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Linux on Laptops: Asus Zephyrus G14 with Ryzen 9 4900HS

21 points by indigodaddy 6y ago

inamberclad 6y ago
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.
- julianlam 6y ago
  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
grawprog 6y ago
>, 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.
- Volundr 6y ago
  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.
muro 6y ago
Article is from early April 2020
anorphirith 6y ago
I have the same machine I've resorted to VM or WSL
- apfsx 6y ago
  I’d love to get one but it’s out of stock everywhere :(
rektide 6y ago
lol guess who?!?! NVIDIA!!! always proprietary. always closed. always custom. never interoperable. this laptop embodies the nvidia legacy.
jzig 6y ago
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.
lumost 6y ago
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.
- m463 6y ago
  > 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.
  - lumost 6y ago
    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-environments-and-tools https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#development-e...
Volundr 6y ago
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.

21 points by indigodaddy 6y ago

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.

julianlam 6y ago
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

grawprog 6y ago

>, 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.

Volundr 6y ago
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.

muro 6y ago

Article is from early April 2020

anorphirith 6y ago

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

apfsx 6y ago
I’d love to get one but it’s out of stock everywhere :(

rektide 6y ago

lol guess who?!?! NVIDIA!!! always proprietary. always closed. always custom. never interoperable. this laptop embodies the nvidia legacy.

jzig 6y ago

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.

lumost 6y ago

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.

m463 6y ago
> 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.
- lumost 6y ago
  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-environments-and-tools https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#development-e...

Volundr 6y ago

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.