My 2018 Linux Test

According to the Manjaro install troubleshooter guide, if you switch to discrete graphics mode in BIOS the distro will install fine. Of course, I only read that after my install froze about 4 times in a row. If you want switchable graphics there are instructions to enable install but it looked, ahem, way above my n00b level to get going.

In my case I tried installing Solus, Manjaro Deepin, Antergos, Ubuntu 18.04, Mint, Fedore 29. No luck without major tweaking. All the troubleshooting forum help wrt the noveau modeset etc didn't work either.
 
I don't think the way Kubuntu is setup allows me to switch between the nVidia and Intel video cards, it just turns the nVidia card on full time to handle everything.

I honestly haven't heard the fans in this laptop run this loud ever.

Yeah, even on integrated graphics my usually silent laptop's fans would keep whirring up annoyingly.
 
And are they using the Intel iGPU?

Are they dynamically switching between the two as needed by workload?

I'd love to see this working, Optimus or otherwise, but I've yet to see a real example that anyone other than Nvidia has put in the effort.

Not to derail the thread any further but yes.
 
According to the Manjaro install troubleshooter guide, if you switch to discrete graphics mode in BIOS the distro will install fine. Of course, I only read that after my install froze about 4 times in a row. If you want switchable graphics there are instructions to enable install but it looked, ahem, way above my n00b level to get going.

In my case I tried installing Solus, Manjaro Deepin, Antergos, Ubuntu 18.04, Mint, Fedore 29. No luck without major tweaking. All the troubleshooting forum help wrt the noveau modeset etc didn't work either.

Unfortunately my laptop doesn't have an option to disable/enable either of the internal graphics cards.

And yes, that's exactly the situation I'm running into with regards to troubleshooting information just not working. Kubuntu is up and running and seems to work fine. I just can't make heads or tails of what exactly they've done to make it work.
 
Unfortunately my laptop doesn't have an option to disable/enable either of the internal graphics cards.

And yes, that's exactly the situation I'm running into with regards to troubleshooting information just not working. Kubuntu is up and running and seems to work fine. I just can't make heads or tails of what exactly they've done to make it work.

Yup, that is a thing. Manufacturers create their own UEFI options and some lock out certain features. We had that issue with a number of ASUS laptops, usually the low-mid end laptops. Their higher-end laptops all seemed to have more advanced BIOS options. It was even different year to year. It was very frustrating because we used a Linux image for our company laptops and Optimus was a real pain in our ass. We went through a ton of ways to try and get around it and some worked better than others, but ultimately we just started buying laptops that either didn't have Optimus, or at least had the BIOS option to disable it.

I think what amazes me is Ubuntu wouldn't work, but Kubuntu does. herpaderp. : /

That usually means there is a way to configure it properly in Ubuntu, but just may not be part of the main build yet.
 
If you're having issues with switchable graphics solutions, try PopOS!

It's made by System76 and their implementation of switchable graphics is the best available for obvious reasons.
 
If you're having issues with switchable graphics solutions, try PopOS!

It's made by System76 and their implementation of switchable graphics is the best available for obvious reasons.

I'm going to have to give that a go on my old gaming laptop.

In other news, CentOS is looking really good for a fileserver. At least it likes ZFS and Aquantia 10Gbit NICs! Adopted my two pools right up. Now for SMB...
 
Yup, that is a thing. Manufacturers create their own UEFI options and some lock out certain features. We had that issue with a number of ASUS laptops, usually the low-mid end laptops. Their higher-end laptops all seemed to have more advanced BIOS options. It was even different year to year. It was very frustrating because we used a Linux image for our company laptops and Optimus was a real pain in our ass. We went through a ton of ways to try and get around it and some worked better than others, but ultimately we just started buying laptops that either didn't have Optimus, or at least had the BIOS option to disable it.



That usually means there is a way to configure it properly in Ubuntu, but just may not be part of the main build yet.

Yeah, I figure it is possible. Gnome seems a bit more advanced than KDE, but KDE isn't bad. I'm working with Kubuntu to see if I can make it work for me. So far on my laptop it is running ok, but not great.

