Tuxedo Manjaro Infinity Book not working on first boot

I purchased a Manjaro InfinityBook Pro 15 from Tuxedo Computers some weeks ago with a choice of Plasma KDE as a desktop. The experience so far has been anything but pleasant. The laptop still is not working as advertised.

On first booting the machine, I was supposed to input a default user and password. However, the laptop did not accept the defaults. On calling Tuxedo’s customer support I was told that this was due to some error in production caused by a last-minute Manjaro update and that my only solution would be to re-install the OS using the WebFAI stick provided with the laptop.

I did this while connected to my router with an ethernet cable. The OS was downloaded and installed, then rebooted and the first thing to appear on my screen was an image saying

Welcome to Manjaro Linux “Mikah 20.1” setup

This computer does not satisfy some of the recommended requirements for setting up Manjaro 20.1.
Setup can continue, but some features may be disabled.

The system is not connected to the internet.

The latter was obviously not true, since it had just downloaded the whole OS from the internet immediately before reboot. The former is surprising, given that it is hardware supposedly officially supported by Manjaro.

I continued with the setup anyway, but in the end, that gave me a very unsatisfying and dysfunctional system. WiFi was deactivated by default and had to be activated via the command line, network manager widgets were not installed by default, nor was bluetooth support, not even the battery monitor widget. After making a few manual adjustments I noticed that the system was telling me that “the battery is plugged in, but still discharging”…when it was clearly not plugged in. After that, I stopped further using/exploring the system and contacted Tuxedo support, since this is clearly not the result I had expected for the money spent on this computer. My whole motivation for buying this laptop had been to get a system that by default was well adjusted to the hardware and required no further tinkering.

I contacted Tuxedo’s customer support, but they told me that they are only responsible for the hardware and that since this was a problem with the software configuration, I should go onto the Manjaro Forums for help.

So here I am!

Some things worth mentioning…

I went through the whole process of installing Manjaro/KDE via WebFAI a total of three times using two different routers and internet connections, always with exactly the same result as described above. Just as a test, I also installed a standard Manjaro/KDE ISO onto the laptop as well and this works out of the box with none of the problems experienced during the installation that was supposed to be customized for my hardware. From this, I would conclude that the problem also isn’t being caused by some hardware defect.

Obviously, I could just use the laptop with this “all-weather” Manjaro installation from now on, but I would expect that to result in shorter battery life and a certain amount of tinkering once I start moving from the most obvious functions to more specific ones. I don’t think I am asking too much for this hardware to at least work as advertised after the very first boot…

P.S. Ich verstehe und spreche auch Deutsch