The Hypa Flux from Argos: a cheap and cheerful netbook — if Linux-resistant

[reddragdiva]

I was in the market for a proper Xubuntu netbook, after taking arkady’s Chromebook to Vancouver last month.

I have a work Lenovo X390, which is a corporate beast machine — 32GB RAM, four core i7, compiles LibreOffice in ninety minutes.

But I wanted something cheap, cheerful and semi-disposable — so it wouldn’t be a disaster if it broke, or was lost or stolen.

Also, I really miss my old Dell Mini 9.

So there’s a new laptop from a company called Hypa, exclusively through Argos. 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, 64-bit CPU, £179. Bright purple.

“It’s a PC,” I thought, “I can Linux this!”

I did try the preinstalled Windows 10 S for a while. I can confidently state that Windows 10 S is an abomination, and should be razed from the face of the earth. If you like Windows, you can apparently de-S it, and then you might be able to do things like install software.

The hardware

The laptop weighs just one kilogram. This is only slightly heavier than my 10″ Android tablet.

The keyboard is about the same width as the X390’s, and the keys are actually bigger. The key action is pretty soft, but the whole thing clatters in a pleasing manner when I type. This is a lovely LibreOffice machine.

The screen is 11.6″, 1920×1080. I got used to 1920×1080 on the X390, and it turns out retina is good. The Chromebook I took travelling is 1366×768, and it just seemed annoyingly pixelated — so 1080p was essential. I set XFCE to 128dpi, though I think the screen’s actually about 192dpi.

The screen has a distinct blue cast to it. I do redshift -O 6000 at startup now, which seems to get it not looking too weird. (redshift is great, one day I’ll bother messing with it to get the screen balanced just right.)

I’d be happier if the screen hinge tilted back to flat, but I can live with it.

The CPU is a tiny, slow Celeron N3350 running at 1.1GHz for minimum power use. It isn’t quite up to pushing pixels to the screen fast enough to actually play 1080p videos off YouTube. But 720p works okay, as long as you don’t move the mouse or something. (1080p plays fine in VLC.)

The charger is some proprietary plug, not USB-C like all the cool kids are using these days. This is a disappointment. Also, the headphone socket is precisely opposite the power socket, and about the same size, so it's easy to accidentally plug power into that instead — not good design. Apparently you can get spare chargers from Hypa, though they don’t give a price or list them on the site. The model is PS24A120K2000BD — get a spare in. (This charger is not the original, but is compatible — 12V, 2A, 3.5mm barrel plug.)

The battery lasts approximately forever, even in active use.

The webcam is 640×480, which is bizarrely incapable these days. Not that I care about the webcam.

The laptop is BRIGHT PURPLE. I woulda liked hot pink, but this will do me just fine.

Linux on the Hypa Flux — is “nostalgia” that word for wanting to stab everything

I do not recommend that you use the Hypa Flux for Linux unless you are comfortable with compiling a driver from source.

Hypa have a FAQ:

Q.Can I install Linux on my HYPA device?
A. Your HYPA device has been specifically designed and built to work the best with Windows 10, therefore we do not support changing from the preinstalled Windows 10 operating system.

Hypa are 100% correct here — because the hardware in this thing is barely supported in Linux, especially the crappy Realtek wifi.

The machine wouldn’t even run the live disk of Xubuntu 18.04 without hanging, so I tried the 20.04 preview and it was a bit happier. The touchpad driver does all the gestures! (Middle-click is three fingers simultaneously — apparently this doesn't work in Windows, only Linux.)

20.04 comes with kernel 5.4, which includes the rtl8xxxu driver. This is not a good driver. It achieves 1Mbps on a good day — and the PC keeps randomly freezing, which I strongly suspect the driver has a fair bit to do with.

So it’s time for … an authentic early-2000s Linux experience!

The proper driver is Larry Finger’s rtl8723bu driver. Download, compile, install with dkms so it’ll recompile for you every time you get a new kernel.

I also disabled Secure Boot to get the module running. Given that travel is actually one of the use cases for Secure Boot, I should probably go back and sign the driver properly and so on.

The laptop kept hanging, so I got Ubuntu kernel 5.5.8 from kernel-ppa, and it’s been stable since — this page tells you which files to install. 5.5.8 doesn’t include a good Realtek driver either (update: the prepackaged driver still sucks as of 5.8.0, though that version reaches 6Mbps update 2: and still only 6Mbps as of 5.14), so I’m still on my hand-compiled one.

If you suspend, the wifi won't come back by itself on resume. I added this script as /lib/systemd/system-sleep/redshiftandwifi and made it executable:

#!/bin/bash 
if [ "${1}" = "post" ]; then
    /usr/bin/redshift -O 6000
    /usr/sbin/rmmod 8723bu
    /usr/sbin/modprobe rtl8723bu
fi

I’m basically waiting for ever-newer mainline kernels to hit kernel-ppa, in the hope of slight improvements to rtl8xxxu.

This sort of nonsense is why Ubuntu's attitude of "make it just work" was a good idea in the first place. But! My lovely netbook behaves now!

Should you buy it?

Even with the wifi issues, I love it!

If you miss the netbooks of ten years ago, this will be a delight.

If you’re happy with Windows 10, and think you can live in a Windows with 4GB RAM, go for it.

If you want Linux … wait a couple of years. Or be prepared to get into the OS with a spanner.

But I want a lovely light Linux netbook!

There’s a whole lotta Windows netbooks of late of this sort — Microsoft are responding to the threat of Chromebooks. These are recent devices, so they may well have similarly new and ill-supported hardware.

Unless you can be sure a particular device has fully-supported hardware, then I’d say get an 11″ Chromebook with 4GB RAM and use CHRX to install your GNU/Linux of choice — ChromeOS is also Linux, so for hardware support you’ll just need a new enough kernel. Note caveats on the CHRX page — very recent hardware is not so well supported.

(I nearly got a refurbished HP Chromebook 11 with 4GB instead of this — but that weighed 200 grams more, and weight was important to me.)

You may also be interested in DSHR's tiny travel laptop experiences from 2017, with updates in the comments to the present day.

Comments

[rbarclay]

It's not a proper "authentic early-2000s Linux experience" when you don't have to fuck around with separate ndiswrapper modules.

[emperor]

FWIW, I just bought a Lafité Pro laptop - weights 1.1kg. Linux works very nicely as long as you get an SSD that isn't NVME.

[reddragdiva]

how the hell does it fail to support a disk?!

does a recent kernel help?

[emperor]

Increasingly-common problem, AIUI - https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html (who optimistically thought it might be fixed) / https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/aecec8b60422118b52e3347430ba9382e57d6d76 / https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ide/msg57379.html

[hellsop]

Windows 10 S?

That explains the "do not support changing from the preinstalled Windows 10 operating system" phrasing. They know goddamned well that their driver environment is too brittle for the real world.

I'm surprised you didn't find out the WIFI is entirely software.

[reddragdiva]

it's gonna happen y'know, they have these 64 CPU threads to use up ... or, on this laptop, two threads.

[(Anonymous)]

That is a brilliant review. Good job (and funny too)

[liam-on-linux.livejournal.com]

Nice writeup. Agreed.

I am almost tempted except I am working on my collection of old cheap Thinkpads from when they had good keyboards. I think I'm more of a keyboard obsessive than thee...

[reddragdiva]

oh god i wouldn't recommend this thing unless you are me. I like that it's 1kg and I like the keyboard and I like the retina display. I don't like that it's all but unusably slow as a netbook.