port hub problems

On Wednesday, which was about two days ago in this part of the world, my computer had suffered from a little mishap. I’d connected one of the four USB-C ports to a five-year-old USB-C to USB-A port hub because my e-reader was running low on charge. Currently, Kobo Clara BWs only come with a USB-A charger so I had to use such a port hub; I assume the reason why Dell ships XPS models with USB-C ports is because they want to be fancy as the rest of the world has clearly not caught up to adopting USB-C. Anyways, it was supposed to be a normal charge, although this time my computer was running Linux instead of Windows 11. About an hour or two of leaving the Kobo to charge, I closed the computer lid & took a brief nap somewhere else far away from the computer because I was feeling very bored & wanted my day to be shorter. When said nap was over, I came back to my computer & heard the fans were blaring loud & clear.

You must understand how shocked I was. Sure, Dell computers have a serious heating problem & my computer is very old, but ever since I switched to Linux I’d never heard the computer fans ever again. It had been nearly a month since I’d switched to Linux & I’d already decided a few days prior to the incident to use my cool pad as a stand instead because my computer rarely gets hot nowadays. I first touched the aluminium lid coating & saw that it was scathing hot. I opened the computer lid & the screen was just black. Just a black screen. No logos, neither Dell’s or Ubuntu’s. I was confused. After pressing the power button a couple of times, the computer finally shut down (I could tell because the screen became even blacker) & I restarted it again. Running true to Linux’s fast startup time, the computer was fully operational within ten seconds. The fans were still roaring though. As I had no idea what was even occurring, I opened Claude & after some back-and-forth dialogue we were both able to identify the source of the problem: the old USB port hub. It was some issue of hardware compatibility, which really meant that the USB port had become too old &/or wasn’t designed with Linux users in mind. I didn’t want to stop using the USB port hub because of hardware issues, so I ran some commands in the kernel & rebooted the computer a few times. I knew that the problem laid whenever I’d close the computer lid, thereby sending it to sleep. In my computer, there are two mechanisms which dictate what happens to the computer once the lid is closed. First is s2idle which puts the computer in a brief sleep & doesn’t turn it off. The other is deep which turns off the entire computer once you close the lid. I switched to deep to see if the computer would still get hot while connected to the port hub. Well, because of that I nearly lost my computer because it had some serious booting troubles, & once it did begin, the deep state did nothing to alleviate the heat. I switched to s2idle soon enough, seeing that having the computer turn off every time I’d close the lid was too cumbersome for me.

You might think that I’ve found a solution to this, & I sort of have, although it’s not a fancy solution expected of proper tech savvy people. From now on, whenever the port hub is connected, I’ve to ensure I don’t close the lid so it doesn’t go through s2idle or deep which both have a problem with my old port hub. It’s more of a lazy fix than an actual fix. I’m just going to leave things to fate, & deal with these small problems. It is an old computer after all. I mean it’s battery is completely dead (I can tell that because it doesn’t charge anymore; it’s always at five percent charge) & there’s a stupid blinking red light beneath which I had to cover with a piece of paper because it was hurting my head. Well, at least Linux makes my computer useable these days.