System76 Has Been Collaborating With NVIDIA Over Linux Driver Fixes

[gerry_here_to_learn]

Unless something changes with nvidia, and as long as AMD keep progressing as they are..

As an Ubuntu machine vendor, it will makes no sense for System76 to go with nvidia over AMD after 18.04 release.

That is if everything remains as is and stays on course the way it has been the last two or so years with nvidia doubling down on their blob and AMD making leaps and bounds of progress on their open stack.

[starshipeleven]

They are a direct customer of NVIDIA, they should fix bugs raised by them. The end user is not a, direct, customer of NVIDIA.

Huh, no. NVIDIA can fix or not fix whatever they feel like, just like any hardware manufacturer. If they made a contract where there is $$$ involved if NVIDIA fixes things, things change.

[torsionbar28]

They should collaborate with the Nouveau-Team to enhance the open driver instead of the proprietary one!

Nouveau team needs reverse engineered hardware info about nvidia gpu's. That's not what System76 is doing. It sounds like System76 is simply providing good detailed bug reports, and helping with testing, so the upstream vendor can fix the bugs. That wouldn't help nouveau team much, as those guys already know what doesn't work, they don't have the proprietary hardware info they need to fix it.

[theriddick]

I do wonder how long it will be until we see telemetry user data recording on the proprietary NVIDIA driver?!!

If AMD Open drivers become a big success then NVIDIA may support the open Nouveau, however atm the AMD drivers are no threat to NVIDIA, at least from a performance and compatibility point of view.

[akincer]

My biggest complaint over the end-user experience with a System76 laptop my wife uses is that there's a strange bug that causes the numlock pad to get locked often when she puts her computer to sleep. System76 was not exceedingly helpful to fix the issue. It's not been fixed and she's just learned to deal with it. I think the most frustrating part is they acted like it was an isolated incident. I find that highly unlikely, but whatever.

Other than that, it's been a great laptop. And to be fair to System76, I'm guessing the problem is related to a driver that they have no control over, but the way they handled the issue was so-so in my opinion. It certainly was not the level of support I think a non-technical user would find acceptable.

Note: the only reason I mention this is that I think it's great they work with hardware vendors to fix issues. I just wish they would do the same for this numlock issue.

[drohm]

My biggest complaint over the end-user experience with a System76 laptop my wife uses is that there's a strange bug that causes the numlock pad to get locked often when she puts her computer to sleep. System76 was not exceedingly helpful to fix the issue. It's not been fixed and she's just learned to deal with it. I think the most frustrating part is they acted like it was an isolated incident. I find that highly unlikely, but whatever.

Other than that, it's been a great laptop. And to be fair to System76, I'm guessing the problem is related to a driver that they have no control over, but the way they handled the issue was so-so in my opinion. It certainly was not the level of support I think a non-technical user would find acceptable.

Note: the only reason I mention this is that I think it's great they work with hardware vendors to fix issues. I just wish they would do the same for this numlock issue.

Sounds to me like an RMA situation. I would have insisted on that tbh. They charge quite a bit of money for their laptops to have to deal with an issue like that. I'd be salty, until they resolve it.

[akincer]

Sounds to me like an RMA situation. I would have insisted on that tbh. They charge quite a bit of money for their laptops to have to deal with an issue like that. I'd be salty, until they resolve it.

They did actually send us a replacement, but swapping hard drives showed the problem still existed. They offered some alternative approaches, but none were all that exciting. I instead opted to wait until one of two things happen -- an OS update fixed the issue or I got her a new laptop.

I do hold out hope it will be fixed in a future update. A problem she was having with WiFi seemed to have resolved itself after the 16.04 update.

And for what it's worth -- I was pretty salty, but it wasn't helping and they were genuinely trying to help, but I'm about 99.9% sure it's a driver issue that they can't fix and shipping me 1,000 new ones wouldn't help. It would just re-present itself. The only thing I'll forever look negatively on them about is telling me nobody else is having the issue. I call full-on BS on that.

[DMJC]

The open source stack is excellent, but incomplete. Until it's got all 235 extensions, it won't be a competitor to the NVIDIA binary driver. Frankly laptops with integrated GPUs are becoming a silly idea thanks to USB Type-C. Now you can have your cake and eat it too with a Type-C to PCI-E box. Keep your screens/keyboard/mouse/LAN at home plugged into your Video card, and dock your laptop as needed for gaming. That's the future of gaming. Ditch the tower PC and just use your laptop with an upgradable GPU. I want a Razorblade Stealth with a Razer Core. It's basically a 13" Macbook Pro without the dumb choices Apple made this time.

[sarmad]

I own a System76 Oryx Pro and it's been great. I don't recall facing any GPU-related issue. In fact, the system overall is very stable. Good to see System76 working closely with nVidia.

[starshipeleven]

Ditch the tower PC and just use your laptop with an upgradable GPU.

No thanks, even if only running the CPU a laptop can hit throttling because its power ciruitry overheats because it sucks ass (in general) and even more if compared to a desktop mobo with dedicated heatsink and all.

Plus the fact that the overwhelming majority of laptops come with processors that can't compete with desktop counterparts, or have heat issues, or both.

I want a Razorblade Stealth

It has a fake i7 (an actual high-binned laptop i3, dualcore with multithreading)

A nice laptop, but it sucks ass for gaming even with an external GPU.