Given how high end my XPS 15 9560 is I was kind of amazed it didn't have an option to disable one or the other, but whatevs. lol
 
If you're having issues with switchable graphics solutions, try PopOS!

It's made by System76 and their implementation of switchable graphics is the best available for obvious reasons.

I may give it a go at some point. Right now I'm trying Fedora 29 and I'm not happy. I've been trying for over 4 days just to activate the proprietary nVidia drivers to no avail.
 
If you're having issues with switchable graphics solutions, try PopOS!

It's made by System76 and their implementation of switchable graphics is the best available for obvious reasons.

I tried it and quickly replaced it with Manjaro. It seems... poorly put together. Didn't find the Nvidia hardware either, a GTX675m.

I'm thinking that Optimus support might be out of the reach of Linux.
 
Yeah, I figure it is possible. Gnome seems a bit more advanced than KDE, but KDE isn't bad. I'm working with Kubuntu to see if I can make it work for me. So far on my laptop it is running ok, but not great.

Given how high end my XPS 15 9560 is I was kind of amazed it didn't have an option to disable one or the other, but whatevs. lol

Yeah, I just mentioned it as something you could check out, especially as you are using Kubuntu, you might see what they did with the distro and if you decided you wanted plain Ubuntu, or even go to Debian and then just apply the things you like about the derivatives. That is part of the fun of Linux is learning how to tailor it to your specific needs and tastes.
 
I tried it and quickly replaced it with Manjaro. It seems... poorly put together. Didn't find the Nvidia hardware either, a GTX675m.

I'm thinking that Optimus support might be out of the reach of Linux.

Kubuntu seems to be handling it pretty well out of the box to be honest.

I'm not 100% sold on Plasma but it is getting the job done right now. It setup PRIME support and you have the option of switching between either Optimus card.
 
Kubuntu seems to be handling it pretty well out of the box to be honest.

I'm not 100% sold on Plasma but it is getting the job done right now. It setup PRIME support and you have the option of switching between either Optimus card.

Plasma is very nice. The key to Plasma is how configurable it is. No other DE is as configurable IMHO. The plugins for KWin and things are just outstanding and allow you to do some neat stuff. You can pretty much make Plasma fit the workflow you need and it makes life easy.

Over the weekend I actually replaced KWin with i3. KWin just doesn't run well enough on this Intel iGPU. It felt laggy and I know KWin is anything but that. So now I'm XFCE DE with i3. It's my first tiling WM and it's pretty impressive especailly on my triple monitor setup at work.

Screenshot_2019-03-25_15-32-29.png
 
Kubuntu seems to be handling it pretty well out of the box to be honest.

I'm not 100% sold on Plasma but it is getting the job done right now. It setup PRIME support and you have the option of switching between either Optimus card.

Might try that, thanks!
 
Just wanted to give a quick update.

The laptop is still running well on Kubuntu and the desktop is running well on Ubuntu.

The desktop has World of Warcraft up and running through Lutris, Plex is also up and running. There are a few snags I'm working through but in general I could easily see myself spending most of my time not in Windows right now.
 
Just wanted to give a quick update.

The laptop is still running well on Kubuntu and the desktop is running well on Ubuntu.

The desktop has World of Warcraft up and running through Lutris, Plex is also up and running. There are a few snags I'm working through but in general I could easily see myself spending most of my time not in Windows right now.

Glad you got everything up and running. Not really sure why it would really matter if you use Windows or not, just so long as what you are using works for you, enjoy. :)
 
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Just learning something new is all. And I'm not that big a fan of all the information Microsoft steals from you while using Windows.

I know technically you can turn a lot of the tracking off. But I honestly don't think it turns off and information is still sent to Microsoft.

I know distros like Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora that are supported by corporations are probably sending information as well, which is why I'll still keep trying to fiddle with some less corporate backed distros in the near future.
 
What I learned messing around with Arch has been invaluable while using other distros.

First, the good I've learned:

Not only have I learned about mounting drives, I've also learned how to manually add drives to fstab so they mount and are available at boot.

I've also learned to partition drives and what it all means.

I've become a lot more comfortable with the command line interface.

