Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Best Laptop With Decent Linux Graphics Support?

Posted by timothy on from the holy-grail-for-the-holidays dept.

jcreus writes "After struggling for some years with Nvidia cards (the laptop from which I am writing this has two graphic cards, an Intel one and Nvidia one, and is a holy mess [I still haven't been able to use the Nvidia card]) and, encouraged by Torvalds' middle finger speech, I've decided to ditch Nvidia for something better. I am expecting to buy another laptop and, this time, I'd like to get it right from the start. It would be interesting if it had decent graphics support and, in general, were Linux friendly. While I know Dell has released a Ubuntu laptop, it's way off-budget. My plan is to install Ubuntu, Kubuntu (or even Debian), with dual boot unfortunately required." So: what's the state of the art for out-of-the-box support?

35 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. It's a very sad thing to admit, but by Hsien-Ko · · Score: 5, Informative

    Intel.

    1. Re:It's a very sad thing to admit, but by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, AMD is looking good too, with currently shipping Fusion parts for laptops all being Evergreen or Northern Islands, both supported by the open source xorg Radeon driver, with a few exceptions such as full screen antialiasing, which seems to be getting close but currently requires the Catalyst driver. See here for the current xorg driver state. Notice that everything you need for 2D and 3D graphics is there, up to but not including Southern Islands. Just taking a quick look around, it looks like the latest budget AMD laptops are Trinity, which is Northern Islands, which should work fine with the current Xorg driver. But definitely google the specific chipset. Power management... good question. I'm getting solid results with Ivy Bridge, I haven't tried AMD's laptop parts recently.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:It's a very sad thing to admit, but by marcansoft · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Which means the Optimus solution isn't actually all that bad. I have the opposite viewpoint: I bought an Optimus laptop assuming the nvidia wouldn't work, simply for the other specs and the Intel video. When it turned out that bumblebee worked fairly painlessly and I was able to use the nvidia to accelerate 3D while the Intel drove my displays, I was pleasantly surprised. The solution is a bit of a hack, but honestly, I don't really have anything bad to say about it. It's the best of both worlds: open Intel drivers which are stable and support modern interfaces like XRandR 1.3 and KMS driving the displays, and the clunky proprietary but fast nvidia driver sandboxed in its own backgrond X server doing 3D acceleration only.

    3. Re:It's a very sad thing to admit, but by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I believed this jazz and bought an AMD/ATI laptop after being bitten by nVidia's optimus comment (my nvidia laptop got stolen). Now I miss my nvidia laptop. The Radeon driver is really lacking, has a very high battery consumption, doesn't work well with many applications. The fglrx (proprietary) driver won't work with several Xorg version without that considered a major bug by the dev team.

      It is very possible that right now, if you want pure open source, Intel may be the one offering the most supported punch. I will really consider this option for my next one. I wonder if CUDA can be done with intel cards.

      The alternative is to use bumblebee on nvidia proprietary driver, which drains battery but allows to enjoy a decent graphical acceleration.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    4. Re:It's a very sad thing to admit, but by TeXMaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

      OpenCL is supported by all major vendors, and it can be used both on CPU and on GPU. However, Intel's support for OpenCL on GPU is only available on Windows. Until the GalliumComute framework is ready, we won't be seeing any open source OpenCL support anywhere. (Also, Intel's GPUs support OpenCL only from HD4000 series).

      --
      "I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
    5. Re:It's a very sad thing to admit, but by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 3, Informative

      Another happy x220 laptop user here. So far my experience after 6 months is that the thing is amazing.

      • Screen resolution is only 1366x768 (bummer, but few non-huge laptops are any better)
      • With the 9-cell battery (default is 6) and pcie_aspm=force, I got 11 hour battery new, and 9.5 hours when 6 months old
      • Mic-mute button does nothing, but I've never needed it (output mute works perfectly)
      • Touchpad enable/disable does nothing, but I've yet to hit the touchpad by accident in over 6 months (and I used to do that regularly on my other laptops)
      • With the SSD the only noise is the fan which occasionaly turns itself OFF because the CPU (i3) stays below 50 under normal load and isn't needed 100%!!!
      • For non-AAA gaming, the intel chipset does just fine. 60fps in UrbanTerror at full resolution.I can even output full 1080p via ext display (haven't tried with gaming yet).
    6. Re:It's a very sad thing to admit, but by Thumper_SVX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I came here to pretty much say this. I actually got an Alienware M11XR2 for free (it was purchased by my work for an executive who decided he hated it, and nobody else wanted such a small laptop so it was given to me as a play box). I stuck Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it, installed Bumblebee after a bit of research and it works fantastically well. I play FlightGear and Diaspora on it frequently, and just got into the Steam for Linux beta. I haven't had any issues with it at all.

