Hi,
Facing a purchase of a new laptop. I'm a somewhat proficient Linux user but when it comes to graphics sometimes I feel almost like a complete noob. Here is what I need the laptop for:
1) Watching movies - either with a standalone player or from a (hopefully hardware-accelerated) browser. Made some research on browsers, things look more or less doable in Linux. Also want to be as future-proof as possible (decoding 4K HDR and 8K possibly?).
2) Plenty of work on a KVM-based Win 7 VM. No Windows without virtualization stays on my hardware.
3) Standard office apps, no gaming, no video editing, no external monitor or TV used.
Due to a whole bunch of reasons I'll be going for HP Omen or ZBook. For the sake of discussion assume the following is present in the system: NVMe SSD, 16GB DDR4 RAM (2400 or 2666MHz), Core i7-8750H CPU, Lubuntu x64 (16.04 or 18.04 - doesn't matter to me).
I want a 17-inch display and here is what I can chose from (and unfortunately never see with my own eyes before purchase):
1) FHD 120Hz 300 nits
2) FHD 144Hz 300 nits
3) UHD 60Hz 300 nits
4) UHD 60Hz HP DreamColor 400 nits
Read some stuff about scaling on small-size (e.g. below 20-inch) 4K displays. I wonder how Ubuntu handles this issue? Can't find anything useful in forums.
Used to have a very-good 23kg 19-inch 120Hz Sony Trinitron back in the day I prefer it every day before these crappy modern LCD displays. Does 120/144Hz on LCDs feel like good old CRT monitors in your experience?
GPUs I can chose from are:
1) Intel - HD 630. It has sufficient power (and more importantly - driver support) to decode 1080p and also 4K encoded with HEVC Main 10 profile. Has anyone tried 4K HDR, 8K?
I assume at least 4GB of system RAM will be necessary to play such demanding content based on what I read. Can Ubuntu 18.04 use that much for the integrated video card? I saw there are some limitations on Win 7 and Win 8 but can't find anything for Ubuntu.
2) NVidia - GTX 1050, 1050Ti, 1060, or Quadro P1000. Lack of driver support for HEVC Main 10 profile makes me want to stay away from these for now. There is a ticket open on NVidia's site which has been unresolved for almost 2 years. Besides that plenty of bad experience with NVidia on previous laptops (overheating, crappy proprietary drivers, you name it).
3) AMD Radeon Pro WX4170 - I read very good things about recent AMD Linux support. Devs from AMD seem to be developing in parallel two sets of proprietary drivers + submit a lot code for open-source MESA drivers which yield great results:
Not sure what is the purpose of these parallel open-/closed-source efforts but as long as I can decode in hardware majority of the stuff I throw at the laptop I'll be a happy user. I drowned in the sea of info regarding OpenCL, OpenGL, VAAPI, VDPAU, CUDA, and god knows what other sh*t you can use to decode video in hardware nowadays. The only thing I think I understood best option to decode one type of content can be completely different from the best option to decoder another type of content. Should I care as an average user about the selection criteria? Ideally no, but as we all know you always need to do some extra worthy effort to get things optimally working in Linux.
I'm wondering whether I can get away without a discrete graphics card cause frankly I always had Nvidia in my laptops and besides frying my balls it served no purpose so far. I turned it off permanently on my old laptop (no 1080p/60 and 4K content back at the old days). I'd rather invest in more RAM than something I'd use to decode videos 10% of the time maybe. Besides that I use the Win 7 VM quite a lot and have 100+ tabs in 2 browsers so extra RAM never hurts.
Please share your experience with the aforementioned hardware and software-related limitations.
Facing a purchase of a new laptop. I'm a somewhat proficient Linux user but when it comes to graphics sometimes I feel almost like a complete noob. Here is what I need the laptop for:
1) Watching movies - either with a standalone player or from a (hopefully hardware-accelerated) browser. Made some research on browsers, things look more or less doable in Linux. Also want to be as future-proof as possible (decoding 4K HDR and 8K possibly?).
2) Plenty of work on a KVM-based Win 7 VM. No Windows without virtualization stays on my hardware.
3) Standard office apps, no gaming, no video editing, no external monitor or TV used.
Due to a whole bunch of reasons I'll be going for HP Omen or ZBook. For the sake of discussion assume the following is present in the system: NVMe SSD, 16GB DDR4 RAM (2400 or 2666MHz), Core i7-8750H CPU, Lubuntu x64 (16.04 or 18.04 - doesn't matter to me).
I want a 17-inch display and here is what I can chose from (and unfortunately never see with my own eyes before purchase):
1) FHD 120Hz 300 nits
2) FHD 144Hz 300 nits
3) UHD 60Hz 300 nits
4) UHD 60Hz HP DreamColor 400 nits
Read some stuff about scaling on small-size (e.g. below 20-inch) 4K displays. I wonder how Ubuntu handles this issue? Can't find anything useful in forums.
Used to have a very-good 23kg 19-inch 120Hz Sony Trinitron back in the day I prefer it every day before these crappy modern LCD displays. Does 120/144Hz on LCDs feel like good old CRT monitors in your experience?
GPUs I can chose from are:
1) Intel - HD 630. It has sufficient power (and more importantly - driver support) to decode 1080p and also 4K encoded with HEVC Main 10 profile. Has anyone tried 4K HDR, 8K?
I assume at least 4GB of system RAM will be necessary to play such demanding content based on what I read. Can Ubuntu 18.04 use that much for the integrated video card? I saw there are some limitations on Win 7 and Win 8 but can't find anything for Ubuntu.
2) NVidia - GTX 1050, 1050Ti, 1060, or Quadro P1000. Lack of driver support for HEVC Main 10 profile makes me want to stay away from these for now. There is a ticket open on NVidia's site which has been unresolved for almost 2 years. Besides that plenty of bad experience with NVidia on previous laptops (overheating, crappy proprietary drivers, you name it).
3) AMD Radeon Pro WX4170 - I read very good things about recent AMD Linux support. Devs from AMD seem to be developing in parallel two sets of proprietary drivers + submit a lot code for open-source MESA drivers which yield great results:
Not sure what is the purpose of these parallel open-/closed-source efforts but as long as I can decode in hardware majority of the stuff I throw at the laptop I'll be a happy user. I drowned in the sea of info regarding OpenCL, OpenGL, VAAPI, VDPAU, CUDA, and god knows what other sh*t you can use to decode video in hardware nowadays. The only thing I think I understood best option to decode one type of content can be completely different from the best option to decoder another type of content. Should I care as an average user about the selection criteria? Ideally no, but as we all know you always need to do some extra worthy effort to get things optimally working in Linux.
I'm wondering whether I can get away without a discrete graphics card cause frankly I always had Nvidia in my laptops and besides frying my balls it served no purpose so far. I turned it off permanently on my old laptop (no 1080p/60 and 4K content back at the old days). I'd rather invest in more RAM than something I'd use to decode videos 10% of the time maybe. Besides that I use the Win 7 VM quite a lot and have 100+ tabs in 2 browsers so extra RAM never hurts.
Please share your experience with the aforementioned hardware and software-related limitations.
Comment