
Void Linux (musl) on the Huawei MateBook X Pro - wezm
https://bitcannon.net/post/huawei-matebook-x-pro-void-linux/
======
dreich
> musl appeals to me because I’m Australian and a sucker for an underdog it
> has a clean code base, permissive licensing, and is not a GNU project.

Although this is as good a reason as any, especially if someone is
(politically) biased against the GNU project, I fail to see how and why the
x86_64-musl target appeals to the OP in the first place. It ships a standard
GNU userland, it uses GCC and GNU {core,bin}utils to (cross)compile most
packages and GNU bash is a standard requirement for the build toolchain.
Without the above, Void cannot exist.

A core property of the Voidlinux / musl-libc combination that goes
unmentioned, is that one can easily leverage xbps-src as a native cross
compilation toolchain to seamlessly (no porting/patching) generate static
binaries for foreign architectures. As an example, one can generate static
binaries for GNU tar and _just_ use them on an android (bionic) device.

Finally, Void-linux ships with the xbps-uunshare utility as standard and
allows a regular user to _launch_ an unprivileged container with any
distribution (like debian, ubuntu, etc). This way, the OP can enjoy the full
gamut of software available on those glibc systems without the need to install
and/or dual boot Windows.

------
panpanna
> musl appeals to me because [...] is not a GNU project

I don't see the logic in this. There are tons of other GNU & GPL code on your
machine.

~~~
mwyah
Using Firefox on Windows appeals to me, even if Windows is closed source.

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MatekCopatek
I can share similarly positive experience with the exact same model. I'm
running Ubuntu 19.04 and everything pretty much worked out of the box,
including nVidia drivers. The only thing I miss from the XPS 13 I used
previously are automatic uefi/firmware updates.

I really wish this level of build quality and especially the 3:2 ratio would
be available on more models. Occasionally switching back to 16:9 seems quite
limiting now, especially on 13".

And while I agree the webcam is very unflattering, it's still perfectly usable
if you aren't doing customer calls or anything like that where presentation is
important.

~~~
znpy
I used to have a ThinkPad T42 with 1400x1050 14" display. That think was
awesome for writing (both code and documents in OpenOffice Writer). I wish 4:3
displays got mainstream again.

------
pingec
I've been using Matebook X Pro for 11 months (Windows) and so far I am super
happy with the experience. I am never switching back to a 16:9 screen.

Some things that bother me:

    
    
      - touchpad rattle (can be fixed [1])
      - keyboard backlight has a timer and turns off after some seconds of inactivity, there is no mode to leave backlight always on while laptop is awake
      - cooling of the charging circuit is poor and if you have some CPU load *and* charge the laptop at the same time, the fan will ramp up
    

These are small things that could be fixed in the next iteration, I hope they
do fix them.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r67b1ZOZNVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r67b1ZOZNVg)

~~~
dijit
The two last points are also true on the XPS and precision line from dell.

If those are the largest issues then this really is a glowing recommendation
by all accounts.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Why?! How do we still tolerate companies with decades worth of experience to
still sell us products with poorly designed cooling on their premium line
devices?

If it would be some cheap discount supermarket laptop I would understand it,
but XPS is Dell's flagship and makes them some fine margins.

~~~
dijit
Personally I’m not horrified that a charging circuit gets hot when it’s under
the highest possible load, given that the cooling solution in place (the fan)
detects it and ramps up.

To my mind that’s just the cooling solution working as intended.

~~~
pingec
I have no hand-on experience but on paper the newer Matebook 13 [1] seems like
it has a better cooling solution with two fans and two cooling heat sinks. I
think the Matebook X Pro series could be improved in this direction as well.
Also Matebook 13 seems like a great machine for the price tag, if only there
was a 16GB ram version...

[1]
[https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-13/](https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-13/)

------
noway421
This is amazing and so on-brand. I can't stand Windows 10 interface, and this
bundled together actually does look like a slick combo. I know I can install
linux on virtually any laptop including a used Thinkpad, but let me put it out
there: there's something special about the tiny bezel and a tiling windows
manager. The look of awesomewm status bar near the tiny strip of black glass
is enamouring.

I can't think now of switching my 15" macbook pro I'm using for work for
anything non macos due to mobile dev requirements, but perhaps in another life
this is the choice I'll make.

------
wpdev_63
The only problem with buying a chinese laptop is that I would be afraid any
non-trivial propriety code I write for a company would be stolen by the
chinese to make their own product. I am not saying Dell is any better, they
have an extremely close relationship with the US intelligence agencies but
atleast I know they won't steal my code _for competitive advantage_.

It looks like great hardware neither the less and with apple being so arrogant
these days with its keyboard and its warfare against the repair community it
looks like an enticing option.

------
LyndsySimon
I have an AVITA Clarus that I purchased on clearance a few months ago. It’s
been a great machine for what it is, and is very well supported in Manjaro (an
Arch derivative).

I paid ~$175 for it, and it’s approximately on par with the MacBook Air I had
a couple of years ago. Stats are i5@3.2Ghz, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, integrated
graphics. It’s good enough for back-end web development provided I offload the
“heavy” stuff to a hosted platform somewhere - which is generally how I
develop anyhow, as I often do so from an iPad Pro LTE.

------
albertzeyer
I wonder if this gets mostly upvoted because of the notebook or because of
Void Linux. For me, mostly the notebook (Huawei MateBook X Pro) looks
interesting, as I'm a MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) user, and I'm slowly looking for
a good modern replacement (and I'm obviously not happy with the current
MacBook Pros). As my future notebook would be non-Apple, I would want to
install Linux, and want good Linux support, and otherwise a high hardware
quality.

I like that this Huawei MateBook has an all aluminium unibody. (How much other
notebooks are there? Maybe not necessarily unibody, but I like a solid body
out of aluminium.)

A touch screen is also a nice addition.

His choice of Linux distribution is maybe a bit strange. I would probably go
with Ubuntu or so, and hope to have even better support. E.g. I would want to
use software like CLion, PyCharm, Steam, etc just out of the box.

Also, I would want to make use of the NVIDIA card. This is also nice for CUDA
development. I wonder (I would hope) that this works fine with a more standard
Linux distribution.

I wonder how the long-term usage quality is. My MacBook Pro 2014 works still
mostly fine now (2019), and even the original battery gives me still about
3-4h of usage.