I've learned a lot more about video drivers, and how much they still suck in Linux.

I've learned a ton about X, GUIs, and how the two truly are separate and you don't necessarily need a GUI to run graphical things.

I know quite a bit more about repositories, and GIT.

I'm starting to understand Systemd but I feel like I still have a long way to go with that one.

Now, the bad:

There are way too many outside dependencies for things that you really have no clue exist. For example, if I install nvidia on Arch, you would think it would include everything you need. But there always seemed to be at least one, and usually more, additional packages you need to download to get it to work.

Which brings me to configuration files. Using plain text files for configuring things is wonderful in concept. However, documentation about how to write these configuration files, format them, the actual commands you need to enter to configure an application, are pretty much non-existent.

For example, it took me at least a week to figure out how to configure X just by running Xorg :0 -configure. And even then, the config file rarely worked out of the gate. It was made even worse by nvidia-xconfig. nVidia-xconfig assumes you've already ran Xorg -configure so when you haven't, the Xorg.conf is missing baseline information needed for it to actually work.

This problem seems to replicate itself across many applications. Multiple config files are pulling from multiple locations most of which you don't even know exist. Again, with X, it will load every configuration file in a given directory (example /etc/X11), then, will pull all additional .conf files from xorg.conf.d directory. Throw on top of that the ArchWiki telling you Arch supplies default config files so nothing needs to be done (which isn't true) and you wind up with a hot mess just getting your video working.

Granted, if you are using nVidia and just stick with the nouveau driver, things work out a lot simpler, but overall video performance is pretty poor. But if you are sticking with the command line for like a server or something, most of these headaches would be avoided.
 
I got Arch mostly working, sort of, well, it was bootable for a short period of time...

And like you, I learned quite a bit!

I'll need to do that again, perhaps on metal next time. I spend as much time in Linux as I can; I think my fileserver will be on the RHEL 8.0 Beta for a while (I'd use CentOS 7, but that 3.10 kernel- and after trying to update the kernel and having that break ZFS, well, the "official" 4.18 will do). I do need to learn the Red Hat 'way' as I use it professionally and am scheduled for the RHCSA.

Personally, if I could run Manjaro on everything and have it 'work', that's what I'd do. I love the concept! But it's perhaps a bit too much bleeding edge while also a bit undeveloped as a distribution for niche desktop configurations that I tend to run, including
  • a desktop with AMD and Nvidia GPUs powering multiple monitors (couldn't get the desktop to extend to the AMD GPU, Ubuntu MATE populated them from the install image)
  • a laptop with Optimus (still not sure about this one; it's running Manjaro right now, but will probably get Kubuntu as JSumrall has done above)
  • a laptop with Secure Boot that I'd prefer to keep enabled (this one has Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 LTS, which I'm pretty happy with)
I tried Pop!_OS (sp?) which seemed to be goofy with permissions or something, and couldn't find the Nvidia GPU- more or less useless without some real digging.

One that I'm adament about trying is Solus Budgie, which I'll hopefully be setting up on my 'Linux on metal' desktop soon. That system will be more interesting, as it's a 7600K | 16GB | GTX970 setup with a 1440p 165Hz G-Sync monitor and should game appreciably well. It'll probably dual boot Fedora 29 (or 30 if that comes out soon) too, so I'll cross shop a bit there.


Happy Linuxing!
 
You noticing a theme to your issues ?

Closed source bolted onto open source is the issue. Nvidia as a company is the worst thing that has ever happened to Linux.

EVERY Other GPU producing company at this point not only supports open source and Linux in general with required information... they just employee people to work on those drivers and stacks. AMD Intel are the majors and of course directly support Linux. Matrox (yes they are still around and their hardware does get used things like Kiosks which run Linux) has a Linux driver team. ARM doesn't directly make an open source driver for their mallie stuffs but they do have their employees submit features and bug fixes all the time to the open source kernel driver... its perhaps sad that the open source ARM GPU driver can run games like Quake faster then Nvidias open source driver lol. Same for the other Mobile GPUs like QComm Broadcomm Via Pvr stuff ect ect all have working and very good open source drivers in the kernel.

