Screen autorotate for 2-in-1 laptop?

[splott]

I've got two 2-in-1 computers, an older Lenovo Yoga X1 (2nd gen) and a newer Dell Inspiron 16.
I put Fedora with KDE Plasma on the old Yoga as a test, if I can get the issues worked out I want to put linux on the Dell too.

BUT I don't want to lose the screen autorotate. I've had it working...and then it wasn't. I think Fedora 41 worked? But then it didn't again, possibly when I hit 42. I actually think I've done that at least twice, tested, it was working fine, then I updated and then it didn't work again.

I figured Fedora would be the best option that would be most likely to have this figured out but nothing is consistent, which is almost worse than having it not work at all ever.
I've switched it to X11 instead of Wayland, I've tried setting SElinux to permissive, no luck.
But in my testing, found it actually works fine before I actually log in, like the login window turns the way it should!
But once I log in, we're stuck again. And in fact, the "autorotate in tablet mode" option is now gone from the Display Settings section entirely.

Anyone have the keys to make this work?
I'd be down for a different distro if things would "just work". That was why I chose Fedora, I wanted something well-developed that would need a minimum of meddling.. but here I am.

 

[theLegionWithin]

a little bit of searching indicates that the iio-sensor-proxy package handles sensor/accelerometer data in Plasma Wayland (which appears to have better support than X11 - X11 doesn't inherently provide auto-rotation functionality, apparently) - some documentation for it is here https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/iio-sensor-proxy/ (https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/iio-sensor-proxy/iio-sensor-proxy/ points to that gitlab page, as does https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/iio-sensor-proxy/, so I guess that's the definitive source for multiple distros).

in regards to fedora (which I dont use), once iio-sensor-proxy is installed, start it via "sudo systemctl start iio-sensor-proxy.service".

hope that helps!

 

[splott]

I had seen that, but didn't consider it could be NOT already installed as part of Fedora...

Alas, I was right the first time, It's already installed, it is indeed part of the Fedora packages.
I also assume it's already running, but I ran that line anyway just to be sure, no change.

 

[splott]

On a whim, I did a search on YouTube, and found a guy who said his Yoga (much nicer newer version) worked well with Ubuntu out of the box.

Made up a thumb drive and tried running it live and tested...that was fun. Yeah, screen rotates, but after I rotated and then put it back, nothing ELSE worked anymore. no mouse-clicks, no keyboard, no nothing, I had to hard-shutdown.

 

[theLegionWithin]

On a whim, I did a search on YouTube, and found a guy who said his Yoga (much nicer newer version) worked well with Ubuntu out of the box.

Made up a thumb drive and tried running it live and tested...that was fun. Yeah, screen rotates, but after I rotated and then put it back, nothing ELSE worked anymore. no mouse-clicks, no keyboard, no nothing, I had to hard-shutdown.

that's weird.

I tried to find something accelerometer related that wasnt iio-based and there just doesnt seem to be a lot out there for it.

you could try to run your laptop's serial number through https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/parts-lookup & try to get a bill of materials for it - that may provide more information on the manufacturer of the accelerometer - and then try to find distros that support that hardware (personally I'd say give Arch a shot).

 

[splott]

Thanks!
I can look up the serial # and try to dig out the answers, but honestly whipping up a Live USB drive for a distro is WAY easier, I'll probably do that tomorrow.

 

[splott]

you know I shouldn't have said that.
Because now it does NOT like Arch. two different thumb drives, no luck, won't boot it.
Will have to mess with it tomorrow, it's late for me.

 

[splott]

I just went looking at instructions for Arch, and it looks like the successor of Slackware? Not in a direct form, but in a "you want it? no, there's no bundle, you install it!"

I'm gonna try a couple other things before I go that far, I'm too old for this sh*t. (by which i mean, i have a busy life and a house that needs fixing and it's gardening season, etc. i can't invest as much as a youngling with all the free time.)

 

[splott]

I think I might have found the answer. the answer might be GNOME instead of KDE. Bit more experimenting, but it's looking promising.

 

[theLegionWithin]

I just went looking at instructions for Arch, and it looks like the successor of Slackware? Not in a direct form, but in a "you want it? no, there's no bundle, you install it!"

yeah, vanilla Arch is super minimal (no bloatware), you configure it how you want it - some really good documentation on wiki.archlinux.org though - for a lot of linux stuff, just with an Arch focus.

hope gnome fixes that issue! it's a headscratcher

 

[splott]

yeah and I could puzzle Arch out given time, but a couple of my basic CLI commands just..weren't there. CLI I can handle, but I don't want to start over with basics, that makes Arch a bit more work than i'm willing to tackle.

Gnome is interesting! I had to start over with my Fedora install since I couldn't get it to play nice as a dual-DE setup, but after I did it definitely screen-flips! I have to fold first and THEN flip, and I have to bring up the onscreen keyboard myself, but ..it does seem to work and consistently! gonna run a couple sets of updates before I call it a full success, but I'm actually optimistic!
And Gnome is just way more slick than when I first tried it...lol. 20+ years ago. Back then KDE was better, more intuitive, and now, Gnome is gonna be a learning experience but I can see a lot of potential, convenient features, etc.

thanks for sticking with me here!! I'll post comments esp if Gnome fails me after all, if I'd found one good thread that said "GNOME WORKS BETTER" this whole puzzle would've been MUCH easier to solve so I want to be sure I put that here.

 

[theLegionWithin]

Gnome is interesting! I had to start over with my Fedora install since I couldn't get it to play nice as a dual-DE setup, but after I did it definitely screen-flips! I have to fold first and THEN flip, and I have to bring up the onscreen keyboard myself, but ..it does seem to work and consistently! gonna run a couple sets of updates before I call it a full success, but I'm actually optimistic!

nice, glad to hear you found a workaround!

 

[Kojack]

I went with Zorin OS for my touchscreen devices. Seemed the best way to go. I am using a low spec dell 11 in 2 in 1 and zoris is amazing on it. Fast, light, gets out of the way for basic consumption.

 

[splott]

I went with Zorin OS for my touchscreen devices. Seemed the best way to go. I am using a low spec dell 11 in 2 in 1 and zoris is amazing on it. Fast, light, gets out of the way for basic consumption.

Interesting, does it actually autorotate?? I have found exactly 0 of the lesser known distributions that would rotate!

 

[Kojack]

I will try in shortly and let you know. As far as I know that was part of the draw of Zorin.

 

[Kojack]

I just unplugged and tried the flip and rotate on my system. ALL works perfectly.

 

[splott]

I just unplugged and tried the flip and rotate on my system. ALL works perfectly.

Oh interesting! I have a newer machine coming on Monday, maybe I will give that a shot!