What hardware are you using?

Discussion of hardware related issues
wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

The only distro I looked at closely was Pop OS, which has an excellent hardware detection system. Looking at lspci, shows an Nvidia card, however Pop OS uses/installs only drivers for Intel HD graphics, and does not show that any optional drivers are needed. That leads me to believe that as far as Linux is concerned, I should just stick with the Intel HD graphics and ignore the Nvidia graphics and the whole hassle of switching graphics.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

Go to additional drivers and see if the Nvidia gpu is detected and they should give you an option to install drivers including Nouveau. Ubuntu based distros default to Nouveau unless the individual distro makes their own decision to use proprietary drivers. If Nouveau isnt working you could try an older Nvidia driver like 341 for instance.
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wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

I called Additional Drivers Optional Drivers, but Pop OS when booted from the Intel Drivers, did not even see there was an Nvidia card. I tried Mint which is also very good at hardware detection and its Additional Drivers did not see an Nvidia either. I booted into Endeavour and the scrolling text showed "Nvidia drivers are blacklisted" so in the end it looks like I can install about any linux as long as I am content without Nvidia. I suspect the problem is probably the Apple designed and made Multiplexer chip. Apple created drivers for this machine for Windows 7, 8 and 10. It is also possible to pull the kexts from the Apple system and use them on a FreeBSD install. So I think for this particular hardware, Mac, Windows and BSD are the only viable options.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

My familiarity with Apple is very poor but Im very familiar with earlier gpus, I would agree with your assumptions.
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

Well, my KingSpec 512GB (2242) drive died. I'd been having issues with the T14G1a going into read-only mode, and finally caught it when it JUST started so I was able to switch to the TTY to try to see errors. It clearly said there was a problem reading nvme1, which was the secondary drive. So pulled it out and put it in a spare external enclosure, new partition table and formated to f2fs, and sure enough, after about 5 hours of using it, it went read only. So that's trashed. No great loss, that has a 2TB primary SSD, so the 512GB wasn't really adding much to it. Booted from a gparted live iso, shrunk my / partition 500GB, rsync'd over all the data from the KingSpec (this was before I actually removed the drive), and updated fstab. Mostly painless, and only had about 15 minutes total downtime. It's now that most of my laptops have only a single drive. Only the ancient T495 still has dual drives anymore.
wove
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by wove »

Failing by going into read only mode is about as nice a failure mode for a storage device as one can get. Very nice that you did not loose any data. A KingSpec (64GB) was the first SSD I purchased. It has been a good little drive. I am sure it purchased based on price, just to see what all the hub-bub over SSDs was all about. It is the last 64GB I have and is useful for quick installs of distros I want to take a look at. But for the last year or so it has spent most of its time just sitting in my desk drawer.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

Smallest drive I have is 120gb. Do you know what caused the failure or was it a drive youve used over a long time?
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

KingSpec apparently has a bit of a reputation for this on their drives. This did happen to be ~3 years old, but it's not like it was used heavily. Probably only had 1 or 2 TBW in those 3 years. But if you read the reviews for their NE512 drive on Amazon, there's a LOT that die very shortly after getting installed. Not sure why, they're pretty decent parts (SM2263XT controller and I forget the NAND but it's a major OEM, not an unknown chinese NAND manufacturer, and the label IS a graphene heatsink), but it is well known for this. The drive never had the best performance either, barely eclipsing 50% of what a PCIe 3x2 drive should get (about equal to a USB 3.2g2 drive), so I don't even really miss it.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

Ive never tried Kingspec, but Im presently using Team Group and Netac with no issues.
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

TeamGroup is great hardware. As I've mentioned before, the performance is generally absolutely middle of the road as they tend toward reference designs. But they're quality drives.
Netac I was unimpressed with the singular drive of theirs I ever used. Seemed to underperform compared to it's parts. But most reviews on them are pretty positive, so I may have gotten a bad egg. But they're strictly budget drives, so they in theory are neck and neck with KingSpec in so far as they also are strictly budget drives. They also are both Chinese OEM's who are trying to increase their business outside China, thus the VERY attractive price points on their hardware.
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