I get that Nvidia makes arguably the best GPUs around, but their Linux support SUCKS. The vast majority of problems Linux people try and help new Linux folks with are issues related to Nvidia stuff. Be it getting drivers installed... figuring out how to make the bolted on drivers not mess up secure boot... trying to solve strange tearing... not being able to use wayland outside of some very specific setups. And 100 other issues that seem to crop up when you have NVidia anything in a Linux system.

I look forward to Intel getting into the GPU game... and I really do hope Navi isn't pure hype. Perhaps some real open source pressure from Intel in the high end server GPU market will push Nvidia to go open source on their Linux driver. Intel has already won some massive super computer contracts for their XE GPUs and they haven't really shown much yet. They announced they have already won Aurora an exoscale super computer to be built for the Dept of Energy. In the press releases its clear one of the major factors that swung their win was that their entire software stack from the hardware on up is 100% open source.
 
Closed source bolted onto open source is the issue. Nvidia as a company is the worst thing that has ever happened to Linux.

I won't contend the philosophical issue, but it's not an 'issue' per se. Ubuntu (MATE or otherwise) runs out of the box on all three systems, no problems with hardware or drivers. The only real question mark is the laptop with Optimus, and that one I understand- it's non-standard and frankly fairly rare. I'll spend more time on it later and see if/how it works where the Nvidia GPU can be used.

Otherwise, I feel that Nvidia has done a great job supporting Linux with respect to features and performance.
 
I won't contend the philosophical issue, but it's not an 'issue' per se. Ubuntu (MATE or otherwise) runs out of the box on all three systems, no problems with hardware or drivers. The only real question mark is the laptop with Optimus, and that one I understand- it's non-standard and frankly fairly rare. I'll spend more time on it later and see if/how it works where the Nvidia GPU can be used.

Otherwise, I feel that Nvidia has done a great job supporting Linux with respect to features and performance.

That isn't really true though. Lots and lots of people have to use force full composition pipeline as Nvidias drivers don't play right with most compositors. Tearing is a common issue with Nvidia GPUs not just mobile dual setups... issues with tearing also tend to very one card manufacturer to the next never mind GPU models. It seems NVs closed source driver has issues with GPU Firmware oddities. (that type of stuff tends to get cleaned up when outside eyes are on the code) Nvidia forces their implementations of things sort of related on the community going so far as recommending projects run and maintain 2 code paths for things like Wayland. Nvidia has held wayland back years and is the main, and perhaps the only reason X is still the go to for most major distros. Never mind CUDA... I get that they love the control over the stack they get with CUDA. I can tell you that the big CUDA clients HATE Nvidias guts, NV is in serious trouble if Intels XE stuffs are OpenCL powerhouses (which should be expected with their early super computer wins clearly they are talking it up already to big customers) If anyone can get OpenCL up to snuff and poised to replace Cuda its Intel. AMD has been the only real dog in that fight and they haven't really had the resources to focus on OpenCL in a way Nvidia has with Cuda. Intel is a very different story.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-January-EGLStreams-KWin
They could have just used GBM like everyone else their EGLstream crap offers nothing of value and ZERO reason to maintain multiple code paths. After been told as much for years I guess Nvidia is just putting their own people on it ? Thanks I guess ?
The debate and fight as it where has been going on for 3-4 years now;
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XDC2016-Device-Memory-API
Nvidia really hasn't done anything accept drag their heals and refuse to simply use the open standard everyone else is already using. I know the wayland project has had other issues don't get me wrong... but having the largest install base GPU MFG basically fight you over something as basic as simple device memory extensions for years hasn't helped.

