Wednesday, April 24, 2019

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro on Ubuntu Desktop 18.04.2 LTS

CPU - Intel Core i7-8550U
RAM - 16GB LPDDR3
SSD - 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD
Thunderbolt 3 - USB Type C
Display - 13.9 inches LTPS Touchscreen (3,000 x 2,000) (260 PPI)
Graphic - nVidia M150 and Intel HD Graphic on CPU
F2 key - UEFI BIOS
F12 key - Boot list

This is 2018 model. The 2019 (HUAWEI MateBook X Pro New) is not available here at the moment.

If you want to, you need to update BIOS on Windows 10 environment before installing Ubuntu. To update it, just download the driver and install the ".INF".

You can install Ubuntu Desktop 18.04.2 LTS on HUAWEI MateBook X Pro without any problem no matter "Secure Boot" is enable or not. However, it cannot be shutdown or reboot properly unless you installed nVidia display driver on it.

Make sure the "Problem Reporting" is set to "Automatic" at "Privacy" of "Settings" under the top right hand conner.

Meanwhile, you may need to install "net-tools" for seeing the settings of the network interfaces.

sudo apt install net-tools

nVidia Display Driver

You can install the latest nVidia Open Source Display Driver version 418 on it via Ubuntu PPA. VirtualBox 6.0.6 guest VM requires newer version of nVidia display driver. I tested it with version 319 but the guest vm cannot be refreshed properly near the mouse pointer.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update


(if you have older version of nVidia driver, delete it first)
sudo apt purge nvidia*

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-418 nvidia-settings


GNOME Extensions

GNOME Extensions are very useful. I recommend you to install the following for this laptop.

sudo apt chrome-gnome-shell gnome-tweak

Go to the "https://extensions.gnome.org/" to install extensions by clicking the "ON/OFF" button on the Extensions pages.

EasyScreenCast to record the screen in video format.

OpenWeather to see the current weather of your location.

CPUfreq to change the CPU between "powersave" or "performance" as well as "Turbo Boost".

VirtualBox Applet for easy access the VirtualBox virtual machines when VirtualBox is installed.

Extension Update Notifier to notifiy you about the update of Extensions.

Caffeine to disable and enable the screen saver.

Clipboard Indicator to manage your copy and paste clipboard data.

Lock Keys to indicate the "Nums" and "CapLock" keys status.

Harddisk LED to display the activity of the hard drive/SSD.

That's all! See you.