5 ms·

The steamdeck works so well, because Valve spent a LOT of effort fixing AMD, wayland and pipewire issues for their handheld. Some of that then trickles down to

The steamdeck works so well, because Valve spent a LOT of effort fixing AMD, wayland and pipewire issues for their handheld. Some of that then trickles down to other machine other parts don't(like sleep, and audio). For example, they have a proper filter chain for their speakers and microphone. Since recently buying an AMD based laptop I've come to realize how much better Intel's software support, both in Linux AND in windows is. And that patterns moves all across AMD product lines. For example, they pressured all vendors to drop S3, dropped it from Phoenix and went all in with Microsoft's s2idle without any clear way to support it. As a result you have multiple vendors with half working idle implementations, overheating and other bugs. Intel has also vastly surpassed AMD is their ML stack, even though their GPU's are less powerful.

saidinesh5 3y ago
That's quite interesting to know. Which laptop/AMD cpu did you purchase? I may have to buy a new laptop in the near future. Linux is my default OS. I've been happy with my existing Ryzen 7 3000 series laptop for 5 years or so. I want to know if Intel is doing better these days.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Framework is very well supported on Linux, and have both Intel and AMD builds. Highly recommended.
  - pkaye 3y ago
    How is Framework power management in Linux? Does it need lot of tweaking in mainstream distributions/
    - adastra22 3y ago
      Not as good as when running windows (when has there ever been a laptop with linux power management as good as windows?), but better out of the box experience than most laptops I’ve tried.
- opengears 3y ago
  Take a look at the 'Ubuntu Certified' Laptops. Most Dell, HP and Lenovo should be supported. Here is a full list https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?q=%C2%B4&limit=228&category=Laptop&release=22.04+LTS https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?q=%C2%B4&limit=228&cate...
- sofixa 3y ago
  If you're interested in ASUS laptops (they have some very good and powerful models), you can check out this website: https://asus-linux.org/ https://asus-linux.org/
  - ponector 3y ago
    Bought one beefy Asus ROG model (m16-2021) and it was so poor quality! Windows had BSOD daily (reddit suggested to replace wifi card - it helped). Sometimes audio output became muffled. After few months body coating started to peel off in some places. I wish I bought something else!
- wraptile 3y ago
  I just got Thinkpad T14s Gen4 with AMD chipset and it's brilliant! The chipset works out of the box with great performance and battery (Tested on Arch and Nixos) and the 16:10 OLED semi-matte screen is a must upgrade (better than any other laptop screen on the market imo). My only gripe is the fingerprint magnet body material which is annoying to care for. I'm running nixos and plasma wayland without any issues. Even the fractional scaling works out of the box.
  - saidinesh5 3y ago
    Interesting.. How is the OLED burn in so far? Also does the fingerprint sensor work?
    - wraptile 3y ago
      No burn that I could notice in 2 months of use now. I don't think that's a major problem for laptops tbh. I don't use fingerprint sensors on laptops and ordered mine without on but AFAIK it does work on linux if I recall correctly.
      - saidinesh5 3y ago
        Not sure. that's the one thing that horrifies me about OLED laptops. The taskbar always being there = recipe for burn in..
- rjzzleep 3y ago
  Take a look at this amdgpu issue tracker[1], you will find that there are lot of devices across vendors having the same issue. And even if you get s2idle to work, which people on my machine do by disabling wakeups with something like the following, it looks like the system is sleeping, but it will often still spend most of the time in userspace, which leads to heat issues if you are foolish enough to throw it in your backpack at that point: for i in $(cat /proc/acpi/wakeup|grep enabled|awk '{print $1}'|xargs); do case $i in SLPB|XHCI);; *) echo $i|tee /proc/acpi/wakeup ; esac; done [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/?sort=created_date&state=opened&search=sleep&first_page_size=20 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/?sort=create...
vladvasiliu 3y ago
> For example, they pressured all vendors to drop S3, dropped it from Phoenix and went all in with Microsoft's s2idle without any clear way to support it. As a result you have multiple vendors with half working idle implementations, overheating and other bugs. Are there still Intel parts with working S3? Linux seems to think that my 11th gen intel laptop supports it, but it doesn't work (hangs on going to sleep). I haven't figured how to coax Windows into using that instead of s2idle. This particular model doesn't offer a BIOS toggle for that, as I hear it was the case on some thinkpads. I'm also not convinced the s2idle situation is that much better on the Intel side. I sometimes use Windows on my work laptop and let it hang around suspended when I'm done for the day. Yesterday evening (Sunday), after two days of doing nothing, it figured it would be as good a time as any to turn into a jet engine. I also sometimes find it is pretty warm coming out of my backpack after a 45-60 minute commute with a long portion of walking, even when it's close to freezing outside (we've had a few weeks of 0-2º days where I live). This doesn't seem like an isolated thing: see all the people complaining about other manufacturers' laptops not going to sleep properly while being carried around closed in bags. --- edit: found a way to enable S3 on windows. It goes to sleep but doesn't wake up. It actually seems to mess up the PC so much that after a forced reboot the fan goes crazy for a few minutes before showing the UEFI logo.
- egeozcan 3y ago
  The sleeping is so broken on all the laptops these days that I'm seriously considering buying an old laptop because all the nice things you get with a modern powerful laptop aren't worth it if the battery is randomly empty and you can't turn it off. It's astonishingly inexplicably broken and the industry completely ignores it. I have 0 idea why.
  - leni536 3y ago
    I can't decide if I'm incredibly lucky or what, but I never had broken sleep in the last decade on Linux.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
nicman23 3y ago
seems to me you bought a bad laptop. i bought a cheap generic lenovo and the only thing that is not working is the fingerprint reader, which is probably for the best. even the touchscreen / stylus works great and that is not my words but a family member that gifted my laptop (due to irrelevant to tech, life reasons)
wraptile 3y ago
I'm really confused by this post as AMD chipset is the de facto recommendation in any laptop discussion forum on Linux. AMD graphics cards are also much better on linux too so it almost seems like you got things in reverse?
- 127361 3y ago
  I personally find AMD GPU support under Linux to be absolutely excellent. Only thing I don't like is the "secure processor" which requires signed and sometimes encrypted firmware to run. The older cards don't have this.
  - fulafel 3y ago
    At least on iGPU business Thinkpads, Intel systems still seem to be more robust with Linux. The difference isn't necessarily on graphics, just less bugs overall ranging from wireless (bt/wifi) to monitor / dock compatibility etc.
  - minimaul 3y ago
    And in contrast, I find Intel support to be very buggy, certainly on Linux.
  - lobocinza 3y ago
    I have a RX 6600 XT and it was a PITA in many instances. Sometimes black screen at boot which resolves after GDM is started. Freezes when waking up which is an issue that come and go on Arch after each update cycle. Bizarre frame drops in games out of nowhere. Like one day I had stable >60fps but next day after a reboot with no change to the system it stayed ~15fps. This was a huge pain for almost an year after launch but I think it is stable enough by now.
smallstepforman 3y ago
I have a Zen2 desktop and Zen3 laptop, and power save mode / suspend works flawlessly. Is there an errant service/app on your system which disables suspend?
merb 3y ago
Wasn‘t acpi always a shitshow? I remembered https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7279 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7279 even s3 was shitty , s2idle is just a „software wrapper“ around a already broken thing. I think the only way to fix any kind of power management issues would mean to replace the whole system with a more modern interface, which probably would be extremely hard to do, since every hardware vendor and os would need to change a lot of things. Heck we actually have problems with modern standby on windows on dell precision tower workstations, we even tried windows 11. but sometimes it will just fail and it will try to go to standby and than it fails and it will resume in a cycle, it will not resume and you hear the power cycle, it’s the biggest hibernation shit show that I’ve seen so far, the thirst things I do on these machines is disable it. It’s the same thing as https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/weg/delivering-a-great-startup-and-shutdown-experience#recommended-goals https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/weg/... aka fake s5, which is just stupid on nvme disks. No software around acpi does not fix it, it makes it worse.