In regards to Nvidia and Linux.... we can say its great that they provide as good driver support for Linux as they do for windows. Good on them... that they like the big iron server money. Its just that they seem to be quite asinine in their non support for anything open. Be it APIs that are NOT driver level that need to talk to their closed source driver... or the actual driver themselves. There really isn't anything stopping them from providing the same basic information support to the NV open source team as other MFGs do. There is nothing at all proprietary about a software driver. They force distributions to keep multiple kernels around, or NV DKMS installers to check NV support off. Now perhaps the open driver would never been good enough for gaming... but I bet it would be and then some. AMD went through this already... they have bolt on drivers as well, and they do get plenty of use in workstation setups and the like, but after a couple years of working with the open source teams their open driver is the best option for games. For basic desktop use the AMD (and Intel) open drivers are the best option. NV should really be no different. They should help the nouveau team out just enough to get decent drivers in the kernel and NV hardware working properly with the MESA stack. Leave the closed source stuff for their big iron customers, of course most of them would love to get ride of the closed source stuff as well.

I guess for NV they see open drivers as giving up to much control of the big iron server systems they covet. (it has nothing to do with Linux desktop users) What I don't get is its costing them contracts at this point. Google 100% went AMD because NV doesn't provide open drivers >.< Really no other way around it Stadia will never run an NV anything as long as NV sticks to closed source drivers and stacks. Intel is winning the next big wave of GPU/CPU super computers for 2021 and beyond... even without hardware to show, again because they are committed to 100% open stacks. If I was an NV shareholder I would frankly be pissed that sticking to their closed source drivers and stacks is costing them some major wins.
 
You noticing a theme to your issues ?

Closed source bolted onto open source is the issue. Nvidia as a company is the worst thing that has ever happened to Linux.

EVERY Other GPU producing company at this point not only supports open source and Linux in general with required information... they just employee people to work on those drivers and stacks. AMD Intel are the majors and of course directly support Linux. Matrox (yes they are still around and their hardware does get used things like Kiosks which run Linux) has a Linux driver team. ARM doesn't directly make an open source driver for their mallie stuffs but they do have their employees submit features and bug fixes all the time to the open source kernel driver... its perhaps sad that the open source ARM GPU driver can run games like Quake faster then Nvidias open source driver lol. Same for the other Mobile GPUs like QComm Broadcomm Via Pvr stuff ect ect all have working and very good open source drivers in the kernel.

I get that Nvidia makes arguably the best GPUs around, but their Linux support SUCKS. The vast majority of problems Linux people try and help new Linux folks with are issues related to Nvidia stuff. Be it getting drivers installed... figuring out how to make the bolted on drivers not mess up secure boot... trying to solve strange tearing... not being able to use wayland outside of some very specific setups. And 100 other issues that seem to crop up when you have NVidia anything in a Linux system.

I look forward to Intel getting into the GPU game... and I really do hope Navi isn't pure hype. Perhaps some real open source pressure from Intel in the high end server GPU market will push Nvidia to go open source on their Linux driver. Intel has already won some massive super computer contracts for their XE GPUs and they haven't really shown much yet. They announced they have already won Aurora an exoscale super computer to be built for the Dept of Energy. In the press releases its clear one of the major factors that swung their win was that their entire software stack from the hardware on up is 100% open source.

Yeah, I've noticed it. If AMD or Intel, or any other company for that matter was able to provide even remotely close performance to nVidia, I'd quickly switch.

Intel has tried to enter the GPU game before. What was it the 780 or 740 something or other in the late 90's. What a turd that was.

Honestly, if they release a video card that can't perform at least as well as nVidia's last generation, it's going to flop and flop hard.
 
I got Arch mostly working, sort of, well, it was bootable for a short period of time...

And like you, I learned quite a bit!

I'll need to do that again, perhaps on metal next time. I spend as much time in Linux as I can; I think my fileserver will be on the RHEL 8.0 Beta for a while (I'd use CentOS 7, but that 3.10 kernel- and after trying to update the kernel and having that break ZFS, well, the "official" 4.18 will do). I do need to learn the Red Hat 'way' as I use it professionally and am scheduled for the RHCSA.

Personally, if I could run Manjaro on everything and have it 'work', that's what I'd do. I love the concept! But it's perhaps a bit too much bleeding edge while also a bit undeveloped as a distribution for niche desktop configurations that I tend to run, including
  • a desktop with AMD and Nvidia GPUs powering multiple monitors (couldn't get the desktop to extend to the AMD GPU, Ubuntu MATE populated them from the install image)
  • a laptop with Optimus (still not sure about this one; it's running Manjaro right now, but will probably get Kubuntu as JSumrall has done above)
  • a laptop with Secure Boot that I'd prefer to keep enabled (this one has Ubuntu MATE 18.04.2 LTS, which I'm pretty happy with)
I tried Pop!_OS (sp?) which seemed to be goofy with permissions or something, and couldn't find the Nvidia GPU- more or less useless without some real digging.

