Updated: February 4, 2026
My neverending Linux desktop adventure is one helluva ride. Up and down, sideways, and then we loop again, skidding precariously along the monorail of nerdy emotion, missed opportunities, tragicomic ego games, and a complete disregard of what product is meant to be. Case in point, me Slimbook Titan machine. Linked here you have the last report. Use that to go back in time, all the way to the moment of purchase. You will see my satisfaction seesawing, going from abysmal to solid to great to pointless to silly to nice, many which ways.
In my latest report, I mentioned a workaround to intermittent system freeze issue via general purpose event (GPE) interrupt blocking or masking, which seem to have resolved said freezes, with the added bonus of having no sound notification when the battery charger is plugged in or out. But it does resolve a stupid and unnecessary issue, which bugged me greatly. Now, we shall see what gives a month later.
All is quiet on the hardware front
Okay. So, the keyboard remains spongy, and requires a bit more force to register clicks. The CPU or GPU fan will warble now and then, but the longer you keep the system running, the lesser the noise. Basically, you need to let the elements warm up and expand.
However, the system no longer stupidly hangs due to its botched firmware and kernel combo. The interrupt masking does its job wonderfully. I've decided not to upgrade the operating system to 24.04, because that does not lead to any happiness. As I've shown you in my Executive reports, not only is the upgrade buggy, a travesty for an LTS, the subsequent kernel upgrades do not help at all. I've moved from 6.8 to 6.14, and this still doesn't work. Not in the slightest. And unlike this Titan, the interrupt workaround leads to more problems than good, so I'm not doing that there. But on this machine? Groovy. Suspend and resume work superbly, again, in contrast to the Executive with the interrupt masking workaround in place. Well, you win some, you lose some.
Software stuff
I've done some more fun things. My original and noble idea was to fully move away from Windows, and to do that, I wanted to migrate all my workflows away to Linux. This was going on superbly, until the firmware crap started messing up my systems. Yes, it reminds me why I hate firmware updates, and why I don't want to do them if there are no issues. But sure, move fast, destroy things, the whole modern nonsense. The answer is, unfortunately, buying a Macbook. A sad happy day.
Anyway, I checked all of my different programs, added a few new ones, played some more with Xpra and friends, configured several more virtual machines using my own recipe for a Plasma desktop. I redid that both with 22.4 and 24.04 Server builds of Ubuntu. This isn't strictly related to the Titan, but I thought you might be interested in the findings.
I noticed that I had a leftover Skype entry in the Kubuntu menu. This was a snap leftover, long removed. I'm not sure why the system didn't delete this, but it could be because I have manually edited the description text, given that I had both the deb and snap versions, and I wanted to be able to differentiate between them.
My various WINE-powered programs work - and continue to work - superbly. There is a somewhat sluggish performance in SketchUp Make, but after I removed the environment variables that pinned the program to the Nvidia graphics card, the issue went away. Strangely, I get better in-program responsiveness with the integrated graphics than the dedicated unit. Something worth exploring.
Other than that, the Nvidia side of things is pretty solid. Non-WINE programs cooperate superbly with the graphics card, and the PRIME on-demand profile works correctly. I also tested some serious data backups from one NVMe to another using rsync. No complaints. The speed was reasonably excellent, and the system did not lag or stutter.
sent 123,196,248,447 bytes received 18,550,861 bytes 308,422,526.43
bytes/sec
total size is 318,888,901,985 speedup is 2.59
And I guess that should cover this report.
Conclusion
I want to be able to look at the Titan's current state, after interrupt tweaks, and my past experience as two separate things. It's a very hard thing to do, and it does mar the overall feel. Even though technically this last report is pretty good and positive, I can't truly forget the previous seven endeavors plus the original setup, and all the ups and downs involved. But I will try. So, yes, the eighth report is a rather positive one.
The hardware "issues" are well, there, but they didn't "get" in my way. Now that I've "fixed" my system, it works quite alright. I don't know how long this state will last. But I'm resigned to this reality, and I don't want to waste too much emotion fretting over what's essentially 25 years of missed Linux desktop opportunities. I'll enjoy the Titan for its beefy spec, solid range of programs and games running well under Linux, and keep Kubuntu 22.04 for quite a while longer. And that brings this report to its honorable end.
Cheers.