Fwd: AX500 support quirks

Thu Jan 27 10:33:40 PST 2022

Hi Patricio,

As I see it there are DIY distributives like Gentoo or Arch that are 
targeted to the people who has no issues to patch and compie new 
kernel.  So they do not care much to backport any new drivers to old 
kernels. Who want it - will do it.

And distributions like Ubunto or Fedora  that are targeted to out-of-the 
box usage.  There the developers try to backport everything, compile 
standard kernel with all the features and so on.

SO maybe you need to choose the correct distribution.  Do you want to 
make a distribution highly optimized for your hardware and your usage 
(and willin to spend some time and effort for this) - or do you prefer 
to have general distribution that will work on any hardware including 
the one you have.  Linux can offer you  a choice.

I've choosen Gentoo (after slackware (started from 0.98 long long ago, 
redhat,suse, debian) - just because I have enough knowledge and 
experience to build system for my hardware and usage. From other side I 
understand that if I take my ssd from 9310 and plug it in Ryzen based 
laptop it will not even boot as all my binaries are compiled to use 
every single Intel feature availabe on intel Tigerlake.

So just select a proper distribution for your needs and tour skills. As 
for new features of new hardware - they will sooner or later land into 
mainstream and all the concervative distributions - but it will take 
time. As for AX500 the proper support is not in the mainline yet. I bet 
Ubuntu gives you WiFi + BT but your energy saving features are crap (CPU 
never goes below PC3 state ), and hibernate/suspend makes you trouble 
(or you do not use it or do not care if it does not wake up 50% of 
times).  And you have 2 choices - wait when all the recent development 
from this mailin list land to mainstream or take the latest code from 
Kalle's git and do it yourself.

On 1/27/22 16:58, Patricio Ferraggi Ares wrote:
> Hi Mark, thanks for answering back. Generally, I would agree with you
> that newer hardware requires distros that update frequently to get
> those drivers in, but in this situation, I find it very strange is the
> other way around.
>
> More updated distros like arch-based ones have no functioning BT,
> while older distros like ubuntu-based ones have both working BT and
> WiFi. It might be the case that the arch distros I tried simply did
> not enable the modules you mentioned.
> I am not sure what is going on.
>
> I will give a try your recommendations and see if can make some progress.
>
> Thanks
>
> El jue, 27 ene 2022 a la(s) 14:28, Mark Herbert
> (mark.herbert42 at gmail.com) escribió:
>> I use Gentoo with very custom kernel (ath11k master-pending backported +
>> more bleeding edge and experimental features). So it is hard for me to
>> say why bnary distributes have it all so different.
>>
>> When I got my 9310 in August 2021 it was completely unisable because of
>> ath11k no matter of distribution, but now the situation is quite
>> different - thanks to Kalle and team.
>>
>> The only issue now is to wait till those new features will land into
>> mainstream distributions which sometimes prefer to stay on so called
>> "stable"  kernels for ages. They maybe stable if your hardware is  from
>> stone age, but for new hardware like 9310 "stable"  kernel is stabe in
>> only one aspect - it is not working and will never do.  In all
>> distributions there are usually packages with newer "experimental"
>> kernels that are available but will not be installed by default, but you
>> can install the packages and enjoy working system.
>>
>>
>> For ath11k /dell 9310 the best will be 5.17 which is in rc1 now, but I
>> guess 5.16.3 released today will also be fully usable. Just need to get
>> new firmware from Kalle's git as the firmware in linux firmware package
>> is absolute junk more that 1 year old.
>>
>> As for bluetooth - it is working perfectly, but it is not an USB module
>> as intel. It is hci_uart , so you need to have uart bt support built is
>> as well as ath3k bt firmware loading and btqca extensions. And aldo the
>> firmware is required (available in regular linux-firmware )
>>
>> Here is my log of bt initialization. All working well.
>>
>> [    4.930758] hci_uart_qca serial0-0: failed to acquire enable gpio
>> [    4.932732] Bluetooth: hci0: setting up ROME/QCA6390
>> [    4.936750] Bluetooth: hci0: Frame reassembly failed (-84)
>> [    5.254533] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Product ID   :0x00000010
>> [    5.256045] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA SOC Version  :0x400a0200
>> [    5.257636] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA ROM Version  :0x00000200
>> [    5.259263] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Patch Version:0x00000d2b
>> [    5.260790] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA controller version 0x02000200
>> [    5.262228] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Downloading qca/htbtfw20.tlv
>> [    6.210557] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Downloading qca/htnv20.bin
>> [    6.438691] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA setup on UART is completed
>>
>> On 1/27/22 15:29, Kalle Valo wrote:
>>> Patricio Ferraggi Ares <pattferraggi at gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> My name is Patricio, I am a fellow software developer and user of the
>>>> Dell XPS 9310 (AX500 version). First of all, I wanted to thank you for
>>>> all your hard work bringing support for this model, thanks to you, I
>>>> have been able to use my laptop with Linux almost since I got it.
>>>>
>>>> This is not a bug report in any way, I just would like to gain some
>>>> knowledge on the subject and you might be the perfect person for my
>>>> questions.
>>>>
>>>> I noticed that although all distros use the Linux kernel, support for
>>>> this hardware is not the same across all Linux distros. To be more
>>>> specific, Ubuntu-based distros have had working wifi and Bluetooth for
>>>> almost a year now, although there are some problems like resuming from
>>>> deep sleep,  both wifi and Bluetooth work right away on installation,
>>>> at the moment I am using Pop OS with Linux kernel 5.15.5 as my main
>>>> driver. On the other hand, arch-based distros dont' have working BT,
>>>> as you can see here and here. The wifi is working but Bluetooth
>>>> sometimes doesn't turn on and when it does it cannot properly connect
>>>> to devices. This happens across multiple arch-based distros and kernel
>>>> versions, even if I try kernel versions that work fine in PopOS, they
>>>> don't in Arch.
>>>>
>>>> So finally, my questions:
>>>>
>>>> Why is there this inconsistency of support between distros when
>>>> theoretically, they are all Linux?
>>>> Why is it that if Arch is always updated, in this particular case
>>>> their hardware support is lacking compared to ubuntu?
>>> This is something you need to ask Ubuntu, or check from their git
>>> history or package changelogs. But in general distros make changes to
>>> the kernel, some of them even quite drastic, so behaviour between
>>> distros can be different. My guess is that Ubuntu had custom changes to
>>> ath11k, maybe they backported patches?
>>>
>>>> And finally, do you have a working configuration with wifi and
>>>> Bluetooth? if that is the case could you tell me your distro, kernel,
>>>> firmware, system firmware versions?
>>> I also use Dell XPS 13 9310 with QCA6390 as my daily driver (no pun
>>> intended) and I have no issues with wifi. BIOS is 3.1.0 from 07/22/2021.
>>> I'm a debian guy so I have Debian 10 and use connman, but
>>> network-manager should work as well. I compile my own kernel from my
>>> ath.git master branch[1], but with QCA6390 I would expect stock v5.16
>>> release to work fine. For WCN6855 I recommend to use v5.17.
>>>
>>> Firmware version is WLAN.HST.1.0.1-05266-QCAHSTSWPLZ_V2_TO_X86-1.
>>>
>>> I don't use Bluetooth so can't comment on that.
>>>
>>> [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kvalo/ath.git/
>>>