One that I'm adament about trying is Solus Budgie, which I'll hopefully be setting up on my 'Linux on metal' desktop soon. That system will be more interesting, as it's a 7600K | 16GB | GTX970 setup with a 1440p 165Hz G-Sync monitor and should game appreciably well. It'll probably dual boot Fedora 29 (or 30 if that comes out soon) too, so I'll cross shop a bit there.


Happy Linuxing!

I've installed Arch so many times the past month I literally almost have it memorized. I ended up making a spreadsheet, like an Apollo launch mission checklist, and can go from bare drive to up and running install in about 30 min with nVidia drivers installed, working and XFCE going (unless it craps out).

Once I find the power cord for my 3rd monitor, I think I'm going to try a net install on that old machine of mine.
 
Yeah, I've noticed it. If AMD or Intel, or any other company for that matter was able to provide even remotely close performance to nVidia, I'd quickly switch.

Intel has tried to enter the GPU game before. What was it the 780 or 740 something or other in the late 90's. What a turd that was.

Honestly, if they release a video card that can't perform at least as well as nVidia's last generation, it's going to flop and flop hard.

No doubt Intel need to get to parity quickly to do damage in the consumer market anyway. In the server market they only need to equal what Nvidia is shipping today. There is a true hate for Nvidia and their closed source ways in the big iron community. Should be interesting anyway. :) The whole Intel 700 cards was quite the story... but ya Intel went about that wrong trying to buy their way into the field, and not navigating patents well. That and NV went full dick and bought another company for no other reason then to punish Intel. (its how NV ended up suing Intel for GPU patent infringement... they where not NV patents NV bought them up.) In any event NV ended up agreeing to stop making x86 chipsets and Intel paid through the nose for NV patent access for years. Intel didn't try to make another GPU until that deal basically ended. In any event... ya nice to have more competition but Its hard to imagine Intel really ending up anywhere but third with their first gen.

But seeing as we are talking about Linux right now....
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-vii-linux&num=11
AMD VII sell for basically the exact same price as the 2080 where I am (I mean exactly 930 bucks Canadian) VII is faster and on 100% open drivers.

On the lowest end of things the 570-580-590s smoke the NV offerings.

The only holes I see at present are right in the middle where I admit the 1660s look pretty compelling for the price, just a hair cheaper then Vega and just a bit north of a 590. And of course the 2080ti if you really are looking for the top of the food chain.

I get that you have been messing more with mobile stuff which is another ball of wax... still its not like the green team is really beating on the red team all that hard right now. There are a few races that are clearly NVs. The rest (and especially in terms of Linux performance) they seem pretty neck and neck to me. Just AMD offers a much smoother Linux experience, that is just a fact.
 
We'll see how things shake out going forward- for now, Nvidia's closed-source driver does do quite well for me. The challenges I meet are more due to niche configurations that likely haven't been well addressed versus anything wrong with the software.

And I was quite annoyed when Manjaro ran the Nvidia GPU just fine, but failed to extend the desktop to the AMD GPU (a 4GB RX560); it just sent a blank signal, leaving the monitors awake but with black screens.

Kind of wish I had a higher-end AMD GPU (RX580+) to throw in my Linux workstation; it currently has a GTX970, and I can't really justify replacing that, especially given that I have a G-Sync monitor for it.
 
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We'll see how things shake out going forward- for now, Nvidia's closed-source driver does do quite well for me. The challenges I meet are more due to niche configurations that likely haven't been well addressed versus anything wrong with the software.

And I was quite annoyed when Manjaro ran the Nvidia GPU just fine, but failed to extend the desktop to the AMD GPU (a 4GB RX560); it just sent a blank signal, leaving the monitors awake but with black screens.

