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Latest Comments by hiryu
Oryx Pro is the first System76 laptop with Coreboot, Open Controller Firmware and NVIDIA
27 Jun 2020 at 4:04 pm UTC Likes: 1

Decided to do a little searching this morning on the off chance I might find something on the Nvidia+Windows issue on this new Oryx Pro and came across this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/hfuulp/new_system_76_oryx_pro_model_is_out/fw3uyp0/?context=3 [External Link]

Looks like this guy is the principle of Sys76. No idea if the firmware update is even available yet, but even if it's not, I think this pretty much confirms that at the very least a fix is inbound!

Oryx Pro is the first System76 laptop with Coreboot, Open Controller Firmware and NVIDIA
26 Jun 2020 at 4:05 pm UTC Likes: 3

As mentioned in the "actual specs" in the article... The Nvidia GPU hilariously cannot be accessed in Windows. System76 has informed me that this is being actively looked into as many of System76's customers are interested into dual booting on hardware like this.

I've also found other issues with Windows on a different Sys76 laptop we have. We're unable to adjust the screen brightness, and more often than not, Windows will not recognize the laptop even has a battery (and just assumes the laptop is plugged in). It's possible there is some other functionality broken in Windows that we haven't caught yet. I've asked as to whether these issues are also present in the latest Oryx Pro. They've informed that they're looking into it, and will get back to me.

I've noticed that under the Windows device manager there are 2 unknown devices. I'm unsure what one of them is, but the other is something like "ACPI1776" (I'm going from memory, but something quite close to that).

Seems System76 has their own ACPI implementation in their custom BIOS/UEFI implementation:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=System76-ACPI-Driver-Linux-5.5 [External Link]

I am bringing these issues up so people are aware that there *might* be other issues on Sys76's Coreboot enabled laptops.

I love System76's tier 1 support for Linux. I've been buying my laptops from them exclusively since 2009, because I know they will just work, and I don't need to invest massive amounts of time researching whether or not the model of laptop I'm interested in will be compatible with my primary OS (I'm a father and generally work so I don't have a lot of free time).

But while I'm in Linux the vast majority of the time, I do like to game here and there (and this is something that's improving in Linux, but still has a ways to go)... So I hope System76 gives some sort of official update as to what their plans are here. If they announce that they will definitely be addressing the issues that prevent dual boot from being fully functional, I'll pull the trigger as I'm very much in the market for a new laptop right now.

Quoting: Alm888...
I love your avatar! I still occasionally go back and play that game.

System76 announce their 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen powered Serval WS laptop
11 Jun 2020 at 4:29 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: GuestPersonally, and I don't think I'm alone here, but I was really hoping for a lighter, more compact Ryzen 4xxx APU based system then a workstation brick with a desktop CPU in it.

I can't help but wonder if AMD has all their mobile APU supply tied up with the big OEM's.
The Serval WS line has always been their "portable workstation" line that has a full desktop CPU and terrible battery life. Perhaps we'll see something when they refresh their Oryx Pro line, which is expected this month.

Does anyone know if AMD has something like Nvidia Optimus? I've noticed that switching from the Nvidia GPU in my Sys76 laptop to the Intel has had the option changed from "Intel" to "Integrated" recently. I've searched around a little to see if AMD has a solution for this, but I haven't found anything. I may just be searching for the wrong thing though. :/

Descent 3 returns to Linux (and macOS) with an official modern port
5 Feb 2020 at 6:28 am UTC Likes: 1

Bought it, seems to run just as well as you'd expect for a game this old...

I remember trying the Loki demo back in 02... I had to disable multitexturing for my original Radeon 32 ddr for the game to render properly so I'd say this already gives a better experience now than it did way back when.

Haven't tried to get a controller going yet.

Some thoughts on the new strategy game Sudden Strike 4
11 Aug 2017 at 7:15 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: liamdaweYou get it in between missions, when the guy is reading the diary and I think a few other places.
Oh yeah, I did notice that. I can live with that as long as the regular unit German is fine. I have to anyway, I pre-ordered after I saw some footage you recorded from a few days ago. :D

Some thoughts on the new strategy game Sudden Strike 4
11 Aug 2017 at 7:01 pm UTC

Liam,

Regarding the accent issue you mentioned... Is this just for some scripted in game dialog?

From what I can tell watching gameplay videos, the regular in game German seems fine. I took some German in the late 90's so I'm no expert, but I'm going to be at least a bit more familiar with it than the typical American.

Anyone,

Is the game installable in Linux yet? It wasn't when I left before 10 am PST this morning.

