Laptop with discrete graphics card, any chance it'll work?

[lok...@gmail.com]

I am about to buy a new laptop, and jst about the only requirements I have is that it should be reasonably small, and that I am able to use the GPU in it. The latter is because I need to do some development which requires it.

I am OK with installing Nvidia's proprietary drivers on dom0. I'm aware of the potential security issues with that, but I am willing to accept it if necessary (i.e. if there is no other solution).

Right now I'm considering buying the Dell XPS 15 laptop which has a discrete Nvidia 1050 card: http://www.dell.com/sg/p/xps-15-9560-laptop/pd

Would this work? If not, is there another alternate for me? I really want to be using Qubes on this machine, but if there is no way I can get a GPU to work, I'm going to have to use a dedicated machine for the GPU work, which means I have to get two laptops, and I'd rather not do that.

Any ideas?

[Grzesiek Chodzicki]

10 series Nvidia GPU's aren't supported by the version of nouveau Qubes ships with.

[lok...@gmail.com]

I'm aware of this, which is why I said that I'm ok with installing Nvidias drivers. If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that this is not an option?

Assuming that Noveau will eventually support it, will it be possible to to utilise the GPU in a vm at that time?

[cooloutac]

Even if you managed to get the drivers to work if its not supported by noouveau. there is currently no gpu passthrough so only 2s rendering in vms.

[Tai...@gmx.com]

On 05/13/2017 01:07 PM, lok...@gmail.com wrote:

> I'm aware of this, which is why I said that I'm ok with installing Nvidias drivers. If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that this is not an option?
>
> Assuming that Noveau will eventually support it, will it be possible to to utilise the GPU in a vm at that time?

No it won't, you would need an external gpu that you would attach to the VM.

Nouveau probably won't support the new chips anytime due to nvidia
refusing to release the binary blobs required to make it work (and blobs
are terrible anyway, they also have hardware code signing enforcement)
and not releasing documentation making development very difficult

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Initial-Nouveau-Pascal

Using nvidia's drivers is difficult, especially with qubes.

I would get a laptop with AMD graphics instead, or get an older model
like the T430 or W530 (and you can install open source init coreboot on
that)

[lok...@gmail.com]

On Monday, 15 May 2017 03:12:18 UTC+8, Tai...@gmx.com wrote:

> I would get a laptop with AMD graphics instead, or get an older model
> like the T430 or W530 (and you can install open source init coreboot on
> that)

Thanks. I'm convinced. I'll go for a laptop with Radeon chipset.

I've been looking around for one, but I can't really find any machines that are appealing. The only ones I've been able to find are huge things that seems incredibly uncomfortable to use and carry around.

I also haven't been able to find a single laptop with the R9 chipset.

Does anyone have a suggestion on a reasonably light laptop (2 kg or so) with a modern CPU and Radeon chipset? Something similar to the XPS 15. Price is not really an issue.

Does anything like that even exist?

[Vít Šesták]

With external GPU, be careful about additional outputs (HDMI/DVI/DP/VGA). They might be wired to the dedicated GPU, which can cause various problems with your setup. First, it is generally poorly supported with Linux. (It should be reportedly better soon, but it might require Wayland, which you will likely wait a while for.) Second, if you manage to attach the second GPU to an AppVM, you obviously cannot access it from dom0.

An alternative to accessing the GPU from Qubes OS is having it on some other device, either on a dedicated machine or on a cloud VM like AWS. I know, it does not cover all possible cases for GPU and it has some drawbacks, but it might be worth considering.

v6

[lok...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, 18 May 2017 03:17:42 UTC+8, Vít Šesták wrote:

> With external GPU, be careful about additional outputs (HDMI/DVI/DP/VGA). They
> might be wired to the dedicated GPU, which can cause various problems with your
> setup. First, it is generally poorly supported with Linux. (It should be
> reportedly better soon, but it might require Wayland, which you will likely wait
> a while for.) Second, if you manage to attach the second GPU to an AppVM, you
> obviously cannot access it from dom0.

Thanks for the information.

I have no intention of connecting an external monitor, so the HDMI issue is not a problem for me. Attaching the GPU to an appvm is exactly what I need to do, since the only VM that needs it is the one I run my development environment in.

Does this work with all laptops that has a Radeon GPU? Or is there something else I need to check before committing?

Finally, I've been looking for Radeon laptops, and all I've found so far are big "mobile workstation" machines, weighing around 4 kg or more. Does anyone know of a smaller machine with Radeon graphics?

Thanks,
Elias

[cooloutac]

linux is always feels 2 years behind man. do thorough research before you purchase something. check bios manual pics for it to actually show vt-d enabled, check that model board on linux forums. are people using it? having probs? etc..

most the xps 15 don't have iommu. but you can search here on mailing list someone posted a specific xps 15 model that does you can check out. make sure they ahve good return policy.