chromebook_snow: status

[hexdump0815]

notes on snow running 5.18.1:

here is list of working and non working features on the snow chromebooks.

working

• wifi
• bluetooth
• builtin display
• usb (the usb3 port is disabled)
• builtin speaker
• energy: suspend/resume

untested

• hw video encode/decode (most probably not working)
• builtin mic (might work)
• external display (might work)

broken

• gpu: only partially useable using the legacy mali driver and blob libraries in some special setups (it might be possible to get the open source panfrost driver somewhat working)
• energy: dpms
• usb3 port (disabled as it seems to break suspend/resume iirc)
• webcam (seems to be usb, but is not detected - maybe related to usb3 probems)

installation

coming soon

problems

• display power management not working and thus disabled by default
• booting via u-boot from usb does not work, via sd-card it should work

[jenneron]

builtin mic (might work)

https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/blob/master/device/testing/linux-postmarketos-exynos5/0023-HACK-ARM-dts-exynos-snow-disable-HDMI-audio.patch

webcam (seems to be usb, but is not detected - maybe related to usb3 probems)

https://dpaste.com/4X5Z7M7PL

UPD: Note that i have plans for upstreaming, so it may not worth including these

[hexdump0815]

@jenneron - thanks a lot for those hints! - i really appreciate that you let me know of those changes as i was not aware of them yet ... looks like i'll have a closer look at all the things you already did for pmos on snow and peach and will most probably take over quite a few of those patches in my next snow/peach round which is currently planned for when v6.0 or maybe v6.1 is out (or if i find some time before) ... its definitely on my todo list for snow/peach now ... even if those changes get partially upstreamed (which is very nice as well) i'll apply them then as long as they are not in yet and drop them as soon as they are in the kernel sources

btw. can you confirm the problems a saw with suspend/resume breaking (i think it was randomly) on snow when the usb3 port gets enabled? i did not test it with usb3 enabled on the recent kernels, but the problem was there for quite a while for me ...

once more a lot of thanks and keep up all your good work - best wishes - hexdump

[jenneron]

can you confirm the problems a saw with suspend/resume breaking (i think it was randomly) on snow when the usb3 port gets enabled?

@hexdump0815 usb 3.0 and deep suspend work in pmOS (5.16.1). Although this version (and many other actually, 5.19.0 is broken too, but 5.18.5 is not affected) has generic issues with camera on armv7

Speaking of upstreaming, I would like to get hp chromebook (spring) firstly and make corresponding patches for it. However it's quite possible I won't manage to get it for reasonable price and will just send patches without it

[hexdump0815]

@jenneron - ok, will give usb3 on newer kernels a try again then

i have a spring here and i think there is quite a bit more work required for it as it is not really working too well with mainline: for u-boot usb is not working (and spring does not have an sd card slot) and for the kernel the display is broken due to deferred devices and maybe more (i think there are quite a few things missing in the dtb)

[RaylynnKnight]

I have a Snow v5 (which I documented one WikiDevi. Will be attempting to build and updated kernel with above patches soon and will post results here.

[hexdump0815]

@RaylynnKnight - spring or snow v5?

[RaylynnKnight]

@hexdump0815 - That should have been Snow v5 (i.e. Samsung Chromebook XE303C12). I've now edited comment.

[OscilloBecher]

Hello, First, i am french .... i speak a special english ... Thanks for all I have daisy snow model of chromebook et i try "230220-01 - debian bookworm image for the snow chromebook - samsung xe303c12", all seems fine, i see the login panel ! but could you say to me what i choose for username and password (i tried "root" and "toor" ... dont match...) Thanks

[hexdump0815]

@OscilloBecher - happy to hear that it seems to work well for you - the default username/password is linux/changeme - see https://github.com/hexdump0815/imagebuilder/blob/main/doc/first-steps.md (linked from the main readme)

good luck and best wishes - hexdump

[hexdump0815]

to have this information here as well: @jenneron from postmarketos bisected the broken mesa support and added an issue on mesa and maybe the gpu will work again soon with mainline kernel and mesa with a bit of luck - see: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/10558

[rtd1250]

I have tried it out, and yes it looks like gpu acceleration is working once again, with reasonable performance. I couldn't get it to work under the debian bookworm image (likely something kernel related, I made sure to remove the blacklisted modules from modprobe.d but didn't troubleshoot past that), however it works on arch linux arm. There seem to be some regressions compared to old mesa, though - desktop acceleration works fine apart from flickering cursor, but glxgears isn't displaying correctly while in old mesa it was fine. Still glad to see that work is still being done for this laptop, now the corruptions are gone

[jenneron]

There seem to be some regressions compared to old mesa

which exactly?

though - desktop acceleration works fine apart from flickering cursor

wayland works fine. flickering cursor is not a big problem in terms of x11

but glxgears isn't displaying correctly while in old mesa it was fine

i think it is being bisected (not by me, this time by another person)

[jenneron]

@rtd1250 can you run glmark2 in x11 with default settings and tell us the score? I'm wondering if performance is different on upstream kernel. We need kernel hacks for T620 to make it performant enough, and I've been testing T600 with the same kernel

[rtd1250]

Arch ARM's kernel is sadly heavily outdated nowadays due to lack of maintenance so the results won't be very meaningful. I'm starting to look for ways to run a more modern kernel, if you've got a preferred kernel or other setup for this laptop I'd much appreciate if you shared it here since I'm not that much knowledgeable with this hardware.

