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**mr_raider** · Oct 16, 2020, 02:19 PM

Look at HPs Probook line. They come in AMD and Intel flavors.

MAybe you have something like this in your country?

https://store.hp.com/CanadaStore/Mer...pt=ABA&sel=NTB

**oshunluvr** · Oct 16, 2020, 02:50 PM

Brightness will be the biggest hurdle

https://www.laptopmag.com/benchmarks/display-brightness

**oshunluvr** · Oct 16, 2020, 02:53 PM

Also, I doubt you'll be getting more cures with AMD. You're blending DESKTOP cpus with LAPTOP cpus. Not the same thing. AFAIK, 8 cores is the most you can hope for. Intel generally has better single core performance.

**oshunluvr** · Oct 16, 2020, 03:05 PM

Here ya go: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ROG-Zep...17/Tech-Specs/

Now all you need is 600 more Euro.

You're welcome.

**GreyGeek** · Oct 16, 2020, 04:30 PM

Basic fundamentals minimal needs for a good laptop:
1) quad core (eight thread) CPU (similar to Intel i7 3.7GHz, not a 2.8GHz with "turbo") with a good fan system.

2) GPU that can be selected as primary in the BIOS, if it is not already the primary GPU.

3) 32 GB RAM (I started with 4GB. Too slow. Added 4GB. Still too slow. Doubled it to 16GB. Acceptable but now is see how 32GB would be preferable.)

4) At least two USB 3.0 ports and an active USB 3.0 Hub plugged into the second one that expands the number of USB ports to at least eight.

5) 17" display. (Personal. My old eyes can't take any size smaller. Even then I'm using Ctrl+middle wheel to zoom in or a 4" mag glass)

6) An 802.11ac or better chip (can it do IPv6 without a tunnel?)

Using this selection criteria I found only two computers on amazon that fit, and the most expensive of the two costs $1,500+ and one doesn't know if a Linux distro would drive everything.

So, all in all, to be sure I didn't have compatibility problems I'd get a computer from System76 or some other Linux dedicated vendor. Then you'll know that everything will work.

**mbohets** · Oct 17, 2020, 03:34 PM

Thanks for the replies.

After reading them, and plowing through a number of laptop reviews, I settled on https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-T....466299.0.html

I selected this one mainly because of the new AMD CPU that seems to outperform Intel i7 and even some i9 chips

Neon installation went well, the only caveat is that I cannot change the display brightness, when I move the brightness slider, nothing happens.

Any ideas on how to solve this ?

I tried installing NVIDIA drivers instead of nouveau, but then I only got 800*600 display resolution, so I reverted back to the nouveau drivers.

After some googling, I found a Reddit article that says that Ubuntu based distros are a bit conservative on kernel choice, and that this works in Manjaro and Fedora.
Before switching to Manjaro, I would like to try out a few things in Neon, so any ideas ?
As winter is coming, I won't take my laptop and sit in the garden with it anytime soon, so there is some time to try to solve this issue.

In the past I tried Manjaro and Fedora.
Manjaro was very nice and has a very good support forum + Arch docs, but I am used to the Debian like tools of Neon, so it is more comfortable.
Fedora I did not like so much, don't know why.

I also noticed that battery life is shorter using linux, compared to windows, but that was also the case with my old Samsung laptop.
I read somewhere that in windows, only the CPU integrated GPU is used when there is low demand for graphic power, and it only switches on the additional NVIDIA GPU when more power is needed, for example while playing a GPU hungry game.
Is something like that also possible in linux ?

**GreyGeek** · Oct 17, 2020, 07:52 PM

That Asus looks like a great box at a great price!
Besides Acer, Asus and Toshiba are my top pics.

IF you have powerdevil installed you can adjust the brightness by left clicking on the Battery Icon and dragging the slider on the popup dialog.

If you run the Nvidia X Server Settings, in the System menu, you can establish Application Profiles for each of the important apps you run, or all of them. Also,beneath the Application Profiles, is the PRIME Profiles option, which has a radio button titled "Nvidia On-demand". Hoover your mouse of the various options and a popup explains what they do.

The latest Neon (10/2) has Plasma 5.20. I've got the USER edition running with BTRFS as a VM to try it out. I've been running Kubuntu since Jan of 2009, except when I tried Neon for about 6 months just after Neon first was released in the summer of 2016. So far it has been running great.

**mbohets** · Oct 18, 2020, 10:04 AM

Powerdevil is installed, but dragging the slider does nothing.

