HCL - Dell Latitude E6530

[IX4 SVS]

This is a decent machine (SSD/i7/16G mem) which allows Qubes to be reasonably responsive. The system works mostly fine out of the box, the only issues I'm having are:

- Resume from sleep sometimes fails, resulting in a hung system.

- Video performance is poor. I have high power consumption, slow drawing of pixels, I can not rearrange the configuration of my external monitors via the dock & DVI ports without crashing the X server, and anything drawn in the external monitors leaves behind "stuck" pixels (of artefacts that were parts of GUI windows, but should no longer be there). I'm not sure if I should be using the nouveau or i915 driver exclusively, currently both are loaded. Pointers to instructions would be very helpful.

- The LUKS passphrase prompt during bootup is usually not displayed (my screen is black), I have to blindly type in the passphrase and then I reach the X login manager and have a GUI.

- Using the screen brightness function keys works, but results in a sluggish system for at least 15-30 seconds.

I have not tested:

- microphone

- webcam

The following work as expected:

- WiFi

- Internal storage (SSD)

- SD card slot

- USB ports

- Sound

Cheers,

Alex

[Zrubi]

On 04/26/15 03:02, IX4 SVS wrote:
> This is a decent machine (SSD/i7/16G mem) which allows Qubes to be
> reasonably responsive. The system works mostly fine out of the box, the
> only issues I'm having are:
>
> - Resume from sleep sometimes fails, resulting in a hung system.

This is a kernel/BIOS issue - try other kernels or BIOS updates

> - Video performance is poor. I have high power consumption, slow drawing
> of pixels, I can not rearrange the configuration of my external monitors
> via the dock & DVI ports without crashing the X server, and anything
> drawn in the external monitors leaves behind "stuck" pixels (of
> artefacts that were parts of GUI windows, but should no longer be
> there). I'm not sure if I should be using the nouveau or i915 driver
> exclusively, currently both are loaded. Pointers to instructions would
> be very helpful.
> - The LUKS passphrase prompt during bootup is usually not displayed (my
> screen is black), I have to blindly type in the passphrase and then I
> reach the X login manager and have a GUI.
> - Using the screen brightness function keys works, but results in a
> sluggish system for at least 15-30 seconds.

All these issues because of your second nVidia optimus GPU - sadly this
is not well supported on Linux :(

- You can try to disable it in the BIOS - but maybe it is not possible.

- You can try to blacklist it to avoid loading its driver by the
following kernel parameters:
nouveau.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau

- Or you can try to avoid using it by using only the analogue outputs.
(If you did the blacklisting the digital ones will not work)


- or you can try to install the latest nvidia drivers - my the force be
with you :)


--
Zrubi

[cprise]

On 04/26/15 19:24, Zrubi wrote:
>
> - or you can try to install the latest nvidia drivers - my the force be
> with you :)
>

Worth noting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=IVpOyKCNZYw#t=84

[IX4 SVS]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:24 AM, Zrubi <ma...@zrubi.hu> wrote:

On 04/26/15 03:02, IX4 SVS wrote:
> This is a decent machine (SSD/i7/16G mem) which allows Qubes to be
> reasonably responsive. The system works mostly fine out of the box, the
> only issues I'm having are:
>
> - Resume from sleep sometimes fails, resulting in a hung system.

This is a kernel/BIOS issue - try other kernels or BIOS updates

> - Video performance is poor. I have high power consumption, slow drawing
> of pixels, I can not rearrange the configuration of my external monitors
> via the dock & DVI ports without crashing the X server, and anything
> drawn in the external monitors leaves behind "stuck" pixels (of
> artefacts that were parts of GUI windows, but should no longer be
> there). I'm not sure if I should be using the nouveau or i915 driver
> exclusively, currently both are loaded. Pointers to instructions would
> be very helpful.
> - The LUKS passphrase prompt during bootup is usually not displayed (my
> screen is black), I have to blindly type in the passphrase and then I
> reach the X login manager and have a GUI.
> - Using the screen brightness function keys works, but results in a
> sluggish system for at least 15-30 seconds.

All these issues because of your second nVidia optimus GPU - sadly this
is not well supported on Linux :(

- You can try to disable it in the BIOS - but maybe it is not possible.

Disabling Optimus in the BIOS results in no GUI - just a blinking console cursor. No virtual consoles with ALT+Fn either. Pretty much a useless system :-(

 

- You can try to blacklist it to avoid loading its driver by the
following kernel parameters:
nouveau.modeset=0  rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau

The result of this is that now there is no display on my external monitors as the DVI ports are dead (as you point out below).

