HP Elitebook x360 1030 G2 + Ubuntu 18.04

So I forgot my Asus at home today.. and I'm too lazy to make the 40 minute round trip to go get it so I decided to grab up the nearest laptop and load Linux on it. Turns out the nearest laptop was an HP Elitebook x360 1030 G2.. the Ultra book version.

Thing runs Windows pretty damn good, it can only run Linux better!  So because my go-to OS for the past few years has been Fedora, I decided to run what any newcomer would.. Ubuntu!

Anyway long story short I installed Ubuntu 18.04 KDE version.. laptop booted perfectly.  So far everything works including the touch screen. But I have a pair of 17' LCD's, external keyboard and mouse on my desk.  So I grabbed an HP USB-C Universal dock.. plugged it in and nothing. No display, no USB, nothing at all.

Installed the DisplayPort drivers from here: DisplayLink for Ubuntu, rebooted and BOOM. Everything on teh dock worked. Ethernet, Sound, Display, USB.. all of it.

I gotta say Ubuntu surprised me on this one, pleasantly surprised.

HP Elitebook 840 G4, Forced power reset.

So recently we ran into an issue with an EB 840 G4 that refused to power up. The user returned one Monday morning and it just would not power up, we tried a new dock, new power adapter all to no avail.

My assistant today made the call into HP support and long, story short.. she had him hold down the Mute and Power buttons for about 20 seconds. Damn thing fired right up..ran check disk and allowed him to successfulyl login.

Obviously the unit is suspect so we're running a day or two of diagnostics but wow yeah.. who would have  thought the Mute and Power combo?