      While I agree it's not an optimal solution (groan... oh the pun, the pun!) it works really well. I have just modified the launchers in my start menu to call /usr/bin/optirun when I have a 3D accelerated app installed. Just for the record I run Gnome-Shell instead of Unity because I seriously can't stand it, and editing the menu items is easier.

      Interestingly, that extra step is really not that different to what I do on my Windows laptop which has a newer Optimus chipset (Dell E6430); more often than not I have to go and modify the launchers in the start menu to make sure they use the Optimus chipset to run instead of the Intel. Although I do also use the Nvidia control panel for that.

      Hmm... maybe all that's missing is a control panel item for Bumblebee... I might have to break out my Python/GTK skills and throw one together :)

  2. Need more information by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What do you mean by "decent linux graphics support"? I have a Thinkpad with NVidia NVS 3100M discrete graphics and 512mb vram. I'm perfectly content with it for what I do, which includes 3d molecular modelling. KDE looks great, too. On the other hand I don't play any 3d games so I can't tell you what Call of Duty 12 or any of those look like on here. I would sooner write code in CUDA for the GPU than do that.
    R In other words, your sense of "decent linux graphics support" might not be the same as everyone else.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Need more information by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your experience does seem a little out of date. Try a Radeon 6450 for example, it's solid as a rock under both the open source and Catalyst drivers and for $40 you can't complain about the performance.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  3. I, for one by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

    welcome our new middle-finger-brandishing overlord.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  4. System76 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you looked at System76? They make laptops preloaded with Ubuntu. www.system76.com

    1. Re:System76 by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Have you looked at System76? They make laptops preloaded with Ubuntu. www.system76.com

      I just ordered one from The Linuxlaptop. It's basically a Dell Inspiron. I could have gotten it faster and paid a little less directly from Dell, but I'm getting lazy, I want to just turn it on and have it work. I think, from now on I will only order from companies that pre-install Linux. It says something about their commitment.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re:System76 by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nothing says professional like slow load times and a blurred out stock photo in the banner... I mean, it literally took me 3 minutes to load the page. And now it's down.

      Slashdotted I'd say. And that's a good thing. I wish these guys the best.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re:System76 by ittybad · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've been developing on a System 76 for about a year and a half now (the then Serval model). I absolutely love it. I've become hooked on the finger print scanner for sudo commands. The only problem that I recall having was trying to upgrade from 10.04 to 12.04 for Ubuntu. A bunch-o-things got all fubar. Reinstalling 12.04 worked like a charm and my overall experience got even better than before. I ended up having to put a windows dual boot on it for some windows/mac only video conferencing software for work, and System 76 provided all the drivers to make the windows installation work as expected. The bizarre "windows experience index" gave me a seven point something which is apparently good. I highly recommend System 76, but I have yet to try the other vendors.

      --
      No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
  5. System76: Good support by CajunArson · · Score: 4, Informative

    System76 gives good support. They aren't the cheapest option out there though.

    If your goal is not to play 3D games, then Intel HD graphics have by far the best open-source support and HD 4000 graphics are actually pretty good overall. If your goal is to play games, then Nvidia or AMD with proprietary drivers will be your best bet, with the edge in driver quality going to Nvidia.

    AMD does have some open source support *BUT* the 7000 series cards (meaning everything released in the last year) are extremely poorly supported with AMD only having released part of the necessary documentation so far (and it took them 10 months to release the part that is out there....).

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  6. Not enough information + binary blobs by storkus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are two problems here:

    1a. You haven't specified exactly what you'll be doing: if it's just office crap, anything will do; but if you'll be running the GIMP, games, etc, you'll need higher-end hardware (both CPU and GPU).

    1b. Do you need x86/x64? If not, a Chromebook or tablet with USB-OTG and hub may be an answer; unfortunately, the below blob problem still applies.

    2. For GPUs there are two kinds of drivers: reverse-engineered and proprietary blobs; you almost certainly know this. NVIDIA is the king of the blob department, AMD/ATI is middle of the road, and Intel (along with older stuff like SiS) is mostly completely reverse-engineered or even released open. Bear in mind, the open drivers are messy: based on the state of the art, graphics is by far the most difficult thing to reverse engineer a driver for, and I really feel for the guys working on them! (Edit: AMD/ATI's blobs are well known for being a mess, too!)

    Bottom line: if RMS can barely get a machine to his liking, you'll have only a marginally less difficult time. Sorry.

