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I'm using a Samsung NP900x3c with a plain ubuntu 14.04 install and I have to say its the smoothest experience i've had with linux on a laptop so far. Everything

by Pengwin 12y ago

I'm using a Samsung NP900x3c with a plain ubuntu 14.04 install and I have to say its the smoothest experience i've had with linux on a laptop so far. Everything works out of the box and the most technical thing you have to do is disable windows 8's securite/quick book options. I would have really loved to use elementaryOS on it but without the 3.13 kernel the CPU and GPU refused to play nicely and the machine refused to sleep. These issues were fixed in the 3.13 kernel. The main problem I have found with laptops and linux is still GPU. Im reluctant to use a laptop with anything but an intel GPU these days because the last experience I had with an AMD GPU was simply terrible. The AMD drivers refused to install on anything but a specific kernel and even when installed the laptop performed better when i told the AMD control panel to always use the intel chip over the AMD one. Id like to be able to change my opinion, but AMD and Nvidia drivers on Linux are still some sort of absurd joke.

jiggy2011 12y ago
You could built 3.13 from source as an interim measure. The kernel compiles pretty fast these days.
aidenn0 12y ago
I've had zero problems with the nvidia drivers, so long as I use the binary ones. Nouveau has been useless. radeon has been very crashy, NoAccel is my only option for it being stable.
brerlapn 12y ago
I posted separately on my experience with my laptop, but I would vehemently +1 the driver issues for AMD Radeon. My laptop has Radeon 7700 graphics, which in practice means I have had to wipe and reinstall Ubuntu four or five times in the past year after a system upgrade broke the graphics. Catalyst drivers work great, but they break completely upon some combination of upgrade (kernel? who knows). I realize this was naive reasoning, but I assumed that AMD's sponsorship of OpenSUSE would mean better support for Linux. I didn't have trouble with my Dell e1505 running Nvidia drivers, but I didn't tax it very hard, either, other than using Compiz for some desktop effects. I thought having a proper graphics chip rather than integrated Intel graphics would make for a snappier experience, but in the future I'll just stick with integrated graphics and max out the RAM. Edit: Good to hear the Samsung works so well. I remember seeing some issues with those on the Ubuntu forums when they came out, which is why I opted for a different brand, but I'd expect to revisit them on my next purchase.

by Pengwin 12y ago

jiggy2011 12y ago

You could built 3.13 from source as an interim measure. The kernel compiles pretty fast these days.

aidenn0 12y ago

I've had zero problems with the nvidia drivers, so long as I use the binary ones. Nouveau has been useless. radeon has been very crashy, NoAccel is my only option for it being stable.

brerlapn 12y ago

I posted separately on my experience with my laptop, but I would vehemently +1 the driver issues for AMD Radeon. My laptop has Radeon 7700 graphics, which in practice means I have had to wipe and reinstall Ubuntu four or five times in the past year after a system upgrade broke the graphics. Catalyst drivers work great, but they break completely upon some combination of upgrade (kernel? who knows). I realize this was naive reasoning, but I assumed that AMD's sponsorship of OpenSUSE would mean better support for Linux. I didn't have trouble with my Dell e1505 running Nvidia drivers, but I didn't tax it very hard, either, other than using Compiz for some desktop effects. I thought having a proper graphics chip rather than integrated Intel graphics would make for a snappier experience, but in the future I'll just stick with integrated graphics and max out the RAM. Edit: Good to hear the Samsung works so well. I remember seeing some issues with those on the Ubuntu forums when they came out, which is why I opted for a different brand, but I'd expect to revisit them on my next purchase.