Nice that the game seems to run pretty well. I guess Unity's Linux support has come a very long way. :D

Hopefully it will scale up well on my 1440p monitor. Mad Max can make my Pascal Titan stutter here and there in Linux at 1440p, but I'm thinking Sudden Strike 4 won't be an issue.

Sudden Strike 4, a short teaser video of it running on Linux
5 Aug 2017 at 7:01 pm UTC

I've been hearing complaints that they're just capitalizing on the "Sudden Strike" game, and have created something that's more casual and arcade-y.

This is the first video I've seen of the game... and I definitely see where they're coming from. I was a HUGE fan of Sudden Strike 2 (I never even got to try 3). 1 was a decent game, but from what I recall was more arcade-y.

To anyone who's played Blitzkrieg 1, I'd say that Blitzkrieg 1 and Sudden Strike 2 are fairly comparable in how technical they are.

Anyway, with that in mind... This doesn't look like a bad game at all. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but it certainly looks much more up my alley than CoH (although I do like CoH).

And it definitely seems to run quite well, which is a relief when it comes to Linux ports!

In fact, I think my biggest complaint is that they didn't keep some of the voice samples from Sudden Strike 2. :(

Can't wait to try it!

Feral Interactive have released the required specifications for Dawn of War III on Linux
7 Jun 2017 at 6:14 pm UTC

The system requirements are definitely higher than Windows... I am going to assume those are the OpenGL requirements. With Vulkan, I'd still expect the requirements to be higher than Windows, but somewhat less higher as I don't expect this game to be super heavily optimized for Vulkan.

System76 have refreshed their most powerful Linux laptops now with 7th Gen Intel CPUs
18 Feb 2017 at 9:19 pm UTC Likes: 4

My 1st laptop, I bought while I was a starving student in 2005. I spent weeks researching something that would be 100% Linux compatible. I still ended up with something where suspend/resume, didn't work (although Linux had support for it within my first few months of owning the laptop). Even after extensive and lengthy research and after having had used Linux since 1998, and having worked with Linux professionally since 2000, I still had a significant incompatibility with the laptop I had purchased.

Come 2008, I had graduated, and I was able to work time (still in the same sysadmin/devops field) and therefore had a lot more income, but also far less free time. I remembered how much effort I had to put into researching my 1st laptop, and I really didn't want to go through it again with my 2nd now that I had even less free time.

I Googled for Linux laptop companies as I had heard some existed. I only found Sys76 (there may have been others at the time, but I didn't find any for whatever reason). I knew Thinkpads were supposed to be great with Linux, but my work allocated laptop was a Thinkpad (albeit running Windows), and while functional, it was very spartan.

I knew I had to be paying a premium... But I looked at like this. I was paying a premium to not have to waste weeks of my time (I had even less free time after graduating) to get something that still might have some incompatibilities. I had no regrets. The machine was well built, powerful, had absolutely no incompatibilities.

I'm currently typing this on my 4th Sys76 laptop (a Broadwell Oryx Pro w/GTX 980m). Well, 5th if you count the one I bought for my wife. My need for companies such as Sys76 has only increased now that I have children. I'm also very happy to support a Linux company.

Unfortunately, I'm unable to use my personal laptop for work at my new job, but I'm still considering one of these new Oryx Pro's in the near future. It's been nice to be able to game from bed!

Has anyone done the research? Are the premiums really that high? I suspect, at least for their higher end machines, the premiums are probably pretty small/reasonable.

Some notes:
A lot of the screens available for the Sys76 laptops are technically capable of gsync, so it is probably worth it to ask them. The reason and the problem why they don't advertise them as such is that gsync for laptop screens is software based. For whatever reason, Nvidia doesn't support this method of Gsync under Linux. For desktop monitors, Gsync uses dedicated hardware and this works completely fine under Linux. However, Nvidia will probably add support for Gsync on laptop monitors in the future, and I can confirm gsync works fine in Windows (yes, I tried it).

I don't see a use for a 4k screen if you're going to play games. As we've seen, the vast majority of Linux ports aren't well optimized and it can be a struggle to hit 60 fps at even 1080p. Especially on laptop hardware.

Mad Max released for Linux, port report and review available
21 Oct 2016 at 9:20 pm UTC

I've tried the game on one of my systems so far. I definitely see some framerate dips.

The main way I can trigger them so far is to enter a room, and then look outside. I'm able to get the framerate down in the 40's. Hopefully this can be addressed. Otherwise, the game seems to run pretty well so far.

My relevant specs:
i7-5960X
64GB ram
GTX 1080
1440p resolution

I've owned this game in Windows since it came out, but I've barely even touched it since I'm in linux about 99% of the time. I bought a 2nd copy for my daughter from the Feral store to play in Linux so Feral also sees a Linux sale from me. :)