows). Well there you go, my sixth report for this machine. The beautiful, spotless streak of good fortune has been cut short. This is still a superb system, Kubuntu 22.04 is a nice distro, but the exercise today shows that random nonsense can attack at any moment, unexpected. The wonders of modern software. We're done.
Cheers.