How to set up the laptop (Wayland suggestions)

[davenavas]

First off I want to share how I installed Ubuntu in my laptop
It is a Razer blade stealth (late 2016) with 2k display an 128 gb ssd.
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-7500U CPU @ 2.70GHz × 4
Graphics: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)

1. Using the windows installation I updated the BIOS and all the drivers from the Razer website, just to be safe.
2. I opened the back and I unplugged the battery and the CMOS battery for a couple minutes and assemble it back up
3. I plugged my Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation drive. I then turned the laptop on, It takes an extra minute to boot.
4. Once booted in the live installer I chose offline installation, minimal and third party software and drivers. This last enabled an option to set a password, I didn't understand much of this but I accepted and used the same password I have set for the bios. (I noticed I have enabled secure boot in bios).
5. OK, the installation went smoothly as it can be. At this point I had to be careful of the three major problems of installing ubuntu in this laptop:

• First the caps lock button will freeze your machine. So don't press it yet.
• Second, closing the lid of your laptop will make it work erratically when you take out of suspend. So don't close the lid, its better to keep it plugged during installation.
• And third, you may see the screen flickers black sometimes, this is more frequent under heavy load. There is nothing to do for this, just ignore it.

6. ok after you are done installing I would recommend to reboot and then update
   sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
7. Reboot again, an we are almost done.
8. To fix the problem with the Caps lock freezing, I prefer to disable the device that causes this. If you type xinput list you'll see a list of devices.
   AT Raw Set 2 keyboard is the device that causes the computer to freeze. So to disable you can run
   xinput set-prop "AT Raw Set 2 keyboard" "Device Enabled" 0
   and test if you can use your caps lock key normally. It should word as a regular caps key.
   This change will last until you reboot. To make it permanent I run this:

cd /etc/X11/
sudo mkdir xorg.conf.d
cd xorg.conf.d/
sudo touch 20-razer.conf
sudo nano 20-razer.conf

Add this to the file:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier      "Disable built-in keyboard"
    MatchIsKeyboard "on"
    MatchProduct    "AT Raw Set 2 keyboard"
    Option          "Ignore"    "true"
EndSection

Save it and close the file.

9. Ok, to fix the problem with suspending the laptop by closing the lid this is what I did:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

and add this parameter in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, it should look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash button.lid_init_state=open"

Save, close and then run

sudo update-grub

10. The problem with the screen flickering black should have disappeared. The update and upgrade process fixes this one.
11. (Optional) Lastly I tested Firefox and the touchscreen doesn't work with it. To fix this I opened this file:
    sudo nano /etc/environment

and I added this in a new line at the end of the file:

MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1

This makes Firefox work with touch.
Probably you have to reboot at this point to some changes to take effect..

OK, Now to explain the problem I have. I prefer not to have caps lock set as another ctrl key. i prefer the regular caps lock. I can do this as long as ubuntu uses Xorg, but in Wayland i was not able to make this change. Specifically the one explained in step 8. Maybe someone knows how can we achieve this in wayland. I'm no expert on anything so if you have suggestions or you have something I can test I am open for it.
I see Ubuntu testing to change to Wayland and I'll like to be ready for it in case it is used in the next LTS version.

Best regards

David Navas