~~~
lonelappde
System 76 claims to offer an aluminum alloy laptop with Nvidia and Linux

[https://system76.com/laptops/oryx](https://system76.com/laptops/oryx)

but the quality is reportedly bad (flaky hardware, too-fast power drain,
reflash bios to toggle discrete graphics (!), slow support)
[https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/review-system76-oryx-
pr...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/review-system76-oryx-pro)

~~~
robrtsql
> reflash bios to toggle discrete graphics

Really? My understanding was that the RTX series of GPUs support toggling
discrete graphics on the fly if you use beta/dev versions of the drivers and
X. Even if you don't, the worst case scenario should be having to reboot to
enable or disable your graphics card, right?

~~~
dTal
If so, that's a step backwards - on my MX150 system, both nouveau and the
proprietary driver can turn the card off (indeed, that's about all nouveau can
do, and it does it by default).

------
craigkilgo
"and is not a GNU project."

This is the first time I have seen actively avoiding GNU. Is this common?
Reasons political?

~~~
viraptor
Lots of people avoid GNU and go for licensing closer to bsd/mit if they want
more freedom, or apache if they're worried about patents. There are also lots
of companies avoiding gnu just in case it would theoretically force them to
open-source something they want to keep private.

~~~
andrekandre
> Lots of people avoid GNU and go for licensing closer to bsd/mit if they want
> more freedom

is it fair today in this case that means freedom for the
manufacturer/developer, not the user, which is the purpose of the gnu license?

~~~
coldtea
> _is it fair today in this case that means freedom for the manufacturer
> /developer, not the user, which is the purpose of the gnu license?_

Well, the people who care about licenses are mostly geeks on the developer
side. So they would naturally care for the freedom of the developer too, not
just the user.

From the user side, a benefit is that a rich company can use a library/tool
etc in BSD/MIT and

1) make a proprietary product based on it

2) give back to the library/tool help maintain them

whereas many companies wouldn't touch the library/tool if it was GPL, as they
couldn't create their own proprietary stuff on it.

This means

1) more software being made based on open source codebases (even if they are
proprietary, more software being available is better for users than less),

2) more involvement by big companies to help grow/fix/add features to the FOSS
version of the lib/tool (e.g. consider LLVM's growth),

~~~
akerl_
As a developer who prefers to use MIT/BSD-licensed codebases, my preference is
because I want to license the code I’m writing as MIT/BSD, and I don’t want to
expend mental effort figuring out if I’m using GPL dependencies, includes, etc
in a way that impacts my ability to MIT/BSD my own code.

------
ykevinator
I run Ubuntu 19.04 on the same laptop, it's excellent. I wish the fingerprint
reader worked and that Google would fix the chrome issues in Ubuntu but other
than that it screams.

------
dmix
Macbook Pros are standard at my work, like a lot of companies, but I'm going
to push to get the first non-Macbooks. Almost entirely for Linux support.

The Archlinux wiki for Macbooks hasn't been updated since 2015 (AFAIK) and
even back then it was a bit rocky.

From experience it's a necessity to have a laptop with Linux in mind instead
of tacking it on. It shouldn't require any sort of hacking to get working.

------
dragonelite
I have been running manjaro Linux on my matebook x pro for like 6 months or
so. But because of work had to switched back to windows. Do wonder now that
Huawei is shipping their Matebook x pro with a linux distro(deepin) in China ,
maybe they will release/fix the finger print button.

------
hannofcart
> "Given my laptop use was now more casual and for when travelling I
> wanted...3K 3000×2000 HiDPI touchscreen display, Intel Core i7-8550U CPU (4
> core, 8 thread), 16Gb RAM, 512Gb NVMe SSD, NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics"

I would love to hear what you use for serious work is specced like. :)

~~~
alluro2
Well, if you do fairly normal web development nowadays, that includes running
a couple of local services (database, backend) and containers, iOS / Android
simulator, VS Code, webpack dev server running, Chrome, db management tool,
Slack on top of that etc - U-series processor is hardly adequate, and 16GB RAM
is not enough to avoid some level of swapping...Just running Docker empty,
with no containers, takes 3-4 GB on OS X...

Which is crazy, and I don't know how we managed to get to this, but it's the
reality...Electron and Java being the worst culprits - 1GB RAM just to have a
project open in VS Code and 1GB for Studio 3T just to be open and connected to
local MongoDB...

------
boomer_joe
Is there any reason why you did not submit a PR for the package templates you
created?

------
heelix
A 3:2 Laptop! How is the video performance on it?

~~~
wezm
It’s great. No complaints so far.

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haydn3
Pre-compiled binaries are a sin. What a shame!

