I've bought a second hand Panasonic Thoughbook XZ6. This is a 2in1 convertible computer that can be used as tablet or notebook.
My goal is to run Debian GNU/Linux on it and use it as tablet as well as notebook.
First it was delivered with Windows 10. Which sometimes can be useful at least to test the hardware and get some information about drivers etc. So I didn't want to delete it.
The first thing to do was to enter the UEFI menu (“BIOS”) and disable secure boot to be able to load any Linux USB image:
You can press F2 during the boot process to enter the UEFI menu.
I used clonezilla to make first a backup of the whole disk if something go's wrong.
Then I used Gparted to delete the diagnostic partition and to shrink the windows partition to ~58 GiB. This gives me ~180GiB for the Linux installation.
Clonezilla and Gparted are part of the great SystemRescue Linux live system.
lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:2744 Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC) Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 5986:1120 Bison Electronics Inc. USB HD Webcam Bus 001 Device 004: ID 06cb:7fdb Synaptics, Inc. Synaptics HIDUSB TouchPad V03 Bus 001 Device 005: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp. Bluetooth wireless interface Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0eef:c09e D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalaxTouch EXC3104-1247-07.00.00.00 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0424:5744 Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC) Hub
lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 02) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 (rev 02) 00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 02) 00:05.0 Multimedia controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Imaging Unit (rev 01) 00:13.0 Non-VGA unclassified device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Integrated Sensor Hub (rev 21) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21) 00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21) 00:14.3 Multimedia controller: Intel Corporation CSI-2 Host Controller (rev 01) 00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21) 00:15.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #2 (rev 21) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21) 00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Active Management Technology - SOL (rev 21) 00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev f1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point LPC/eSPI Controller (rev 21) 00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21) 00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21) 00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21) 00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (4) I219-LM (rev 21) 01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
Create a Debian Stable installation medium and boot from it. The Debian 12 installer was working without problem incl. WiFi.
I decided to use an encrypted root partition, so I needed to create a separate unencrypted boot partition. You can create this partitions and the dm-crypt device directly in the Debian installer when you launch it in expert mode.
sudo parted /dev/sda print Model: ATA SAMSUNG MZNLN256 (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 256GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: gpt Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 1049kB 106MB 105MB fat32 EFI system partition boot, esp 2 106MB 123MB 16.8MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres 3 123MB 62.1GB 61.9GB ntfs Basic data partition msftdata 4 62.1GB 63.1GB 1000MB ext4 5 63.1GB 256GB 193GB''
cat /etc/fstab # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> /dev/mapper/sda5_crypt / btrfs defaults,subvol=@rootfs 0 0 # /boot was on /dev/sda4 during installation UUID=2b2492b0-c026-4d99-9a77-d02498252b87 /boot ext4 defaults 0 2 # /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation UUID=DE95-1AF0 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1 #swapfile, mainly for hibernation /swapfile none swap sw 0 0
I didn't create a swap partition, but we need some kind of swap for hibernate to work. So I had to create first a swap file on my btrfs root partition:
btrfs filesystem mkswapfile --size 8G swapfile chmod 600 swapfile swapon -v /swapfile
Get the correct offset (For Btrfs, do not try to use the filefrag tool, from Archwiki):
btrfs inspect-internal map-swapfile -r /swapfile
then enable hibernate according to this tutorial https://medium.com/@arsalaan.fa/hibernation-guide-for-debian-12-unlocking-seamless-power-management-on-linux-529b388f8d36
Works out of the box.
If you use Wayland (which is default with Gnome on Debian 12 an later) and Firefox you should tell it to use Wayland features like touch events:
echo MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 » /etc/environment
TODO, but should be enough to follow some how-to's
configure osk-sdl and plymouth
Face camera is USB, works out of the box.
Back camera seems to be MIPI CSI connected to Intel IPU3 similar to MS Surface Pro 5th generation (which also uses a Kaby Lake processor aka Intel 7th generation).
TODO
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/media/ipu3.html https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Camera-Support https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Installation-and-Setup https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/discussions/1352 https://neilzone.co.uk/2021/08/working-front-and-rear-cameras-on-debian-11-on-a-surface-pro-6-surfacebook-2-and-surface-go/ https://libcamera.org/getting-started.html
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