Kind of wish I had a higher-end AMD GPU (RX580+) to throw in my Linux workstation; it currently has a GTX970, and I can't really justify replacing that, especially given that I have a G-Sync monitor for it.

I picked up a RX570 the other day cause I got a smoking deal I just couldn't say no to 150 Canadian. Put it my wives 2200G system for now. Very smooth card for 1080p gaming anyway. Haven't run any real benches or anything but Getting a nice stable 70-75FPS out of Witcher3 Max -minus hair worksunder proton 4.2... and Star Trek online (its a guilty pleasure) is running anywhere from 80-100 FPS basically max+FXAA with no major drops (other then the typical few min of shader compiling anyway) that game does vary quite a bit depending on the map your on, guess that happens with 9 year old MMOs though the newest areas run around 80 the old stuff I see triple digit FPS.

Keep putting off building myself a new machine... there is always something to hold out for. lol I am going to try my best to wait out all the deals we will see the next little while on Ryzen 2600/2700 stuffs, might not work though. :)
 
Keep putting off building myself a new machine... there is always something to hold out for. lol I am going to try my best to wait out all the deals we will see the next little while on Ryzen 2600/2700 stuffs, might not work though. :)

I'm actually kind of kicking myself; I started my homelabbing before Ryzen became viable, and now I'm going to have a fourth Intel desktop, running as a Server 2016 DC. My 8700K is getting passed to the fileserver (which will also be doing KVM work), and the desktop is getting... a 9900K. The DC and my Linux workstation will both be running 7600Ks.

Main thing I'm feeling that I'm missing out on is ECC with Ryzen, to be honest. The fileserver is running a few ZFS pools, and the extra threads on a 2700(X) alongside ECC would certainly be welcome!
 
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No doubt Intel need to get to parity quickly to do damage in the consumer market anyway. In the server market they only need to equal what Nvidia is shipping today. There is a true hate for Nvidia and their closed source ways in the big iron community. Should be interesting anyway. :) The whole Intel 700 cards was quite the story... but ya Intel went about that wrong trying to buy their way into the field, and not navigating patents well. That and NV went full dick and bought another company for no other reason then to punish Intel. (its how NV ended up suing Intel for GPU patent infringement... they where not NV patents NV bought them up.) In any event NV ended up agreeing to stop making x86 chipsets and Intel paid through the nose for NV patent access for years. Intel didn't try to make another GPU until that deal basically ended. In any event... ya nice to have more competition but Its hard to imagine Intel really ending up anywhere but third with their first gen.

But seeing as we are talking about Linux right now....
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-vii-linux&num=11
AMD VII sell for basically the exact same price as the 2080 where I am (I mean exactly 930 bucks Canadian) VII is faster and on 100% open drivers.

On the lowest end of things the 570-580-590s smoke the NV offerings.

The only holes I see at present are right in the middle where I admit the 1660s look pretty compelling for the price, just a hair cheaper then Vega and just a bit north of a 590. And of course the 2080ti if you really are looking for the top of the food chain.

I get that you have been messing more with mobile stuff which is another ball of wax... still its not like the green team is really beating on the red team all that hard right now. There are a few races that are clearly NVs. The rest (and especially in terms of Linux performance) they seem pretty neck and neck to me. Just AMD offers a much smoother Linux experience, that is just a fact.

I'm kind of hitting mobile and desktop right now. I just kind of got to a point where I wanted my desktop up and running in Linux rather than fighting with it just to get basic functionality working.

Now that Ubuntu is up and running with Plex and World of Warcraft available, it frees me up to get ready to focus on getting back to learning things.

That is, once I find that power cord for my 3rd monitor. WHERE ARE YOU POWER CORD!?
 
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You should have been installing Linux about 20 years ago when you had to place the CRT timings into text files and the wrong timings could literally overdrive your wonderful (in my case 'flat screen' glass NEC) monitor into a smoking pile of worthless scrap. I managed not to kill my monitor but I did notice a lot of very high pitched noises coming out of it. :ROFLMAO:
 
You should have been installing Linux about 20 years ago when you had to place the CRT timings into text files and the wrong timings could literally overdrive your wonderful (in my case 'flat screen' glass NEC) monitor into a smoking pile of worthless scrap. I managed not to kill my monitor but I did notice a lot of very high pitched noises coming out of it. :ROFLMAO:

Eh, I was running an hlds server with the Counter-Strike mod on Mandrake out of the basement across a DSL line with the very first Linksys home router...

