I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.
Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…
WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.
Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?
Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.
Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.
And HDR has been working for me for over 6 months with Plasma 6. I wish people wouldn’t upvote this stuff that gives the wrong idea.
Pretty sure HDR is “working” in the sense that KDE went ahead and implemented unfinished specs, so that the very few apps that also went ahead with it can do HDR, but only on Wayland which breaks other things that are behind, and also often requires very recent versions and specific obscure parameters to be passed to enable HDR support?
Yeah, it’s a great step forwards and great for enthusiasts, but unless I’m very behind on the state of HDR myself, it’s still something I’d consider “coming soon” and not proclaim it’s just “working for me”. It certainly feels like a “year from now” kind of thing - something to anticipate, not try to force just yet.
I don’t know when the last time you used Wayland was but in Plasma 6 I wouldn’t say it “breaks other things.” Before Plasma 6 I had plenty of problems and stuck on X11 but now it’s great. So give it another try if you haven’t recently. Every issue I used to have with it a year ago is gone.
As for the obscure parameters, as of Plasma 6.1 all you have to do for games is add gamescope --hdr-enabled to the launch options for the necessary games. I don’t think that’s particularly difficult or obscure. You can also set up Steam itself to run in gamescope with --hdr-enabled and then every game will have it.
For HDR movies/TV/YouTube you can copy/paste the necessary options into your mpv.conf and then forget about it. It’s a one-time thing and then it works forever.
The biggest place HDR is missing is in Firefox, but Firefox doesn’t have HDR on Windows either so that’s not a Linux thing that’s a Firefox thing.
In my opinion, HDR on the desktop isn’t really there yet in general. Not just on Linux but on computers as a whole. HDR right now is really only for enthusiasts. The only monitors that properly support HDR1000 are $500+ for the entry level ones and $800+ for the decent ones. And you have to choose between miniLED with local dimming that don’t have enough zones yet or OLEDs that get burn-in after a year.