saidinesh5 3y ago

That's quite interesting to know. Which laptop/AMD cpu did you purchase? I may have to buy a new laptop in the near future. Linux is my default OS. I've been happy with my existing Ryzen 7 3000 series laptop for 5 years or so. I want to know if Intel is doing better these days.

adastra22 3y ago
Framework is very well supported on Linux, and have both Intel and AMD builds. Highly recommended.
- pkaye 3y ago
  How is Framework power management in Linux? Does it need lot of tweaking in mainstream distributions/
  - adastra22 3y ago
    Not as good as when running windows (when has there ever been a laptop with linux power management as good as windows?), but better out of the box experience than most laptops I’ve tried.
opengears 3y ago
Take a look at the 'Ubuntu Certified' Laptops. Most Dell, HP and Lenovo should be supported. Here is a full list https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?q=%C2%B4&limit=228&category=Laptop&release=22.04+LTS https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?q=%C2%B4&limit=228&cate...
sofixa 3y ago
If you're interested in ASUS laptops (they have some very good and powerful models), you can check out this website: https://asus-linux.org/ https://asus-linux.org/
- ponector 3y ago
  Bought one beefy Asus ROG model (m16-2021) and it was so poor quality! Windows had BSOD daily (reddit suggested to replace wifi card - it helped). Sometimes audio output became muffled. After few months body coating started to peel off in some places. I wish I bought something else!
wraptile 3y ago
I just got Thinkpad T14s Gen4 with AMD chipset and it's brilliant! The chipset works out of the box with great performance and battery (Tested on Arch and Nixos) and the 16:10 OLED semi-matte screen is a must upgrade (better than any other laptop screen on the market imo). My only gripe is the fingerprint magnet body material which is annoying to care for. I'm running nixos and plasma wayland without any issues. Even the fractional scaling works out of the box.
- saidinesh5 3y ago
  Interesting.. How is the OLED burn in so far? Also does the fingerprint sensor work?
  - wraptile 3y ago
    No burn that I could notice in 2 months of use now. I don't think that's a major problem for laptops tbh. I don't use fingerprint sensors on laptops and ordered mine without on but AFAIK it does work on linux if I recall correctly.
    - saidinesh5 3y ago
      Not sure. that's the one thing that horrifies me about OLED laptops. The taskbar always being there = recipe for burn in..
rjzzleep 3y ago
Take a look at this amdgpu issue tracker[1], you will find that there are lot of devices across vendors having the same issue. And even if you get s2idle to work, which people on my machine do by disabling wakeups with something like the following, it looks like the system is sleeping, but it will often still spend most of the time in userspace, which leads to heat issues if you are foolish enough to throw it in your backpack at that point: for i in $(cat /proc/acpi/wakeup|grep enabled|awk '{print $1}'|xargs); do case $i in SLPB|XHCI);; *) echo $i|tee /proc/acpi/wakeup ; esac; done [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/?sort=created_date&state=opened&search=sleep&first_page_size=20 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/?sort=create...

