System76, the Linux hardware supplier for laptops, desktops and more has been working with NVIDIA on fixing up their drivers.
It's good to see more companies get involving in speaking with and working directly with NVIDIA to improve Linux graphics drivers. It's important for our future to have stable drivers as it makes the experience for everyone so much better. Every little issue fixed would hopefully make us look more attractive to people new to Linux too.
In the NVIDIA 375.26 driver two bug fixes made it in thanks to System76: The screen backlight not coming on after entering idle mode and the driver not detecting when the power source had changed (say between battery and being plugged in).
They are still working on a bug involving the screen backlight not adjusting properly, which should arrive in a future driver.
I spoke with their community manager Ryan Sipes about it to see if I could find out a little more.
GOL: First of all, can you tell us how receptive NVIDIA were to your requests? We've heard before that NVIDIA aren't the easiest of companies to get in touch with to fix Linux driver issues.
Ryan: We sent the bug reports via their channel for doing so with an explanation of who we are and what we do. A couple of their engineers responded to us and we began a dialogue. They were very attentive to our bug reports and we now have a direct line to those engineers.
GOL: What part did System76 play in getting NVIDIA to fix bugs in their driver, what did your company actually do? Was it just getting in touch with them, or something more?
Ryan: Before working with NVIDIA we were filling and tracking these bugs, as they were affecting our customers. We worked alongside them, providing information and doing testing. Given the proprietary nature of the driver, we could not write the code. But we were able to keep in contact and keep the ball moving. We even sent them a brand new Bonobo WS (our most powerful laptop) for them to test on as well.
GOL: Have NVIDIA given a timeline of when to expect the screen backlight adjustment bug to be in a public driver?
Ryan: From what I understand, the backlight adjustment bug will be fixed soon in a follow-on update.
GOL: Will you be looking to do the same for AMD drivers as well, have you spoken to AMD at all?
Ryan: We don't ship any machines with AMD currently.
GOL: Do System76 have any plans to ship units with AMD GPUs?
Ryan: Not at the moment, we will continue to assess the quality of the AMD drivers. It is something we watch.
I would like to thank Ryan for taking time out of his busy day to have a chat with me.
You will see a post about it on the System76 blog sometime soon. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It's good to see more companies get involving in speaking with and working directly with NVIDIA to improve Linux graphics drivers. It's important for our future to have stable drivers as it makes the experience for everyone so much better. Every little issue fixed would hopefully make us look more attractive to people new to Linux too.
In the NVIDIA 375.26 driver two bug fixes made it in thanks to System76: The screen backlight not coming on after entering idle mode and the driver not detecting when the power source had changed (say between battery and being plugged in).
They are still working on a bug involving the screen backlight not adjusting properly, which should arrive in a future driver.
I spoke with their community manager Ryan Sipes about it to see if I could find out a little more.
GOL: First of all, can you tell us how receptive NVIDIA were to your requests? We've heard before that NVIDIA aren't the easiest of companies to get in touch with to fix Linux driver issues.
Ryan: We sent the bug reports via their channel for doing so with an explanation of who we are and what we do. A couple of their engineers responded to us and we began a dialogue. They were very attentive to our bug reports and we now have a direct line to those engineers.
GOL: What part did System76 play in getting NVIDIA to fix bugs in their driver, what did your company actually do? Was it just getting in touch with them, or something more?
Ryan: Before working with NVIDIA we were filling and tracking these bugs, as they were affecting our customers. We worked alongside them, providing information and doing testing. Given the proprietary nature of the driver, we could not write the code. But we were able to keep in contact and keep the ball moving. We even sent them a brand new Bonobo WS (our most powerful laptop) for them to test on as well.
GOL: Have NVIDIA given a timeline of when to expect the screen backlight adjustment bug to be in a public driver?
Ryan: From what I understand, the backlight adjustment bug will be fixed soon in a follow-on update.
GOL: Will you be looking to do the same for AMD drivers as well, have you spoken to AMD at all?
Ryan: We don't ship any machines with AMD currently.
GOL: Do System76 have any plans to ship units with AMD GPUs?
Ryan: Not at the moment, we will continue to assess the quality of the AMD drivers. It is something we watch.
I would like to thank Ryan for taking time out of his busy day to have a chat with me.
You will see a post about it on the System76 blog sometime soon. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Wow, 1000$ for shipping! There are companies that can open a POBox for you in the states and then re-ship whatever it receives to you overseas. I would check some of those, maybe you get reasonable prices with those instead.
I own a System76 Oryx Pro, and it's been great for gaming and for my work as well. Really worth the price.
Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind. Do you know of a name of one of these companies? I wouldn't need a PO Box, I have friends and family I could initially send it to.
No, unfortunately I don't know any names. I haven't used any of those services myself.
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It would be great if Nvidia was more open, but that's just not the way major hardware and software companies do things. The sad truth is that if you want things completely free (as in speech, not beer) then your options are going to be severely curtailed.
That's the problem! :(
But hey: Also worth an experience. I'm surprised what you could reach with systems going under the definition of "office-pc" or "office-notebook" with an integrated graphics device for example. Using Devuan as base or Trisquel? Outstanding. :)
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Luke_Nukem Dec 30, 2016
AMD has really done a disservice to the Linux community with their poor support. If it wasn't for Nvidia, Linux gaming wouldn't be where it is today.
