Choosing a PCS Laptop for Ubuntu - ULTRANOTE IV or OPTIMUS VIII?

Hello,

I am looking to buy a PCS laptop. I would install Ubuntu 17 on it, and I would run Windows 10 in a VirtualBox. I would use the machine mainly for software development under linux/gcc and Windows/VC++. I would buy a separate monitor for use on the desktop.

I am currently considering either the 15.6" ULTRANOTE IV or the 15.6" OPTIMUS VIII. I see on these forums that people have had trouble getting ubuntu to run on the OPTIMUS VII because of the GTX960. The OPTIMUS VIII has the GTX 1050, would I have the same problem with that?

Whichever model I choose, I would have a more or less unlimited budget with the given configuration. Here are the two configurations that I am currently considering:

15.6" ULTRANOTE IV

Chassis & Display UltraNote: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Backlit Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Dual Core Processor i7-7500U (2.70GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card INTEL® HD GRAPHICS 620 - 1.7GB Max DDR4 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Hard Disk 2TB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive ULTRA SLIM 6x BLURAY ROM, 8x DVD ±R/±RW & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE
Memory Card Reader Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0
USB Options 1 x USB 3.0 PORT (Type C) + 1 x USB 3.0 PORT + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS
Battery UltraNote IV Series 44WH Lithium Ion Battery
Operating System NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Some questions regarding this build:

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive: Is this likely to work under ubuntu? I might watch the odd movie on this machine.

Bluetooth and Wireless: There are two options, identical, except that the second one says "vPRO" and costs 12 euros more. What's the difference?

Battery: If I buy a second battery, how would I charge it?

Monitor Cables: I am given a choice of HDMI or mini-HDMI. The laptop spec doesn't specify which, so I guess it's not mini?

15.6" OPTIMUS VIII

Chassis & Display Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 7700HQ (2.8GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 - 2.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Hard Disk 2TB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 3
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0
USB Options 1 x USB 3.0 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Battery Cosmos VI Series 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Operating System NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Some questions regarding this build:

Thermal Paste: I take it PCS would apply that before shipping the machine?

Monitor Cables: Unlike the build above, this build does not prompt me to choose a monitor cable, is one included?

M.2 SSD Drive: Any point in getting this?

I would be grateful for any advice.

Kind Regards,
Erik

You are correct about the GTX960 problems, although I did get Ubuntu 16.10 to run on my Optimus VII after a good bit of fiddling. I have done a brief internet search on the 1050 and Linux and not come across anyone posting about major problems.

PCS will apply the thermal paste and for any laptop I would recommend getting the Arctic Extreme, it is only a few quid more and as heat in a laptop can be a problem well worth it.

m2 drives, especially the Samsung SMs are amazingly fast, I think a smallish one, 256GB is well worth it for the OS and main programs. My preferred set up on my two current PCS machines, an Optimus VII and Octane, is an m2 plus 7200rpm HDDs, the WDs are very good but the standard ones OK as well but if budget is not a problem than a large SSD is probably worth it, although if it is just a storage disc you will not notice any difference from a fast HDD.

Many thanks for that great advice. I went ahead and placed the order, including your suggested changes. Let's see what happens.

Hope all goes well. If you can post a review when you get the machine it would be good. I am away at the moment but if I get time when back next week will put the beta of Ubuntu 17 on a laptop and will post if any major issues.

erik_0000 said:

Many thanks for that great advice. I went ahead and placed the order, including your suggested changes. Let's see what happens.

Click to expand...

Hi Erik!

I am looking at the same laptop as you (The 15.6" Optimus VIII). I have not seen any issue with the setup. I was wondering if you could answer a question or two for me to help me out deciding

I had issues with my precission dell due to optimus and nvidia vsync issues. I was wondering:

* Did you order the 4k display? Did that cause any issues?
* Which version of the drivers are you using?
* Can you disable the integrated gpu fully or is it always in play
* Does the optimus setup create issues on your system? With my pressicion i could not get rid of the flickering when e.g. scrolling through a large wiki page or watching netflix videos
* What version of ubunut do you use?

Thank you for your help I reaaaly like the looks of this laptop and are just trying to make sure i won't have any issues with it

@StephenM: I can't thank you enough for your kind assistance. I'd be happy to post a review including a summary of my attempt to install ubuntu 17 to the M2 drive...

@panda...

pandaadb said:

I had issues with my precission dell due to optimus and nvidia vsync issues.

Click to expand...

i don't follow you, are you asking about the dell or the optimus?

i own a dell inspiron which i purchased in 2009. i have that dual booting ubuntu 16 and windows 7. i have ordered an optimus, my intention is to install ubuntu 17 to that and to run windows 10 in VirtualBox.

I got the machine, I installed 17.04 beta to the m2 drive and fired it up, everything just worked on the first attempt. by default it used nouveau, i switched to the nvidia driver no problem. very nice. many thanks again for the tips i received here. i will post a comprehensive review of the machine.

Can I ask if you are booting from the m2 drive? I.e. does the bios support that? (I wondered about having an m2 drive as the only disk in the notebook, and I would not be getting Windows and only installing Linux.)

I had also heard that M2 drives run hotter, so are not so suitable for notebooks. Has anyone heard about this, and can comment if it is significant? (The only technical explanation I could find was that SATA is a cable, whereas M2 is a bus, and it needs more energy to drive all the lanes on the bus.)

(I'm looking at the Octane III, with a 1070 GPU in it; I'm assuming the bios is the same as in the Optimus?) Thanks!

I would think the BIOS will be different, since it's a different GPU in a different format, with a desktop processor that can support overclocking.

I had also heard that M2 drives run hotter, so are not so suitable for notebooks. Has anyone heard about this, and can comment if it is significant?

Click to expand...

I hadn't heard this. M.2 drives are well suited to notebooks due to the form factor. Motherboards in 2013/2014 had M.2 slots iirc but nobody really used the drives there, whereas they started getting popular at first in note books.

Having googled, apparently it was an issue with the 950 Pro initially. But doesn't seem to be an issue with something like the SM961 http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-sm961-ssd,4608-2.html under any realistic workload.

I boot from an m2 on an original Octane and an Optimus VII, usually with Ubuntu but have tried other distros as well and it is not a problem.

Optimus VIII and Fedora 26 okay?

I'm thinking about getting the PCS Optimus VIII, but need to make sure I can get Fedora working on it. It will have my existing Samsung 960 PRO 512GB NVMe SSD in it and a HDD.

eric, I'm glad to hear you got ubuntu working on yours. Has anyone else tried Fedora/RHEL/CentOS on it?

I ask because I'm a bit leery of the nvidia Optimus graphics setup as my last laptop had it and I could not for the life of me get any linux distro working. It was an Asus N752VX and running Windows 10 it was great, but although it worked fine once it was actually booted into Fedora 26, most of the time it would go from the grub screen to an unresponsive blank screen if Fedora 26 was selected. In contrast, it would transfer from grub to the windows bootloader every time, if that was selected. Although I know that the PCS Optimus uses the nvidia Optimus arrangement (built in and discrete graphics cards sharing memory) I'm aware that lots of other driver compatibility issues might have affected the Asus's ability (or rather lack of ability) to boot Fedora consistently.

I think you should be OK. I had a lot of problems with my Optimus VII but that was a GPU issue, the GTX 960 which caused problems with many OSs but it is fine since the Linux kernel has been updated and Ubuntu 17.10 worked out of the box with it, as did Mint and Cent OS. I have not tried Fedora as it is an OS I do not get on with that well. The Optimus VIII should be better as it it is a different GPU, the 960 seemed to be a one off problem.