[opensuse-factory] Making a better experience installing TW on a 4K / Optimus laptop
This message details my experience installing TW on a 4K / Optimus laptop, namely a Lenovo ThinkPad P72 with Intel UHD 630 / Quadro P600. I'd like to hopefully spark a discussion on how to possibly make it better from the POV of a proverbial "new Linux user" that would want to install TW on such laptop. I used the current TW net-install image as of today written on a USB drive. There are 2 separate pain points here: 4K and Optimus. 1. 4K The issue is text too small and really hard to read. It is even more problematic on a laptop due to the very high pixel density. a. the installer first starts GRUB in native 4K, thus with super small text. This is only (somewhat) problematic if you have to edit the config. To address small text, would it not be better for configure GRUB to always start in a sane resolution such as 800x600 ? There is another (smaller) issue: key presses are very delayed (like 2s between keys!). b. after GRUB and before the installer switches to Xorg, the linux console takes over, again in 4K with a super hard to read font. This transfers over to ncurses (which asks for the WiFi SSID and password). If you need to spend some time in the various ncurses installer options (for example to start a shell) or switch to a virtual console (to check installer / kernel logs), it is super painful to read. And I'm not even talking about doing a text only install which is almost impossible to do. Not sure how this can fixed. Bonus: it would be nice to have mouse support in ncurses, with the installer loading gpm. Mostly useful for full text install though. 2. Optimus Assuming, laptop boots into Optimus mode (that is, with 2 graphic cards), Xorg will start with a blackscreen. The reason is that nouveau does not work at all in an Optimus setup. Booting with the nouveau module blacklisted results in Xorg failing to start and the installer falling back to text installation, but then you have the 4K issue and if you are brave enough to go for that text install, Xorg will still not start properly as well on reboot. The only way to have the graphical installer starting is by enabling "Discrete only" in BIOS to have a single video card, the NVIDIA card. This make nouveau not explode. It would be very nice to have the installer 'just work' in Optimus mode, although this is tricky. The installer would have to detect that situation (Optimus) and: - unload the nouveau module - make sure Xorg does not try to load the nouveau driver - start Xorg with the proper BusID for the Device associated to the Intel card. Xorg is unable to determine it by itself and will fail to start if the proper BusID is not specified. => That way Xorg will start properly using the modesetting driver. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org
Michael Pujos composed on 2019-01-30 20:51 (UTC+0100):
1. 4K
The issue is text too small and really hard to read. It is even more problematic on a laptop due to the very high pixel density.
a. the installer first starts GRUB in native 4K, thus with super small text. This is only (somewhat) problematic if you have to edit the config. To address small text, would it not be better for configure GRUB to always start in a sane resolution such as 800x600 ? XVideo=800x600
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Linuxrc Probably on a 4K display, 800x600 would be gross over-correction. On a 2560x1440 I use 1440x900. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org
On 1/30/19 8:51 PM, Michael Pujos wrote:
This message details my experience installing TW on a 4K / Optimus laptop, namely a Lenovo ThinkPad P72 with Intel UHD 630 / Quadro P600.
I'd like to hopefully spark a discussion on how to possibly make it better from the POV of a proverbial "new Linux user" that would want to install TW on such laptop.
I used the current TW net-install image as of today written on a USB drive.
There are 2 separate pain points here: 4K and Optimus.
Please, when this discussion is over and you have gathered all the informed input about what could be done to improve the user experience open a couple of separate bugs in bugzilla with all that info, for things to really happen. :-) Cheers. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org
Ancor Gonzalez Sosa composed on 2019-04-22 09:34 (UTC+0200):
Michael Pujos wrote last January:
This message details my experience installing TW on a 4K / Optimus laptop, namely a Lenovo ThinkPad P72 with Intel UHD 630 / Quadro P600.
I'd like to hopefully spark a discussion on how to possibly make it better from the POV of a proverbial "new Linux user" that would want to install TW on such laptop.
I used the current TW net-install image as of today written on a USB drive.
There are 2 separate pain points here: 4K and Optimus.
Please, when this discussion is over and you have gathered all the informed input about what could be done to improve the user experience open a couple of separate bugs in bugzilla with all that info, for things to really happen. :-)
A bug about the general subject of Optimus was resolved fixed in January: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1121246 Enable support for Optimus systems (Intel/NVIDIA GPU combo) on our products -- Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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Ancor Gonzalez Sosa
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Felix Miata
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Michael Pujos