this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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[Solved] Sorry if this not related to this community because I don't know where to ask, but should I buy this laptop? and does it play nice with Linux. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) by ColdWater@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.ml
57 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
  • Price: 370$
  • Model: Asus ROG Strix G15 (G531GV)
  • CPU: Intel I7 9th Gen
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX 2060 6GB
  • Ram: 16GB
  • Storage: Samsung SSD 980 Pro 1TB (NVME)
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[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 8 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

2060, 9th gen and 1Tb SSD for 400 is a good deal in my opinion. Don’t fear the nvidia BS spreaded here, with an up to date distro, it is no problem

I use my 780 with endeavourOS and latest proprietary driver without issues. I had to switch some packages from the nauvau edition to the nvidia editions. (Vulcan and cuda stuff)

In kde settings about page you can easily check if vulcan is running good

[–] Anti_Face_Weapon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

NVIDIA drivers are notoriously bad. They break and WILL depreciate your card eventually, forcing you to switch to the slow open source drivers.

I have had two cards lose support. It's absurd.

But for 370 it's kinda a steal honestly.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 1 points 24 minutes ago

It's 2000 series, so they are supported by the new OSS driver, no?

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I would love to here more info about your issue, I bet there was just a misunderstanding 😇

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 1 points 46 minutes ago

I have Nvidia gt210 in office, and latest Linux mint installed, no proprietary drivers for my GPU is installable, they exist, yes, but you can't install them on latest Linux mint

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

There's a lot of naysayers in here with ideas born out of fashion advice similar to the "if it tastes good, it's bad for you" crowd. That laptop is a fantastic deal so long as it's all in one piece! Nvidia has shaky driver support, but you'll be fine.

[–] boreengreen@lemm.ee 6 points 4 hours ago

Older, out of support, nvidia drivers tend to break from time to time.

[–] Asidonhopo@lemmy.world 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'd tell them to knock 50-70 off for the condition of the surfaces. No idea about the model and specs or if that's worth it but that's an ugly case on it and I would be grossed out using it, would probably have to tape a sheet of paper over the worn out spots to be comfortable touching that surface.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago

My laptop, similar Taiwanese brand, is fairly new and already beginning to look like this. I don't know why they have to be such cheapskates with the crappy fake metal finish. Somehow we can find enough aluminum to make disposable Coke cans out of it but it's too expensive for a laptop casing.

[–] aspitzer@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

Nvidia works just fine on Linux despite what anyone says. People are just upset because it's a closed source driver. I have used Nvidia exclusively for like decades without issue. Just purchased an RTX3090ti (upgrade from a 2060) for Ollama, InvokeAI, and ComfyUi. Plus I do a lot of gaming. All of it works right out of the box with no tweaking.

[–] Cpo@lemm.ee 7 points 3 hours ago (4 children)

My experience with Nvidia (granted, 3 years old experience):

Going with the closed source driver means stuff breaking each kernel update. Going with the opensource driver (while it may work for you): not everything is supported.

So its not just "people being annoyed with Nvidia" i'd say.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 1 points 24 minutes ago

Keeps jumping to the latest kernel instead of the latest stable release.

Blames nvidia for not keeping up...

I've been on Manjaro for years and have literally NEVER had your issue. Why, because I don't just automatically change to the latest kernel and then wonder why shit doesn't work.

After an update, it'll tell me if a newer kernel is available, I'll look at it and if its a new stable release I'll change to it with no issue because an NVIDIA update was likely included with that update.

Stop forcing early adoption on your computer and then blaming others when it fucks up your shit.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 42 minutes ago

Did you use your package manager and dkms? You need to recompile the driver hook with each kernel update.

I've had Nvidia cards since the Riva TNT2 and it's been reasonably smooth sailing... 🤷‍♂️

[–] ouch@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Going with the closed source driver means stuff breaking each kernel update.

What distro are you using if nvidia breaks after every kernel update? What do you need to do to fix the breakage?

[–] Cpo@lemm.ee 2 points 2 hours ago

Debian.

Well, every kernel update is overstated maybe, but I had my fixed workflow of dropping to text mode and reinstalling the latest drivers from vendor, which is annoying as hell.