  7. ThinkPenguin's got the best free software support by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unlike system76, ZaReason, and every other f'ing company there trying to fix the mess. ThinkPenguin's been working with Atheros for instance on getting the complete source for a USB wifi chipset. That'll bring us the first truly Linux friendly USB adapter which is fully supported. There are two other older USB chipsets which are also not dependent on non-free software. The older N chipset has issues with some routers (then again it's really pre-N so that is to be expected) and the G chipset is well supported provided you stick to browsing the web and don't venture off to setup your own access point.

    Anyway. Back to ThinkPenguin. The company has a number of laptops at a variety of prices points that anybody can afford. They are starting at $500 and you can throw any distribution on them just about because the company doesn't depend on pieces that are outside the mainline kernel and/or other major projects nor proprietary. And to make you feel better they are HUGE contributors to free software. 25% of there profits go to Trisquel and other projects as well. They are also working on numerous initiatives to better support people around the world. For instance there manufacturing keyboards for a dozen languages/regions and have brought support for lots of other hardware to the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe (as well as elsewhere).

  8. I don't understand the fuss by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can use emacs at any resolution, irrespective of X11, pointing device, or keyboard.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  9. There's no simple "good" answer. by wangmaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, Linus gave Nvidia the middle finger, and from a certain perspective it was for a good reason, but from another perspective, it's just "ranting".

    Nvidia has insisted on closed source proprietary drivers. Does this mean the drivers are crap? Nope, it just makes it very difficult for the open source community to troubleshoot/support them.

    ATI/AMD is in the same boat. They have proprietary drivers. Arguably, Nvidia drivers are better. In my experience the ATI/AMD drivers tend to have more bugs. They also have a tendency to release support for a new xorg-server well after the server has been released, thus forcing those of us on the bleeding edge to wait. On the otherhand, they help support the open source drivers, which is great. But, the open source drivers lag behind, so if you're a gamer and dual boot to Windows and have a great ATI/AMD card, it may not work properly under the Linux open source drivers or with a bleeding edge distro with the latest and greatest xorg-server.

    Otherwise, if you want "gamer-grade" graphics, you basically have a choice between Nvidia and ATI/AMD. Both have their tradeoffs.

    If you don't care about gamer-grade graphics cards, Intel drivers are open source, well maintained, and the new sandy bridge and ivy bridge graphics are more than good enough for almost anything but gaming (they're okay for low to mid-low end gaming but that's about it).

    My solution is a thinkpad w520 with optimus graphics. I use optimus graphics under windows when I want to game (quadro 2000m) and use the integrated intel graphics for linux with bbswitch to disable the nvidia gpu so my battery life doesn't suck. But it really does boil down to, do you want to game? If so, you have no choice but a proprietary driver or not-up-to-snuff open source driver. If not, stick with onboard Intel. Decent graphics performance and much better battery life than most discrete solutions.

    1. Re:There's no simple "good" answer. by chmod+a+x+mojo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't forget, NVidia are great for supporting older hardware... at least a LOT better than ATI/AMD.
      ATI/AMD has dropped the HD4200 series cards as of something like 6+ months ago from the newer drivers. NVidia on the other hand still supports a huge range of older cards, and supports VDPAU on pretty much anything from the last few years at the very least.

      For non-gaming needs the radeon driver works out well for most cards though, so it's a trade off. And the X.org boys are ( or at least have been, I haven't been following too close lately ) working on getting VDPAU working on the HD4XXX+ hardware with the radeon driver.

      --
      To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
    2. Re:There's no simple "good" answer. by mallan · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, not true - you can certainly use Optimus cards on Linux, you just have to choose between the integrated chipset or the dedicated chipset at boot time. What you don't get is the power savings from being able to dynamically switch between the low-power integrated Intel gfx and the high performance NVidia gfx. It's really not that big of a deal - the battery life on my thinkpad is just fine using the NVidia gfx 100% of the time.

      --
      "Good people drink good beer"
  10. Re:My MacBook Pro runs linux by Pope+Raymond+Lama · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And can a VMWare hosted Linux desktop do 3D? And about decent 3D?

    --
    -><- no .sig is good sig.
  11. Wait for Haswell by Wyzard · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you can wait awhile longer before buying, Intel's upcoming Haswell processor is reported to have significantly improvied graphics performance, and Intel GPUs are well-supported with free drivers in Linux and Xorg. They're less-powerful than NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, but should be fine unless you need to play high-end games on high quality settings.

  12. I have nothing but trouble with Intel graphics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My latest experience:

    1. I built an Ivy Bridge machine with the latest Intel onboard graphics. I installed Mint 13 KDE, and I got crashes like crazy.

    2. I put in an nVidia card, installed the nVidia proprietary driver, and everything has been smooth since.

    I've had this exact kind of thing happen on several previous builds. In every case, the solution that worked for me was to ditch the Intel onboard graphics and get nVidia.