 

- Or you can try to avoid using it by using only the analogue outputs.
(If you did the blacklisting the digital ones will not work)

Unfortunately when docked, the built-in VGA port of the laptop seems to be disabled - which means one can only have one external monitor. The single-external-monitor configuration works well, but I'm trying to get to having two external monitors.

 

- or you can try to install the latest nvidia drivers - my the force be
with you :)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/2gaeTKuZEd4 doesn't make me very hopeful this has chances of succeeding - has anyone here managed to install NVIdia binary drivers on similar hardware?

Thanks,

Alex

 

--
Zrubi

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[Alex]

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On 04/30/15 20:06, IX4 SVS wrote:
>> reasonably responsive. The system works mostly fine out of the
>> box, the only issues I'm having are:
>>
>> - Resume from sleep sometimes fails, resulting in a hung system.
>
> This is a kernel/BIOS issue - try other kernels or BIOS updates

In my (nvidia + intel, Optimus configuration) experience this is a
Nvidia driver issue. Installing the Nvidia driver from RPMFusion
solved both this and external/internal screen issues, BUT it has some
problems too.

> - You can try to blacklist it to avoid loading its driver by the
> following kernel parameters: nouveau.modeset=0
> rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau
>
>
> The result of this is that now there is no display on my external
> monitors as the DVI ports are dead (as you point out below).

You should blacklist nouveau (the open source driver) only when you
have installed the nvidia / nonfree one, otherwise only the main
screen will barely work.

> - or you can try to install the latest nvidia drivers - my the
> force be with you :)
>
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/2gaeTKuZEd4
> doesn't make me very hopeful this has chances of succeeding - has
> anyone here managed to install NVIdia binary drivers on similar
> hardware?

I've been able to follow the wiki at
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/InstallNvidiaDriver/

Unfortunately, for Qubes 2, following this procedure *now* will result
in too recent drivers being downloaded for the available kernel, and
the RPMs will not compile. I kept a copy of the RPMs I compiled for my
ASUS Zenbook, and have had success in using in an ASUS K550 (X550)
which happens to use another pair of NVidia and Intel integrated vga.
I don't know if you may have some benefit in using them, and once
installed they will be quite hard to remove (it would be faster to
just reinstall Qubes and restore the backups - if only the 2.0 vanilla
version could restore the backups -_-''). If you feel lucky, I can
upload them for you.

- --
Alex
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[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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If you trust packages from rpmfusion repository, you can try to install
them directly to dom0. It is possible to install kernel from Fedora
repository, so those packages will match the kernel version. The
procedure will look somehow like this:
1. Download rpmfusion repository package, transfer it to dom0 and
install with yum.
2. Install dom0 kernel from Fedora repository:
sudo qubes-dom0-update kernel-3.19*
3. Install nvidia packages:
sudo qubes-dom0-update xorg-x11-drv-nvidia

There are different versions of the driver, especially 340xx and 304xx
for older devices, take a look here:
http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia

Disclaimer: I haven't tried installing those drivers in dom0, but I can
confirm that kernel from Fedora repository works (at least on my
hardware).

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Zrubi]

On 04/30/15 20:06, IX4 SVS wrote:

> Unfortunately when docked, the built-in VGA port of the laptop seems to
> be disabled - which means one can only have one external monitor. The
> single-external-monitor configuration works well, but I'm trying to get
> to having two external monitors.

As far as I know the intel GPU supports only 2 monitors.

This means without the nVidia you are not able to use 2 external
monitors in addition to the internal LCD display.


--
Zrubi

[Vít Šesták]

I've also experienced high power consumption on my Dell laptop with Nvidia+Intel GPUs. I solved just by installing Bumblebee, without any need for proprietary drivers. Note that I have Qubes 3.0-RC1, which might differ from Qubes 2.0. Installing packages from Bumblebee repository requires some manual patchwork until https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/988 is fixed.

I think you might find useful my notes about installing Bumblebee: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/qubes-users/bumblebee/qubes-users/Ub_ZbOEde44/vx5UY5TKQ0MJ

If you want to use external monitor, proprietary drivers might be useful. On my laptop, internal display and SVGA are wired to Intel chip, but HDMI seems to be wired to Nvidia chip. If you need more from your Nvidia card than just being disabled (and not consuming the power), you are likely to need the proprietary driver. You might find useful https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee#Output_wired_to_the_NVIDIA_chip , but I haven't tried it.

Regards,
Vit Sestak 'v6ak'

[Alex]

...and indeed now with Qubes 4.0 this works out of the box.

With Optimus enabled, I have three functioning monitors (built-in and two external), but their positioning is unreliable and sometimes a monitor stops receiving signal.

With Optimus disabled in the BIOS, I seem to have two reliable external monitors only, which is absolutely fine with me.

Alex