11th Gen ``Rocket Lake'' CPU ⇒ Linux 5.11 Kernel Required

I talked about building a new PC for mum yesterday, and how I solved the display driver issue through a forcing of the PCI device to use the i915 driver to get the full 1920×1080 output. I also mentioned how I was going to try setting it up today on Xubuntu 20.04 LTS and expressed confidence that it ought to work.

Before that though, here's an updated cable management picture:

The only difference is that the HD AUDIO cable that was previous running along the top of the motherboard in the bottom has been adjusted to run along the back of the motherboard, only to pop up at the end to insert into the correct slot. The cables are thus much cleaner than before, and will be left alone.

Anyway, back to the original train of thought. As it turns out, it didn't work in 20.04. Neither did it work in 20.10---it had to use the Linux 5.11 kernel. It is unfortunate that it is only available in 21.04, and will only be back-ported to 20.04 in three month's time. Three months is too long a wait, and so the new PC will have to run Hirsute Hippo for now.

With the separation of the operating system partition and the data partition, I am much more confident of doing the regular do-release-upgrade commands, knowing that I can just safely nuke it from orbit if necessary. In fact, I used exactly that path to get from 20.04→20.10→21.04 (beta) for today's set up.

I'm currently running the Linux 64-bit version of the Mersenne prime search tool to stress-test the CPU; temperatures via the sensors command are all lower than 75 °C at full-load---and this is with just the stock cooler, and two fans, one for input and one for output. Call me jealous that Eileen-II can't do things like that, though to be fair, Eileen-II is at least 10× more portable than the new PC.

I wanted to run memtest that usually comes as a boot option in grub, but it was nowhere to be found. A bit of research online showed that when using UEFI, it was not possible to run memtest, which is a 16-bit program. There was reference to another memtest that claims support for UEFI boot systems, but I've not done enough research to confirm its workability.

So far, things are progressing well. I should be doing the data migration tomorrow before doing some integration testing with the existing coterie of peripherals. I have tested the monitor and the speakers, but those are expected to work regardless. I am a bit more concerned with the mouse, which uses a wireless dongle---not sure how it interacts with the built-in wifi given where I am intending to shove that dongle attachment.

I think that's about it for now. I might want to get into Cyberpunk 2077 since I didn't get to do so yesterday, but we'll see.

Till the next update.