Razer looking to improve Linux support on their 'Blade' series of laptops

I'd like proper linux support / tools for their naga mouse or similar hardware...

Awesome, I'd probably buy a Razer if they supported Linux directly. At least next time I'm in the market for a laptop.

I tink I would probably make my next laptop a Blade if it were to support Linux.

I have a Blade, and the biggest problem is nVidia Optimus View video on youtube.com . Since the 1060 isn't supported by nouveau in Linux 4.9, I have to use Bumblebee till I upgrade to 4.10, but Bumblebee has problems with Vulkan and with monitors attached to the dGPU. At the moment, the [Arch Linux Wiki](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Razer#Razer_Blade) has most information about needed workarounds etc.

Yep, Optimus is a huge PITA, but sadly there are very few (none?) high-quality laptops with dedicated AMD graphics available, and Intel Iris Pro is quite expensive.
I'm hoping for the Zen-based APUs to improve the situation...

Motherfucking Optimus...

If Razer are dead serious, then I hope they start hammering on Nvidia's door.

Is Optimus really a problem if you use the proprietory nvidia drivers? Maybe I'm missing soemthing but I got two notebooks with the technology and Optimus stickers on it. With one I can select dedicated GPU in the bios and with other I simply selected performance mode in the nvidia-settings. Both run all games just fine..

Is Optimus really a problem if you use the proprietory nvidia drivers? Maybe I'm missing soemthing but I got two notebooks with the technology and Optimus stickers on it. With one I can select dedicated GPU in the bios and with other I simply selected performance mode in the nvidia-settings. Both run all games just fine..

Have you noticed the screentearing? Except if you have xorg server 1.19+ then you are having screentearing. That's the main reason why Nvidia optimus sucks, you stick to the proprietary drivers and burn your eyes with screentearing, or you stick with the mentioned problems with bumblebee (considering that you know how to use it, think about the newbie guys that arrive into linux without knowing anything about this)

It's literally pieces of s*** raining from the sky.


Last edited by knotted10 on 6 Mar 2017 at 9:57 am UTC

So by your comments, I understand that these new laptopts that pack full GPUs you still have to use Bumblebee? There is no way to disable so the OS thinks its only a GPU and discard the integrated one?

Luckily I hadn't had massive trouble with Bumblebee (and nvidia drivers) the only thing I couldn't manage to make work is CUDA for Blender, but using rimusrun or optirun tends to work.


Last edited by minkiu on 6 Mar 2017 at 10:28 am UTC

Unfortunately Razer's notebooks aren't available here in Germany. So I went for an ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS-FY042T. As it has a gsync display, the iGPU is disabled. So I don't have to bother with optimus. As the GTX 1070 can run at very low frequencies in desktop mode, I don't think it's effecting battery runtime a lot. Well, it's also a gaming notebook, so long battery runtime isn't very important. Though it's using power from the battery when playing high demanding games. The power supply isn't enough.

What I couldn't get to work are some hotkeys from the internal keyboard. Display- or keyboard-backlight-brightness aren't changing when pressing fn + the corresponding key. Kernel parameter "acpi_osi=" doesn't help as suggested for other Asus notebooks on stackoverflow etc.
Here I wish Asus would have better Linux support.
As I'm using an external Apple keyboard I can live with that, as its fn keys can change both brightnesses.

Is Optimus really a problem if you use the proprietory nvidia drivers? Maybe I'm missing soemthing but I got two notebooks with the technology and Optimus stickers on it. With one I can select dedicated GPU in the bios and with other I simply selected performance mode in the nvidia-settings. Both run all games just fine..

Have you noticed the screentearing? Except if you have xorg server 1.19+ then you are having screentearing. That's the main reason why Nvidia optimus sucks, you stick to the proprietary drivers and burn your eyes with screentearing, or you stick with the mentioned problems with bumblebee (considering that you know how to use it, think about the newbie guys that arrive into linux without knowing anything about this)

It's literally pieces of s*** raining from the sky.

The new one doesn't have any screen tearing. it has a gsync display which works perfectly. ofc might be bcecasue I disabled the intel GPU in the bios. The old one had but only for videos not for games. At least I didn't notice in any game. There was a workaround for videos I believe but didn't really care since I use chrome cast with my TV for this. Sure it sucks of you want to on the notebook or a connected display but I'm sure there was a workaround.

Years ago before the official nVida driver supported optimums when you had to use bumblebee/primusrun it was true disaster. Games would not run, have gfx glitches or at best just perform badly.

It would be a buy for myself it is had Ubuntu in it and an Amd cpu in it. I am not a big fan of Intel and trying to stay away from them.

I'm not really into serious gaming on my laptop right now. I have a Lenovo refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad T450s that I got right after Lenovo discontinued selling that model. I upgraded the 500 GB spinning hard drive with a 16 GB M.2 cache drive to a 960 GB SSD and a 512 GB M.2 drive (there's another M.2 slot, but the drives I put in are probably already overkill). I'm not likely to invest in another new laptop anytime soon.

This laptop works really well with Linux, and my only regret is that it's all Intel because that seemed the most practical way to go at the time. My desktops are always all AMD (my last Intel desktop purchase was a Pentium III processor and motherboard in 1999), even the current one which I got when AMD was considered to have fallen out of competition (yes, it's a Bulldozer series chip).

Only if they are price competitive. Right now I'm rocking a Lenovo Z70-80 and find it does everything I need. Every game I have thrown at it with native Linux ports have run great. So unless they can offer similar hardware at the same price, I don't see a good reason to switch to their hardware as Lenovo already does a good job with Linux compatible hardware.

Has Razer improved their quality? They have a well-deserved reputation for selling overpriced junk. You can get much better products for the same money.

I heard that the motherboards on Razer laptops have some serious flaws that break them.

Optimus. Got that shit at work. Never ever going to buy a Laptop with Optimus.

My issue is - 3 Monitors. On Windows you can have pass through, and all 3 displays connected. Linux? Not so much, at least I didn't succeed.

I think we need to reflect a little on what the CEO is telling us here. It's not like they suddenly thought that it would be cool to support Linux, it's because of YOU. You made them consider Linux! And this tells us something very important. We often sit on some tiny Internet island commenting that "this and that" have bad/no support for Linux, but it does nothing good if our genuine wishes never reach the actual decision makers. Enough Linux users "bothered" Razer up to a point where Linux simply cannot be ignored, and it's largely up to us if or who of our favorite vendor will be the next.

I'm able to configure my razer blackwidow ultimate 2016 in Linux, so that is a big plus. I'm trying to look into support for my logitech mouse configs in Linux, but no luck. :/

I might buy a razer mouse cause I know they are supported in Linux.

I would definitely have Razer on my shopping list the next time I look for laptops if they support Linux. In fact, I already looked at Razer the last time I shopped for my wife. We ended up choosing a System76.