That's true. But you can certainly lay part of that blame at the feet of ATI before they were bought by AMD. I used ATI once over a decade ago and Linux support was atrocious - sure it worked, but very poorly. Seems this has remained true right up to the last year or two (depending).
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Mountain Man Dec 31, 2016
ATi's Windows divers were never that great, either.AMD has really done a disservice to the Linux community with their poor support. If it wasn't for Nvidia, Linux gaming wouldn't be where it is today.That's true. But you can certainly lay part of that blame at the feet of ATI before they were bought by AMD. I used ATI once over a decade ago and Linux support was atrocious - sure it worked, but very poorly. Seems this has remained true right up to the last year or two (depending).
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More on topic, I'm pretty happy with my gazelle pro (9) -- really good internals and screen (no discrete graphics, though; and a bit noisy). The build quality of the case, though, leaves a lot to be desired.This is the boat my wife was in. She has been using a MBP for over 7 years and has been really happy with it. It finally got slow enough that she wanted to upgrade. Well, to get the hardware we were thinking would give her another long-life laptop, we'd have to spend $2,800 at Apple. That was ridiculous for her use case. We didn't want to swallow that. Along with Apple, we compared System76 with Dell/Alienware and Razer. We decided on a fairly beefy (for home use) Gazelle for $1,300 that blew away Apple's offerings when it came to hardware speed & capacity versus price. I mean, the $2,800 MBP had weaker specs than the $1,300 Gazelle.
Though I hope they eventually build their own laptops, with custom cases, rather than rebrand Clevos. There's quite a bit of room for improvement, especially with respect to the casing.
Some people at the Apple camp seem to have started jumping ship (I did so 3 years ago); and a lot of those seem to be giving Linux a try, rather than go back to ... you know who. While the software quality over at Apple has been on decline for quite a while now, the hardware quality (at least the build quality of the casing) used to be top notch before the nonsensical decisions about the ports, and the ludicrous strip or whatever it's called: So the people coming over from Apple will probably expect to find good build quality. I'm really sorry to say this, but my experience in this regard wasn't all that good.
My wife and I both know there is a premium to the Apple hardware and we were willing to pay some extra over other manufacturers for that quality. But we felt like we'd be idiots to pay more than double the Gazelle price for a MBP that couldn't even match specs! So, my wife is moving from OS X to Ubuntu. (Side note: my wife has been getting more familiar with Linux over the past 6 months as our family tower runs Elementary OS.)
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walther von stolzing Jan 3, 2017
We decided on a fairly beefy (for home use) Gazelle for $1,300 that blew away Apple's offerings when it came to hardware speed & capacity versus price. I mean, the $2,800 MBP had weaker specs than the $1,300 Gazelle.
Yes the hardware & the price for the specs is excellent; my only frustration (apart from the case) is the lack of discrete graphics on the Gazelle.
As to Apple: Especially after they implemented the 'App Store' on the Mac, vendor lock-in became a means of forced obsolescence, and that's one of the things that offends me most with Apple nowadays. Once upon a time, their hardware was known for its longevity -- now software stops updating, and then running, arbitrarily on whatever version of the OS; the OS, in turn, is pickier as to the machine it runs on.
I still have a 2007 Mac Mini, which is perfectly capable of doing what it's supposed to do; but it hasn't been getting any software updates for a very long time now -- and there's no way I'll put it on the web with no security updates. So I'm using it as a thin client (!) connected to a dedicated VM on my main Linux desktop.
The only benefit from my time with Apple was that it introduced me to the unix command line, a package manager (Macports), various GNU and BSD utilities, vim, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days Apple guts command line access too. And maybe even the ability to run VMs down the line. (Actually that would be pretty good; because all those FreeBSD developers would have to start running their OS on their actual hardware.)
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...I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days Apple guts command line access too. And maybe even the ability to run VMs down the line. (Actually that would be pretty good; because all those FreeBSD developers would have to start running their OS on their actual hardware.)I don't know. I would say Apple still has a cool factor that has yet to wear off plenty of developers. With Docker and node.js seeming very popular right now, I don't think Apple would hurt itself by removing CLI, especially with Microsoft doing its fair work of competing for developers' preference.
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MrTennessee17 Jan 9, 2017
I really wanted to get an AMD APU type build from System76 and even emailed them at one point to see if they could do it but could not. I like their offerings but wish they could make a machine that doesn't have the aluminum case (Oryx Pro) build and contains a discrete card instead of just an Intel integrated graphics card in the price range of their Gazelle line ($700).
Oh and some of you that actually have a System76 machine, I wish y'all would put youtube videos up of the review of the machine. I tried finding a reviews a while back and couldn't find any that really walked through what the machine can/can't do.
Last edited by MrTennessee17 on 9 January 2017 at 3:05 am UTC
Oh and some of you that actually have a System76 machine, I wish y'all would put youtube videos up of the review of the machine. I tried finding a reviews a while back and couldn't find any that really walked through what the machine can/can't do.
Last edited by MrTennessee17 on 9 January 2017 at 3:05 am UTC
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