After trying numerous things, I also installed a newer kernel 5.8 and a more recent NVIDIA driver (450) as suggested on this site https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/asus-a17-tuf766iu
but nothing seems to solve the problem.
Also, depending on the kernel, the nvidia X Server Settings are empty (5.4 and 5.9 kernels), or they show very limited options (5.8 kernel), and there is no radio button for Nvidia on demand.

Perhaps I tried to do a bit much at the same time, and I need to start over with a clean install, or try to install the Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia site instead of those from the repositories ?

While I am trying out all sorts of things, and I have some time to play around, I'll also revisit Manjaro and Fedora to see how they work on this laptop.

But apart from this screen brightness thing, I am satisfied with it, it is very fast compared to my previous laptop.

**SpecialEd** · Oct 18, 2020, 02:53 PM

Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post

That Asus looks like a great box at a great price!
Besides Acer, Asus and Toshiba are my top pics.>>>>>.

I've bought four laptops for my family over the past four years. three out of four are from ASUS. (The other is a system76 for me

)

Toshiba no longer makes laptops.

**Qqmike** · Oct 18, 2020, 08:53 PM

... déjà vu ... I like ASUS (laptop and motherboard components) because of how well they handle UEFI -- very user friendly and capable. Fwiw, my nephew is a computer guy (Sandia National Labs), and ASUS has been his choice (and does whatever he wants to do with it -- dual boot Windows, Linux, etc.). There are probably multiple optima, but IMO, ASUS is one of them.

**mbohets** · Oct 19, 2020, 12:16 PM

It looks like Ubuntu/Neon did a very bad job on hardware support for this laptop.
In the mean time, I discovered some extra problems, a second screen connected to the hdmi interface does not work, and battery autonomy is very low (2.5h), also it does not wake-up after sleep.

I replaced Neon by Fedora, and everything, except for the wake-up works out of the box.
Battery autonomy increased to from 2.5 ti 7 hours.
I tried Fedora, a few years back and then I did not like it very much, but they seem to have improved a lot since then.

Tomorrow, I'll give Manjaro (I liked that one in the past, but liked Neon better) a try, and decide what distro to use permanently for this laptop.

**mr_raider** · Oct 19, 2020, 12:50 PM

Originally posted by mbohets View Post

It looks like Ubuntu/Neon did a very bad job on hardware support for this laptop.
In the mean time, I discovered some extra problems, a second screen connected to the hdmi interface does not work, and battery autonomy is very low (2.5h), also it does not wake-up after sleep.

I replaced Neon by Fedora, and everything, except for the wake-up works out of the box.
Battery autonomy increased to from 2.5 ti 7 hours.
I tried Fedora, a few years back and then I did not like it very much, but they seem to have improved a lot since then.

Tomorrow, I'll give Manjaro (I liked that one in the past, but liked Neon better) a try, and decide what distro to use permanently for this laptop.

I would have suggested Manjaro,but Fedora works.

Ubuntu/Neon uses an older kernel and mesa base so problems are not uncommon on cutting edge hardware. You can always try kubuntu 20.10 release candidate.

**mbohets** · Oct 20, 2020, 09:55 AM

I am just done trying Manjaro, and it is even better than Fedora, because in Fedora, I also saw some quirks that are not there in Manjaro.
- Sometimes the mousepointer freezes after a reboot, so I have to reboot again to get it working again.
- When playing a youtube movie via hdmi, connected to my AV receiver, after about 15 minutes, the sound is distorted --> reboot needed to solve this.

None of the problems of Neon and Fedora are present in Manjaro.

Next distro in line for testing is Suse Tumbleweed, which also uses very recent software as I read via Google searches.
I'll keep you posted on what distro is the winner.

**mr_raider** · Oct 20, 2020, 06:34 PM

Originally posted by mbohets View Post

I am just done trying Manjaro, and it is even better than Fedora, because in Fedora, I also saw some quirks that are not there in Manjaro.
- Sometimes the mousepointer freezes after a reboot, so I have to reboot again to get it working again.
- When playing a youtube movie via hdmi, connected to my AV receiver, after about 15 minutes, the sound is distorted --> reboot needed to solve this.

None of the problems of Neon and Fedora are present in Manjaro.

Next distro in line for testing is Suse Tumbleweed, which also uses very recent software as I read via Google searches.
I'll keep you posted on what distro is the winner.

SUSE is it's own animal. Stick to Manjaro if it works. Most KDE users rank it as one of the best distros.

Come back to Neon in April and see if your problems are solved.

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