Honestly, Linux was pretty straightforward then. A touch before that? Perhaps not.
 
You should have been installing Linux about 20 years ago when you had to place the CRT timings into text files and the wrong timings could literally overdrive your wonderful (in my case 'flat screen' glass NEC) monitor into a smoking pile of worthless scrap. I managed not to kill my monitor but I did notice a lot of very high pitched noises coming out of it. :ROFLMAO:

I did. I have used it on and off for about 20 years. I've just never invested the time I am now actually trying to make it work completely.
 
No problems running Nvidia here.

Switchable graphics solutions are a PITA under Windows, I can't count the number of times I've encountered the 'extended black screen at boot' as a result of AMD/Intel graphics solutions on laptops. Stick to iGPU's on laptops and dedicated GPU's on desktop's and all is good.

Glad you got everything up and running. Not really sure why it would really matter if you use Windows or not, just so long as what you are using works for you, enjoy. :)

Because we don't approve of the direction MS is headed and we prefer true freedom. Not all of us are shallow gamers.
 
No problems running Nvidia here.

Switchable graphics solutions are a PITA under Windows, I can't count the number of times I've encountered the 'extended black screen at boot' as a result of AMD/Intel graphics solutions on laptops. Stick to iGPU's on laptops and dedicated GPU's on desktop's and all is good.



Because we don't approve of the direction MS is headed and we prefer true freedom. Not all of us are shallow gamers.

You're fortunate then because I've had nothing but problems with nVidia in Linux for as long as I can remember.

Prime isn't perfect under Windows, you're correct, but it sure isn't the mess it is in Linux.

But nVidia in Linux even with a single dedicated card is a complete pain in the butt. If you're telling me you've never had trouble running nVidia under Linux you've either been extremely lucky, or delusional.
 
But nVidia in Linux even with a single dedicated card is a complete pain in the butt. If you're telling me you've never had trouble running nVidia under Linux you've either been extremely lucky, or delusional.

I won't say 'never', but 1080Ti on my desktop and a 970 in a dedicated Linux workstation and the Nvidia GPU didn't make a difference. Both running Ubuntu derivatives so far, and that may make a difference.

[Manjaro had trouble with the AMD GPU in my desktop, where it wouldn't stretch the desktop but it most certainly recognized the GPUs and powered its outputs...]
 
On the Optimus laptop I can switch between nVidia and Intel video cards using nvidia-settings, but when I use the nvidia card I lose gamma control. This wouldn't be that big a deal if I wasn't connected to an external monitor via HDMI. The default gamma space on HDMI output is horrible.

After doing some google searches it seems to be some issue with modesetting caused by the PRIME configuration. Honestly, to me, it seems the gamma control gets attached to the Intel card and when you use PRIME to switch cards, the application settings control for gamma just doesn't attach correctly to the nvidia driver.

Anyone have any experience with getting the OS display settings to attach correctly to whatever driver is currently being used?
 
Well I'll give a full report on Arch and PRIME with Nvidia later today or early tomorrow. I got a new 5510 laptop at work which makes me happy. Only catch is it's actually more powerful than my old one lol. It's CPU is maxed and has a 4K display. That'll make installing FUN with that tiny ass print. ;) Guess I'm going back to KDE Plasma for the 4K support lol.
 
Well I'll give a full report on Arch and PRIME with Nvidia later today or early tomorrow. I got a new 5510 laptop at work which makes me happy. Only catch is it's actually more powerful than my old one lol. It's CPU is maxed and has a 4K display. That'll make installing FUN with that tiny ass print. ;) Guess I'm going back to KDE Plasma for the 4K support lol.

I don't know how I would have installed it on my 9560 w/ 4k monitor if I didn't have a 1080p external monitor. lol

I'd also be excited to know how you got PRIME working under Arch.
 
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