Installing SolydXK SolydK - Yet Another Installation Process 2019

Today we are going to install SolydK distribution into the harddrive. There were times when i dwelled into the command line interface from Debian minimal install to Linux-BBQ long time ago, before i sell my laptop and doing some office job task using Windows. And for now, i just want to feel all the bells and whistles from  -that-being-said- is a heavy desktop environtment. KDE.

As being written from previous post, my machine is a HP laptop with radeon graphic card and the-infamous realtek wifi. 

The preparation is always the same like before :

1. Setting Up The Partition Under Windows.

2. Preparing Linux Installation Media.

but, instead using unetbootin, this time i use rufus, a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.

The flavors that i choose is SolydK Community Editions, Enthusiast's Edition (rolling) from https://solydxk.com/downloads/community-editions.  ....SolydK CE EE 😐

But why choosing this one? The EE version is one of the distro that can recognize my touchpad corectly during live session. (The stable version detect the left click as a right click, and the right click button as none).

Unlike the SolydX version that run live session smoothly, SolydK is stuck at boot upon booting into the media:

[  ok  ] Started raisenetwork interfaces.

[ ***] A start job is running for live-config contains the components that configure a live system during the boot process (late userspace). (..../no limit) .....and is taking your time forever 😐.

Because this one has nothing to do with graphic card, the "noveau.modeset=0" wont fix the problem.

..but, chenge the quiet splash with TimeoutStartSec=1min do a good job to bypass the start job.

 And all the steps just following the instructions.
Click the install icon at the desktop.

Select language.

Select timezone/region.

Select the keyboard layout

The name, user name, password and the host name.

The HDD Composition

We need a boot/uefi partition, a root partition, a swap partition, and an optional separate home partition mount point.

Be patient and enjoy the installation progress. It should take 15-30 minutes.

.....and enjoy your new system.

HP rtl8723be Wireless Wifi

Finally i got a new laptop, and it's HP with Radeon graphics and Realtek wireless card. Fortunately, the Realtek wireless, the Realtek RTL8723DE 802.11b/g/n PCIe Adapter to be exact, is not so friendly with linux in general.

Debian won't recognized it. Its friendly derivatives SolydXK won't recognized it too. Ubuntu and Linux Mint is not recognizing it either. To make it worse, i don't have any cable connection. So the wifi is my only option to connect the laptop.

And this is an exhausting journey, as i am not a linux geek. 

After i got myself a connected computer, I found this thread :

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=204172

(wow, 2015 thread and the problem still occurs now in 2019)

Download the firmware from here :

https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/archive/master.zip

Copied the zip file into the laptop via FDD, then extract it, and follow the step from the thread or github:

$make

$sudo make install

$sudo modprobe -r rtl8723be

$sudo modprobe rtl8723be

...and finally its working with a very weak signals!

but its working :)

on to the next step:

DEVICE=$(iw dev | grep Interface | cut -d " " -f2)
sudo iw dev $DEVICE scan | egrep "SSID|signal|\(on"

BSS xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

     signal: -65 dBm

     SSID: Error404

The above commands get a result range from -59 dBm to -65 dbm, and neither solution from the github or thread change that number. But the connection is just stable and not dropping if the laptop position is near enough from the wifi router.

Well, thats my work around for now. Cheers.


Update :

updating the kernel to the newest one make the Realtek --RTL8723DE 802.11b/g/n PCIe Adapter-- not being detected -again- by the system.

Reinstalling the firmware using the step above solve the problem.