A year has passed

Just over a year has passed since I got my laptop from PC Specialist. It did require a bit of configuring, but I am very content with it.

I am an avid Linux user. I find Linux to be much more comfortable and productive than Windows for what I want to do. Debian my preferred system, but I do feel that different distributions have a time and place.

I find that it is difficult to walk into a shop or go to an online website to buy a laptop without having an OS installed or to have Linux pre-installed. I am very grateful for the small number of companies that do provide this service.

I do also have a desktop, but I also wanted a laptop that I could use comfortably on the sofa or out and about.

Specifications
OS: Debian 9.3, Kernel: 4.14, KDE
Chassis & Display: Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU): Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 6300HQ (2.3GHz, 3.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM):8GB Kingston SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card: Intel HD Graphics 530, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Hard Disk: 120GB KINGSTON UV400 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (550MB/R, 350MB/W)
Wireless/Wired Networking: GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH

Welcome to the forum, always good to meet another 'nix user. How did you find the installation with your Optimus? I have that model as well, although slightly different specs, and had a few issues with some distros as did others. My main problem was the GPU drivers, it was fine on Xorg using Ubuntu but trying to switch to the nvidia drivers was a real effort, a lot of log in loops before I got the ones that worked. It is fine now but I am on Ubuntu 17.10 which worked out of the box.

Hello arduous and welcome!

Stephen M said:

How did you find the installation with your Optimus? I have that model as well, although slightly different specs, and had a few issues with some distros as did others. My main problem was the GPU drivers, it was fine on Xorg using Ubuntu but trying to switch to the nvidia drivers was a real effort, a lot of log in loops before I got the ones that worked. It is fine now but I am on Ubuntu 17.10 which worked out of the box.

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A bit of a head scratcher to begin with, with some trial and error. This is due to the lack of information on Linux with the build I have.

I had to look on different forums with laptops with similar builds to try and piece together on what needed to be installed and what configurations I needed. The laptop was pretty unusable for half the year due to this, I just treated as a project that I worked on when I got around to it.
The first issues I had were the Intel driver freezing and watchdog not shutting down the machine. Then it led to issues with Wi-Fi not working properly and bumblebee causing X not to load. In the end it was a bit of a waiting game as with Linux, hardware support takes awhile to catch up (especially on laptops). Having a Skylake CPU did not help either as that was not too Linux friendly on laptops.

What I have currently done was:

• Installed Debian
• Backported kernel 4.14 and headers, you can use the Liquorix kernel too which works great; the issue with Liquorix is that you cannot install the headers as gcc7 is required whilst Debian stable has gcc6.
• Backported Nvidia drivers
• Backported Linux Non-free firmware
• Added the options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 to make Wi-Fi work more reliably
• Installed virtualgl, it is needed for bumblebee to work, I do not understand why it is not in Debian's repos.
• Installed bumblebee and bumblebee nvidia. Bumblebee configurations may vary on setup.
• Added the boot parameter: acpi_osi="!Windows 2015" to grub.
• OPTIONAL: You can turn watchdog timer off by going into /etc/systemd/system.conf and changing watchdog timer to 0.
• It is also noteworthy that I do not have tlp or laptop-mode-tools installed.
• I have had some mild success by adding i915.preliminary_hw_support=1 as a boot parameter. It enables support for Intel HD Graphics, but I currently do not need it as I do not seem to have the issues with kernel 4.14+.

I hope this helps. I will add anything if I remember.

It's great that Ubuntu 17.10 worked out of the box, I have been told it is a good release.

ubuysa said:

Hello arduous and welcome!

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Thanks!