Suggestions for video card

[Fun Zork]

I installed Qubes on my laptop and I love it, but now I want to install it on my desktop, but my desktop has a GTX 1080 video card and a CPU without Intel graphics. Apparently nobody has actually gotten Qubes to work on recent nVidia cards (but let me know if you have the secret!). So, I am trying to figure out if there is any video card out there that works with Qubes that supports 4k resolutions. The official documentation appears to only suggest Intel integrated graphics and some ancient Radeon cards. Does anybody have a suggestion for a standalone card that supports 4k that works with Qubes? Thanks!

[Foppe de Haan]

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 8:08:36 AM UTC+2, Fun Zork wrote:
> I installed Qubes on my laptop and I love it, but now I want to install it on my desktop, but my desktop has a GTX 1080 video card and a CPU without Intel graphics. Apparently nobody has actually gotten Qubes to work on recent nVidia cards (but let me know if you have the secret!). So, I am trying to figure out if there is any video card out there that works with Qubes that supports 4k resolutions. The official documentation appears to only suggest Intel integrated graphics and some ancient Radeon cards. Does anybody have a suggestion for a standalone card that supports 4k that works with Qubes? Thanks!

4k in dom0 shouldn't be an issue at all, though using a 1080 for that is a bit wasteful. I'd suggest getting like an rx550 (or a HD 7750, like I had lying around) for use in dom0, and passing the GTX 1080 through to a VM (perhaps after updating the kernel to self-built 4.11?). I did not have much success with passthrough when I still had my gtx 950, but I'm a linux n00b, and that got in the way of troubleshooting.

The installation issues are due to the installer being somewhat older (and including a 4.4-based kernel); they may be resolved with the 3.2.1. release.

[Fun Zork]

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 3:36:42 AM UTC-4, Foppe de Haan wrote:
> 4k in dom0 shouldn't be an issue at all, though using a 1080 for that is a bit wasteful. I'd suggest getting like an rx550 (or a HD 7750, like I had lying around) for use in dom0, and passing the GTX 1080 through to a VM (perhaps after updating the kernel to self-built 4.11?). I did not have much success with passthrough when I still had my gtx 950, but I'm a linux n00b, and that got in the way of troubleshooting.
>
> The installation issues are due to the installer being somewhat older (and including a 4.4-based kernel); they may be resolved with the 3.2.1. release.

Thanks for your help.

Yeah, I wouldn't get a 1080 just for this purpose, that's just what I already have in my desktop, but I've been unable to get it to work with Qubes at all. I have tried both the proprietary driver and nouveau on the default kernel, and the newest kernels in both unstable and current-testing, but no luck. From the threads I've seen, it sounds like nobody has managed to get it to work at all- not just passthrough, it won't load X at all. My intent with this thread isn't to troubleshoot those issues. Unless somebody actually has gotten it working, I'm ready to give up on that one. So, I'm thinking about buying a second, cheap, card that works with Qubes that can support 4k resolutions.

I was thinking about getting a card like the rx550, but the Qubes documentation says that it does not support the 550 because AMD GPU wasn't supported until after kernel 4.4. If I went with a 550, are you thinking I would update to the current-testing kernel and that would get it working? Are you pretty confident in that? If not, maybe I'll go with the 7750 or similar, since you know for sure that that works.

[Foppe de Haan]

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 7:48:53 PM UTC+2, Fun Zork wrote:
> On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 3:36:42 AM UTC-4, Foppe de Haan wrote:
> > 4k in dom0 shouldn't be an issue at all, though using a 1080 for that is a bit wasteful. I'd suggest getting like an rx550 (or a HD 7750, like I had lying around) for use in dom0, and passing the GTX 1080 through to a VM (perhaps after updating the kernel to self-built 4.11?). I did not have much success with passthrough when I still had my gtx 950, but I'm a linux n00b, and that got in the way of troubleshooting.
> >
> > The installation issues are due to the installer being somewhat older (and including a 4.4-based kernel); they may be resolved with the 3.2.1. release.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Yeah, I wouldn't get a 1080 just for this purpose, that's just what I already have in my desktop, but I've been unable to get it to work with Qubes at all. I have tried both the proprietary driver and nouveau on the default kernel, and the newest kernels in both unstable and current-testing, but no luck. From the threads I've seen, it sounds like nobody has managed to get it to work at all- not just passthrough, it won't load X at all. My intent with this thread isn't to troubleshoot those issues. Unless somebody actually has gotten it working, I'm ready to give up on that one. So, I'm thinking about buying a second, cheap, card that works with Qubes that can support 4k resolutions.

I see. It may work once rtiangha gets around to adding 4.12 support to his github qubes kernel repo (-> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/yBeUJPwKwHM ), but yeah, finnicky.

> I was thinking about getting a card like the rx550, but the Qubes documentation says that it does not support the 550 because AMD GPU wasn't supported until after kernel 4.4. If I went with a 550, are you thinking I would update to the current-testing kernel and that would get it working? Are you pretty confident in that? If not, maybe I'll go with the 7750 or similar, since you know for sure that that works.

4.9 is very likely to support the rx 550 (since support for most other Polaris cards was also added/improved in 4.9), but I can't find anything definitive (and the Rx 550 is actually the latest Polaris card in the lineup), so the 7750 is probably a safer bet, if returning the 550 is non-trivial.

[Fun Zork]

Great. Thanks!