I've noticed the exynos5-mainline project so I could try using that if it's suitable for use

Still, I'll try out running benchmarks on 5.5 as that's what is currently installed but I'm pretty sure that some of the problems I'm facing are definitely caused by the kernel itself.

[jenneron]

if you've got a preferred kernel or other setup

Use kernel from postmarketOS Right now it is 6.1.56 LTS kernel: https://gitlab.com/exynos5-mainline/linux/-/archive/v6.1.56-exynos5-lts/linux-v6.1.56-exynos5-lts.tar.gz config: https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/blob/b7427191bf6b5315c4eeb3815f905e8a0d8c25c3/device/community/linux-postmarketos-exynos5/config-postmarketos-exynos5.armv7

Unfortunately, one of USB ports doesn't work with this kernel right now

[jenneron]

The feature status with it is at https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Samsung_Chromebook_(google-snow)

[rtd1250]

I've managed to build the pmos kernel and get it running, it is a huge improvement compared to the old 5.5.7 arch kernel - KDE Wayland now works fine and X11 has also seen a performance increase - this combined with recent mesa changes results in the best desktop experience I've had on snow, KDE's webkit browser works smoothly too

In attachment you'll find the results of glmark2, only difference between them is the kernel, desktop environment was twm since performance is ~20 points worse under kde glmark2-results-snow.tar.gz

[Salahd94]

Hi @rtd1250

I'm encountering an issue while trying to burn a copy of Snow to a flash drive using Etcher. It gave me an error saying the boot partition was not found. Can you provide guidance on how to solve this problem?

Also, I'm interested in the improvements you've made compared to the old 5.5.7 version. Could you share more details on these enhancements and the process behind them?

Thanks!

[jenneron]

It gave me an error saying the boot partition was not found.

do you mean on postmarketOS?

Can you provide guidance on how to solve this problem?

use sd card instead of usb

[Salahd94]

Hi @jenneron, @rtd1250

Thank you for your suggestion to use an SD card instead of a USB drive. It worked perfectly, and I was able to resolve the boot partition error. I appreciate your help!

I have a couple more questions if you don't mind:

1. Could you please guide how to add the library of GPG on postmarketOS?
2. Additionally, I'm interested in installing KDE Plasma on postmarketOS or changing X11 to KDE Plasma. Could you assist me with that?

Thank you again for your assistance!

[rtd1250]

1. Could you please guide how to add the library of GPG on postmarketOS?

You may install packages with apk, links to Alpine/postmarketos package lists are also included here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Terminal_cheat_sheet

2. Additionally, I'm interested in installing KDE Plasma on postmarketOS or changing X11 to KDE Plasma. Could you assist me with that?

Either install postmarketos-ui-plasma-desktop or flash an official image: https://images.postmarketos.org/bpo/edge/google-snow/

To be fair I'm yet to try out pmOS with panfrost-accelerated desktop myself, I'll happily test it now that T600 support has landed in upstream mesa

[jenneron]

It worked perfectly, and I was able to resolve the boot partition error. I appreciate your help!

usb booting should work with recent pmOS images, it has been fixed

[TheNathan0]

@rtd1250, not sure if this affects all Midgard v4 GPUs or just the T620 series of Mali GPUs, but do you get occasional crashes/freezes in KDE when you try to switch tabs or place your cursor on the top left corner of the screen? I have a device with a T628 Mali GPU and for some reason on almost every distro (including postmarketOS) does placing the cursor on the top left corner of the screen or just trying to switch windows makes the desktop environment either crash or freeze; on X11, I believe it usually automatically recovers fairly quickly while on Wayland does it require you to restart the desktop environment (otherwise usually you'll be stuck on a black screen with a cursor); other than that, KDE is stable on both Wayland and X11. On Arch Linux ARM, this problem seems to be either nonexistent or just rarely(?) occurs but some strange lag spike occurs instead if it isn't a crash/freeze.

[rtd1250]

@rtd1250, not sure if this affects all Midgard v4 GPUs or just the T620 series of Mali GPUs, but do you get occasional crashes/freezes in KDE when you try to switch tabs or place your cursor on the top left corner of the screen?

I didn't encounter these freezes myself, but moving the cursor to the right edge of the screen under Wayland caused the cursor to glitch out

[TheNathan0]

I take that nothing happens if you try moving it to the top left then. Speaking of KDE, for some reason is Plasma 6 is more broken on T620 Mali GPUs than it was with Plasma 5. In fact, at least on Wayland, the panels crash and you're immediately left with a strange buggy environment with a cursor and a black screen. So, HUGE epilepsy seizure warning since it involves extreme flickering and artifacting. This was on the latest postmarketOS. Gnome doesn't exhibit this issue however. This is most probably some Panfrost bug since I haven't experienced this problem on any other Mali GPU running Panfrost.

Also, expect KDE performance to improve even more soon. Plasma 6.1 will bring in triple buffering patches, which will make the desktop environment more performant in general, even on lower end GPUs.

[jenneron]

The correct place to report these issues is at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues

[Salahd94]

Hi guys I sill can't install and run glmark2 on pmos can u write down the set of commands that works in pmos terminal 🙏

[jenneron]

@Salahd94 https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Terminal_cheat_sheet and https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_Package_Keeper