Dropped the card after meddling about for almost a year. Been using Linux since slackware was still hip & happening.

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee -3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Not anymore, at least if you not use an outdated distro 😜

[–] Cpo@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I'll interpret this as "it worked for you". It did not work for me.

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago

It did not 3 years ago, what kernel was latest then? This is lake ages ago.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Man I wish my time with Nvidia was as easy as you claim it to be.

I had a 1080 Ti that I was forced to sell because Nvidia drivers made my PC unusable.

The performance drop going from a 1080 Ti to a RX 580 was huge, but it was well worth it for a system that would actually work reliably.

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

A lot has changed since 1080…

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 55 minutes ago) (1 children)

I've tried a 3060 as well, which was a nightmare too. Although that was in a laptop so I'm not sure if that's a laptop-specific thing.

I doubt it though, since every other update would render it unbootable, which also happened with the 1080 Ti.

I do know that AMD "just works", though.

Nvidia needs to seriously improve before they're right for a typical Linux user.

Shit, Valve's new big picture mode was delayed for like a year because it was unusable on Nvidia hardware. Doesn't exactly sound bug-free to me mate.

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

😂I would love to travel to you to show that it works

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 points 57 minutes ago

Except, as I and others are telling you, it doesn't "just work".

A crying-laughing emoji is not a counter-argument.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

I've had lots of problems with Nvidia over the years; you're lucky not to. Latest has been with Wayland which are ongoing. That being said Nvidia drivers are much better generally than they used to be, and I've not had the myriad of small issues I used to get.

This is less to do with them being closed source drivers so much as their drivers being poorly maintained in the past. They seem much better maintained but even now the software support lags behind windows - you have to use 3rd party open source software to make use of the streaming features for example.

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 26 points 8 hours ago

If there's nothing wrong beyond the hideous consmetic damage sure.

Some distros have some very specific images like this one that I would install if I had the same computer: 1000010590

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 17 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Cant recommend anything with Nvidia.

[–] SaveMotherEarthEDF@lemmy.world 24 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

Sorry but could you please elaborate. I've been using nvidia forever in linux machines both at work and at home. I work in AI so using nvidia gpus is a must. Maybe there's something that I missed but my experience has been pretty solid so far.

At home I am using openSUSE tumbleweed KDE wayland and at work ubuntu headless.

[–] zingo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 54 minutes ago)

Yeah, Tumbleweed has a good track record with NVIDIA drivers in my experience. As with updates in general.

Although I still use X11 as Wayland still has graphical issues in some apps for me. Usually Flatpaks. That makes it unusable for me for the time being.

Edit: I have an older card (1050ti), so maybe I don't get the latests drivers anymore?? On version 550.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

These days ROCm support is more common than a few years ago so you're no longer entirely dependent on CUDA for machine learning. (Although I wish fewer tools required non-CUDA users to manually install Torch in their venv because the auto-installer assumes CUDA. At least take a parameter or something if you don't want to implement autodetection.)

Nvidia's Linux drivers generally are a bit behind AMD's; e.g. driver versions before 555 tended not to play well with Wayland.

Also, Nvidia's drivers tend not to give any meaningful information in case of a problem. There's typically just an error code for "the driver has crashed", no matter what reason it crashed for.

Personal anecdote for the last one: I had a wonky 4080 and tracing the problem to the card took months because the log (both on Linux and Windows) didn't contain error information beyond "something bad happened" and the behavior had dozens of possible causes, ranging from "the 4080 is unstable if you use XMP on some mainboards" over "some BIOS setting might need to be changed" and "sometimes the card doesn't like a specific CPU/PSU/RAM/mainboard" to "it's a manufacturing defect".

Sure, manufacturing defects can happen to anyone; I can't fault Nvidia for that. But the combination of useless logs and 4000-series cards having so many things they can possibly (but rarely) get hung up on made error diagnosis incredibly painful. I finally just bought a 7900 XTX instead. It's slower but I like the driver better.