vladvasiliu 3y ago

> For example, they pressured all vendors to drop S3, dropped it from Phoenix and went all in with Microsoft's s2idle without any clear way to support it. As a result you have multiple vendors with half working idle implementations, overheating and other bugs. Are there still Intel parts with working S3? Linux seems to think that my 11th gen intel laptop supports it, but it doesn't work (hangs on going to sleep). I haven't figured how to coax Windows into using that instead of s2idle. This particular model doesn't offer a BIOS toggle for that, as I hear it was the case on some thinkpads. I'm also not convinced the s2idle situation is that much better on the Intel side. I sometimes use Windows on my work laptop and let it hang around suspended when I'm done for the day. Yesterday evening (Sunday), after two days of doing nothing, it figured it would be as good a time as any to turn into a jet engine. I also sometimes find it is pretty warm coming out of my backpack after a 45-60 minute commute with a long portion of walking, even when it's close to freezing outside (we've had a few weeks of 0-2º days where I live). This doesn't seem like an isolated thing: see all the people complaining about other manufacturers' laptops not going to sleep properly while being carried around closed in bags. --- edit: found a way to enable S3 on windows. It goes to sleep but doesn't wake up. It actually seems to mess up the PC so much that after a forced reboot the fan goes crazy for a few minutes before showing the UEFI logo.

egeozcan 3y ago
The sleeping is so broken on all the laptops these days that I'm seriously considering buying an old laptop because all the nice things you get with a modern powerful laptop aren't worth it if the battery is randomly empty and you can't turn it off. It's astonishingly inexplicably broken and the industry completely ignores it. I have 0 idea why.
- leni536 3y ago
  I can't decide if I'm incredibly lucky or what, but I never had broken sleep in the last decade on Linux.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago

nicman23 3y ago

seems to me you bought a bad laptop. i bought a cheap generic lenovo and the only thing that is not working is the fingerprint reader, which is probably for the best. even the touchscreen / stylus works great and that is not my words but a family member that gifted my laptop (due to irrelevant to tech, life reasons)

wraptile 3y ago

I'm really confused by this post as AMD chipset is the de facto recommendation in any laptop discussion forum on Linux. AMD graphics cards are also much better on linux too so it almost seems like you got things in reverse?

127361 3y ago
I personally find AMD GPU support under Linux to be absolutely excellent. Only thing I don't like is the "secure processor" which requires signed and sometimes encrypted firmware to run. The older cards don't have this.
- fulafel 3y ago
  At least on iGPU business Thinkpads, Intel systems still seem to be more robust with Linux. The difference isn't necessarily on graphics, just less bugs overall ranging from wireless (bt/wifi) to monitor / dock compatibility etc.
- minimaul 3y ago
  And in contrast, I find Intel support to be very buggy, certainly on Linux.
- lobocinza 3y ago
  I have a RX 6600 XT and it was a PITA in many instances. Sometimes black screen at boot which resolves after GDM is started. Freezes when waking up which is an issue that come and go on Arch after each update cycle. Bizarre frame drops in games out of nowhere. Like one day I had stable >60fps but next day after a reboot with no change to the system it stayed ~15fps. This was a huge pain for almost an year after launch but I think it is stable enough by now.

smallstepforman 3y ago

I have a Zen2 desktop and Zen3 laptop, and power save mode / suspend works flawlessly. Is there an errant service/app on your system which disables suspend?

merb 3y ago

Wasn‘t acpi always a shitshow? I remembered https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7279 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7279 even s3 was shitty , s2idle is just a „software wrapper“ around a already broken thing. I think the only way to fix any kind of power management issues would mean to replace the whole system with a more modern interface, which probably would be extremely hard to do, since every hardware vendor and os would need to change a lot of things. Heck we actually have problems with modern standby on windows on dell precision tower workstations, we even tried windows 11. but sometimes it will just fail and it will try to go to standby and than it fails and it will resume in a cycle, it will not resume and you hear the power cycle, it’s the biggest hibernation shit show that I’ve seen so far, the thirst things I do on these machines is disable it. It’s the same thing as https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/weg/delivering-a-great-startup-and-shutdown-experience#recommended-goals https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/weg/... aka fake s5, which is just stupid on nvme disks. No software around acpi does not fix it, it makes it worse.