    I know nVidia's proprietary binary blob sucks, but it's the only thing I've found so far that allows me to stay on Linux.

    Maybe other solutions work too, but my recommendation is (1) stay away from Intel graphics, (2) try nVidia first.

  13. OpenGL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you want OpenGL support, you want nVidia.

  14. Re:something better? what kind of joke is this by Nutria · · Score: 5, Informative

    nvidia, ... 80% is in closed, crash-inducing binary lumps.

    What universe is this where the nvidia blobs induces crashes on even a semi-regular basis? I can't remember the last time video caused my system to hang/crash and I've been using the nvidia blob for at least 6 years.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  15. To my surprise... by erp_consultant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    my MacBook Pro does an outstanding job of running Linux. You can dual boot it or run Linux in VMware or Virtual Box. No graphics card issues at all. Everything worked right out of the gate - sound, graphics, wireless, everything. If you can, try and find one a few years old. The new ones have those soldered on chips that make it impossible to upgrade. Get an SSD, take out the DVD, put in a second HD and you're off to the races.

    1. Re:To my surprise... by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

      my MacBook Pro does an outstanding job of running Linux. You can dual boot it or run Linux in VMware or Virtual Box. No graphics card issues at all. Everything worked right out of the gate - sound, graphics, wireless, everything. If you can, try and find one a few years old. The new ones have those soldered on chips that make it impossible to upgrade. Get an SSD, take out the DVD, put in a second HD and you're off to the races.

      Actually, all you need are the ones that lack the "Retina" display. Apple still makes regular plain old Macbook Pros (13" and 15") with fully upgradable everything. Just avoid the MacBook Pro with Retina display and you're fine. You don't want it anyhow - running at native resolution is a good way to strain your eyes. And running non-native looks ugly on any OS other than OS X (Try running 1920x1200 on it - it'll look practically native on OS X, and ugly as heck on any other OS).

      So stick with the traditional line and you'll be fine. Easiest way to tell is because they still come with optical drives.

      No reason to not get the latest tech, especially as Apple is still manufacturing them.

    2. Re:To my surprise... by amorsen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You don't want it anyhow - running at native resolution is a good way to strain your eyes.

      Do you have problems reading stuff printed on 1200 DPI printers? Professional offset printing must be a nightmare for you.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  16. Re:Not sad at all by dmt0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge" stuff is nice.

    I have an Ivy Bridge laptop. What's so nice about it? How much time has passed since the hardware release? I still have tearing artifacts around every title bar on KDE, all because of bugs in drivers - both with Ubuntu's default driver and the one from PPA.

    It's all great that their drivers are open and free, but quality-wise they have always been a mess.

    At this point, if you want a great out-of-the-box support, all you can do is wait. Either when Intel will improve their quality, or when nvidia fixes their optimus stuff. Don't know much about the AMD side of things.

  17. Re:ThinkPenguin's got the best free software suppo by rhavenn · · Score: 3, Informative

    They sell 3 laptops. All three have only a 1366x768 rez. For a "high-end" boutique dealer that's a joke. 1600x1050 minimum and 1920x1080 preferred or no deal. I don't care if everything else is perfect.

    Personally, got a 17" HP 1920x1080 with i3 SandyBridge about 1 year ago and everything works. ArchLinux is rock solid and the Intel drivers have been stable. LAN / Wifi worked out of the box as well as the webcam which suprised me. It was about $600 give or take. My $.02

    If you don't need a gaming rig or 3d video editing, stear away from anything with a nvidia optimus setup as it's not supported and personally, the ATI stuff isn't all that much better then Intel and the Intel drivers are top notch from a open source perspective.

  18. Re:Not sad at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No problems here on Debian sid. Did you try newer kernel/mesa/xorg driver? The xorg-edgers ppa has updated versions for all of these.

  19. Re:Not sad at all by fnj · · Score: 3, Informative

    Intel drivers by far and away have been the best for as long as I can remember. Not the slightest hint of a problem on an RHEL6 clone. I can't even begin to imagine how you can have "tearing" on a static image. Sounds like hardware problems to me.

  20. Re:Not sad at all by dmt0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who's talking about static image? When you minimize/maximize you get tearing around the title bar - in my case that is. Here's a description of the issue from Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIxMTM Hasn't been fixed still.

  21. Re:Chromebook by Andy+Prough · · Score: 3, Informative

    Chromebook already runs a specialized version of Gentoo, which you can unlock in Dev mode and run (http://georgemcbay.blogspot.com/2012/10/go-on-samsung-arm-chromebook_25.html). For dual boot, you can just run a version of Linux on a USB stick (http://www.chromebook-linux.com/2011/11/booting-gnulinux-distribution-from-usb.html).