
Linux on Laptops: Asus Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS - indigodaddy
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/linux-on-laptops-asus-zephyrus-g14-with-ryzen-9-4900hs/
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lumost
I Just made the jump from a macbook to a dual GPU nvidia Razer Blade 15
running pop!_os. Everything more or less works out of box except for thermal
CPU boosting ( which works with some minor tweaks). With the hybrid power mode
you still need to manually decide which apps to run on the dedicated GPU, but
it mostly powers down when not in use.

Still, all the issues running linux on heterogeneous desktop hardware leads me
to think that we need a better business model for linux on the laptop.

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m463
_> better business model for linux on the laptop_

I wonder what the numbers are for linux on laptops.

I suspect that the number of people who buy new laptops dedicated to linux are
low

I think it's much more common to replace a laptop and put linux on the old
one.

And there could also be a middle ground where folks dual-book linux and their
favorite OS.

Given that, it's no wonder Microsoft is heading off dedicated linux laptops by
running linux in a container under windows.

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lumost
Excluding chromebooks the market share is ~1-2% of all machines. However when
you look at the developer crowd, the situation changes with ~25% of devs using
Linux as their primary OS.

Considering that developers often prefer premium and powerful laptops it seems
like there could be a market if the experience was polished.

Edit: Source:
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#development-e...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#development-
environments-and-tools)

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grawprog
>, I downloaded a free-to-play game instead. First, I installed Steam, then
DOTA2. Full confession: I don't know the first thing about DOTA2. However, I
don't think two frames per second is normal on the menu, before even launching
a match.

This seems odd to me. I've got a 5-6 year old pretty mid-range laptop with a
terrible graphics card yet I'm able to run DOTA2 just fine without any
framerate issues on linux.

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Volundr
Yeah the key here is you have a graphics card, even an old low-end one. With
these "dual-GPU" laptops, the default is whatever integrated nonsense is, and
you have to specifically activate the fancy NVidia card for specific programs
(the Windows drivers do this automatically).

I can't easily figure out from the ASUS page what the other card is. If it's
the APU it _might_ theoretically be able to do OK on DOTA2, with the right
drivers, but without setup I'd give decent odds the author is running the
fallback VESA driver, meaning it's basically doing the whole thing in
software.

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inamberclad
Ha, exactly what I've wanted to know since I first saw this laptop. It's sadly
kinda normal that laptops are broken on Day 1 with Linux. The WiFi card in my
XPS-13 (a laptop that, in certain cases, even comes with Ubuntu preinstalled)
was broken for the first month or so before kernel support was added. Shame,
since everything else about it was basically perfect right out of the box.

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julianlam
Not to be a Linux apologist, but you have to do the same with Windows anyways,
no? (Keep in mind it's been almost a decade since Windows was my daily driver)

For example video drivers you always have to install separately, and I
remember having to copy drivers for Ethernet cards after formatting.

Due to the popular opinion of Pop!_OS on here, I gave it a try, and it's
performed wonderfully on my XPS 13 7390. Everything working out of the box

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Volundr
I'm so disappointed. When I initially saw the headline I thought this was
going to be a decent AMD Linux laptop. I've been keeping my eye out for
something to replace my old Lenovo with, and I really don't want to go NVidia
because of the proprietary drivers, but for some reason only the lowest-end
laptops are AMD at the moment.

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jzig
I just got the G15 after six years on a MBP and am thinking about to returning
it. The video card fan is so loud when it kicks on that it's probably louder
than the speakers. My wife started complaining about it across the living
room. Tried to install Elementary OS and after three hours gave up.

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rektide
lol guess who?!?! NVIDIA!!!

always proprietary. always closed. always custom. never interoperable. this
laptop embodies the nvidia legacy.

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muro
Article is from early April 2020

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anorphirith
I have the same machine I've resorted to VM or WSL

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apfsx
I’d love to get one but it’s out of stock everywhere :(