[Tai...@gmx.com]

You really don't want an nvidia card, they have a terrible attitude
about open source and intentionally make it hard for their cards to work
with IOMMU-GFX (see the code 43 "bug")

[pixel fairy]

On Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 11:08:36 PM UTC-7, Fun Zork wrote:
> I installed Qubes on my laptop and I love it, but now I want to install it on my desktop, but my desktop has a GTX 1080 video card and a CPU without Intel graphics. Apparently nobody has actually gotten Qubes to work on recent nVidia cards (but let me know if you have the secret!). So, I am trying to figure out if there is any video card out there that works with Qubes that supports 4k resolutions. The official documentation appears to only suggest Intel integrated graphics and some ancient Radeon cards. Does anybody have a suggestion for a standalone card that supports 4k that works with Qubes? Thanks!

have you tried the 4.0 alpha? thats based on fedora 25, which should be able to use the 1080.

[salm...@gmail.com]

Agreed, but I already have one, so that's kind of water under the bridge... They are also being particularly obnoxious about Wayland, which caused me a great deal of annoying problems.

[salm...@gmail.com]

> have you tried the 4.0 alpha? thats based on fedora 25, which should be able to use the 1080.

I didn't know that was available! Can you direct me to where to get it? That would be awesome if I could make it work without having to switch cards. Thanks!

[salm...@gmail.com]

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 7:35:32 PM UTC-4, salm...@gmail.com wrote:
> > have you tried the 4.0 alpha? thats based on fedora 25, which should be able to use the 1080.
>
> I didn't know that was available! Can you direct me to where to get it? That would be awesome if I could make it work without having to switch cards. Thanks!

Nevermind. Found it- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-devel/jeAsPQjImlU Will try. Thanks!

[rup...@tutanota.com]

21. Jul 2017 17:48 by fun...@gmail.com:

I was thinking about getting a card like the rx550, but the Qubes documentation says that it does not support the 550 because AMD GPU wasn't supported until after kernel 4.4. If I went with a 550, are you thinking I would update to the current-testing kernel and that would get it working? Are you pretty confident in that? If not, maybe I'll go with the 7750 or similar, since you know for sure that that works.

I don't understand differences between AMD cards but my r-7 260x worked with qubes 3.2 at 4k and 60Hz out of the box.

RupB

[Fun Zork]

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 7:05:56 PM UTC-4, pixel fairy wrote:
> have you tried the 4.0 alpha? thats based on fedora 25, which should be able to use the 1080.

No luck. I get the same results as I get after I update to the current-testing kernel- it reboots right after X tries to start, without logging anything whatsoever. I am no expert, but from what I can glean, 3.2 out of the box has two issues with the 1080: the default kernel doesn't support it and Xen doesn't support it. Updating the kernel gets you past that issue, but there still is an issue from Xen, even after updating it to 4.6.5. That's my working theory anyways.

In any case, I ordered a 7750.

[gall...@gmail.com]

I am also looking for ways to have a 4K 60Hz (with 4:4:4, a must for PC use) TV (43" so I don't care about DPI) running Qubes 3.2 with latest 4.9 kernel.

I'll have to buy a video card, and I was looking at the AMD RX560 (which is Polaris 11) since it does have true 4:4:4 4K60 HDMI 2.0 and Dom0 with kernel 4.9 has the module for Polaris 11 (see /lib/firmware/amdgpu/), so that side is covered.

The problem comes from kernel 4.9 release notes, where it says they added AMDGPU but to use it: "you'll need X.Org Server 1.19.0 and xf86-video-amdgpu 1.2.0 too."

And this seems to be a problem because Qubes 3.2 Dom0 is Fedora 23 based, which has Xorg 1.18.3, and lacks X driver for amdgpu (see https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/xorg-x11-drv-amdgpu/overview/).

Maybe this is why X can not start on your case.

Does anybody have a RX5* AMD card working on Qubes (even if not at 4K)? How? Xorg.0.log please?

[cooloutac]

I have an nvidia 650 ti that works fine with qubes. I would just get any card that was released 3 or more years ago, that supports 4k resolution. Get the cheapest one.

[Gallandae]

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately the Nvidia 650 TI does only 4K 30, otherwise it looked good.

Another option would be to upgrade the whole PC, since my Intel i7 didn't have VT-d (required now for Qubes 4.0), so since I'm not going to play games/3D I could go by with a recent i7-6* or i7-7*, whose DisplayPort does support 4K60 4:4:4.

But that means: CPU + mobo + memory, so while Qubes 3.2 lasts, I'd rather just get a supported 4K60 video card.

[Epitre]

Le vendredi 21 juillet 2017 08:08:36 UTC+2, Fun Zork a écrit :
> I installed Qubes on my laptop and I love it, but now I want to install it on my desktop, but my desktop has a GTX 1080 video card and a CPU without Intel graphics. Apparently nobody has actually gotten Qubes to work on recent nVidia cards (but let me know if you have the secret!). So, I am trying to figure out if there is any video card out there that works with Qubes that supports 4k resolutions. The official documentation appears to only suggest Intel integrated graphics and some ancient Radeon cards. Does anybody have a suggestion for a standalone card that supports 4k that works with Qubes? Thanks!

You can try the kernel-4.12 with Qubes 3.2 (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-devel/17qazOdsQ74/mAQLiQ1dBgAJ) it should work with latest NVIDIA cards as it does for my GTX970 who had a lot of trouble before this kernel version.

[Tai...@gmx.com]

You're going to want AMD, they release officially supported linux
drivers that are almost open source and they are cool with
virtualization on their gamer cards.