I am owning an HP Spectre X360 13 (late 2018) and I wanted to share my experience on installing Linux.
At the time of writing there are no review / no report about Linux compatibility for this laptop and that's most likely why you landed here ;-)
The reference number of the model I have is 13-ap0028ca.
I flashed the BIOS from version F7 to F8a using a USB recovery drive. Instructions are here.
I was able to use a Dell USB-C DA200 (RJ45, USB and HDMI working well)
- ELAN Touchpad not working on Debian out of the box
- Webcam only works with uvcvideo (Zoom working but not Skype). Cheese does not recognize webcam either.
- Webcam integrated microphone not working (all distros)
- Similar report has been issued for Arch here
- Test fingerprint reader
- Mess with synaptics on Debian
- Report microphone issue
| Kernel version | Auto-rotate | Touchpad | Microphone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | 4.15 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Ubuntu 18.10 | 4.18 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mint 19 (Tara) | 4.15 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mint 19.1 (Tessa) | 4.15 | Yes | Yes | No |
| ElementaryOS 5.0 | 4.15 | Yes | Yes | No |
| PopOS! 18.04 LTS | 4.15 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Debian stretch | 4.9 | ? | No | No |
| Debian testing | 4.18 | ? | No | No |
| Deepin 15.8 | 4.15 | No | Yes | No |
| Deepin 15.8 | 4.16(upgraded) | No | No(!) | No |
If you don't want to mess around too much for now I would recommend to install Ubuntu-based distros. As for the microphone on my side I workaround it using a headset with integrated microphone for now...
My original intent was to run Debian on that laptop, I will keep trying though!