[–] SaveMotherEarthEDF@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Finally, thanks for the clear cut answer. I don't have any experience with training on AMD but the errors from nvidia are usually very obscure.

As for using gpus other than nvidia, there's a slew of problems. Mostly that on cloud where most of the projects are deployed, our options seem either limited to nvidia gpus, or cloud tpus.

Each AI experiment can cost usually in thousands of dollars and use a cluster of GPUs. We have built and modified our system for fully utilizing such an environment. I can’t even imagine shifting to Amd gpus at this point. The amount of work involved and the red tape shudder

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh yeah, the equation completely changes for the cloud. I'm only familiar with local usage where you can't easily scale out of your resource constraints (and into budgetary ones). It's certainly easier to pivot to a different vendor/ecosystem locally.

By the way, AMD does have one additional edge locally: They tend to put more RAM into consumer GPUs at a comparable price point – for example, the 7900 XTX competes with the 4080 on price but has as much memory as a 4090. In systems with one or few GPUs (like a hobbyist mixed-use machine) those few extra gigabytes can make a real difference. Of course this leads to a trade-off between Nvidia's superior speed and AMD's superior capacity.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The only two things that have ever been broken by an update for me are hyprland and Nvidia drivers, multiple times

Even then that seems to have stopped happening recently though they patched one of the reallg big issues this year

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

My experience (and many others') has been contradictory to yours. AMD, on the other hand, pretty much always works without any fuss because they release first-party open source drivers.

[–] SaveMotherEarthEDF@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Do you mean in terms of gaming? I admit that I don't do much gaming on linux. Usually just development and browsing.

I also use proprietary nvidia drivers if that makes a difference.

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[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Noted, but do you have any laptop model in mind that reasonably cheap and has a good AMD dGPU because it's pretty rare and I can't think of anything on top of my head

[–] helenslunch@feddit.nl 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

What is "reasonably cheap"?

My advice would be to buy something cheap. Then if you have extra cash, get yourself a desktop gaming PC. A laptop just has too many sacrifices. Low power, poor thermals, and high cost.

Have you considered a Steam Deck?

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago

Steamdeck is expensive like 2X the price, because they're imported and not officially available in my country

[–] PetteriPano@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Integrated GPU is not a dirty word anymore.

AMD's system-on-a-chips with RDNA2/3 pack almost the same punch as the discrete cards with the same architecture. See steamdeck as the prime example, but there's quite a few boards, boxes and laptops with the same.

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago

If that's the prime example you're holding up to an RTX 2060, I'd hate to see a subprime example.

[–] velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml 15 points 8 hours ago (6 children)

Gaming laptops have some of the worst builds. They break down very easily. This is why people go for Thinkpads and Elitebooks. I think that you can get yourself a 7th/8th gen Thinkpad Pxy, P1 or X1 Extreme series with a gDPU, and that would be a better deal - but do remember, they all have Nvidia dGPUs. And if you don't really need a dGPU, then there's the Thinkpad T series with the Ryzen processor.

[–] Mango@lemmy.world -3 points 2 hours ago

What a terrible generalization based on pure fashion.

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[–] gento166@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

afaik, if u use the proprietary nvidia drivers and the https://asus-linux.org kernel, u should be good to go. and also, according to this, fedora is the recommended distro of choice by the asus-linux team, but u should find guides for other distros that also support the asus-linux kernel on that website

[–] M600@lemmy.world 1 points 30 minutes ago

This is really cool! I had no idea that asus had Linux support. I just skimmed their site, are all their current models supported?

I’ll have to consider them next time I get a computer.

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[–] SaveMotherEarthEDF@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I don't see why it won't play nice with linux but as to if you should buy this laptop... it doesn't look in a good shape. I am a bit biased as I had poor experience with laptops with gpus. Old laptops can have bent heatsinks so you can't control the temps no matter what. If yiu are hell bent on buying it then I'd recommend to stress test both gpu and cpu and look for heavy thermal throttling

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[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

That's a good deal for this laptop and while Nvidia sucks on Linux (you'll have some support issues), that graphics card isn't the worst offender.

Tldr yes buy and install Linux. You'll have to tinker for the graphics card though.

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