Thanks to Nvidia, there's a new generation of PCs coming and they'll run Linux
zdnet.com69 points by CrankyBear 3 months ago
69 points by CrankyBear 3 months ago
This article is pure conjecture and doesn’t have anything to back up the title beyond “these brands also happen to use mediatek” and making a tenuous link between their Chromebook products and the Digit system.
There's also Lenovo with their upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X based desktop [1]. Between Qualcomm and Mediatek they produced probably more than 90% world's smartphone.
If they start selling Linux desktops they will probably very popular if they have comparable performance with mainstream x86 based desktops but with more affordable price.
[1] Lenovo announces world’s first mini desktop PCs powered by Snapdragon X chips:
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/desktop-computers/lenovo...
We have already seen how this goes with EEE PCs, Chromebooks and Android.
Don't expect your favourite distribution to be there instead of OEM XYZ Linux, that it will have zero binary blobs, or it will be routinely updated.
And even if the hardware happens to be Linux friendly, other distros will need to reverse engineer as always.
> We have already seen how this goes with EEE PCs, Chromebooks and Android
Chromebooks (web based) and Android (smartphone) are not desktop oriented, while EEE PCs were non-performance devices mainly designed for Windows, its Linux version is an afterthought secondary product by Asus.
So agreeing that OEMs don't really care much about Linux Desktop experience quality, nor put that much effort into it.
It's apple to orange comparison with Eee PCs, Chromebooks and Android.
For OEMs it's basically a demand and supply problem. If more users demand for desktop Linux as more performant desktop hardware available, then they start to make effort on the quality.
We already see this in the cloud market where majority are Linux servers and the quality of the OEMs for servers now far surpass of Windows and BSDs. If majority of desktop users are using Linux the OEMs will ensure the quality is there for the users as they follow where the money is. Even now Nvidia is courting Linux on the GPU sides and now on the desktop sides as the article is referring to. As Linux also moving inroads to in-vehicle entertainment the computer vendors including Nvidia will up their game accordingly [1].
[1] Automotive Grade Linux Launches New Expert Group Led by Toyota:
> But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo?
Do they already exist, are they announced, or are these products in their roadmap?
No? Then what on earth are we talking about here?
The author really thinks people care about Linux desktop? No, people want laptops that works. I don't know what that means exactly, but I highly doubt we are anywhere close to thinking Linux desktop is usable for everyone.
In the meanwhile, people with nvidia laptops can enjoy a blinking white cursor on a black display. Courtesy of nvidia Optimus and their “wonderful” first party linux support for it.
Hence why I gave up on Year of Linux Desktop already around Windows 7 time.
I rather run Linux on a VM than keeping to deal with lack of laptop support, optimum isn't the only example.
Even my Asus 1215B, bought with Linux, the last generation of the netboooks effort, wasn't without issues, wlan driver was one, graphics card support for video acceleration and same OpenGL level as on Windows 7 were another.
It's quite easy to get a running Nvidia Optimus setup nowadays. Just go through arch wiki if on X, and just use drivers >560 for Wayland.
Is there anything I'm not in the loop or?
You will get at max 40 fps on external monitor connected to nvidia GPU, on wayland. New version of their driver fix few things but introduce new bugs. I suggest anyone who wants to use Linux to stay away from laptop that have nvidia GPU.
It’s great we recently got the feature for wayland. But for X it’s been a wild ride of bumblebee and using prime-run and full offloading for many years.
The arch wiki is still not a first party solution. As it stands, no normal user should have to go through that. The best option I’ve found is to just stick with Pop!_OS - they have a switcher set up and it actually works.
And once the user sets up Optimus, they can continue down the arch wiki for setting up hardware video decode on their browsers manually, and every other feature that nobody should have to mind.
X is long dead. It is only reasonable for NVIDIA to focus on working wayland experience since that's where Linux desktop is.
For hw-accel, just use nouveau and VA-API will work out of the box. (Yes, nvidia is contributing to nouveau these days).
It is now dead, but on my Asus 1215B VA-API, with AMD, it never got hardware acceleration regardless of the endless entries on online forums I have digged through.
Maybe I should eventually have used anything else other than Ubuntu LTS, but then we are again to the endless stream of "Why are you using XYZ distro, use ZYX instead, it works for me" comments.
X is anything but dead. XFCE and KDE have working x11 DEs. If anything, you get higher performance on it relative wayland in some use cases.[0][1]
Nouveau last time I checked has practically no support for modern nvidia chips (read: 5 years ago to now) in CUDA, performance states, 2D, and 3D.[3]
[0] https://www.phoronix.com/review/wayland-nv-amd-2023
[1] https://discuss.kde.org/t/wayland-vs-x-benchmarking-results-...
I have a 3050 laptop GPU. Nouveau is fine for basic desktop usage. Even for 3D games it's shockingly good (on Vulkan games anyway). I haven't really noticed much difference between Nouveau and the proprietary drivers to be honest...
The biggest thing I notice is that the card is severely lacking VRAM, to the point where most of the games I play run better on the iGPU (which can make use of up to 16gb of system RAM).
I’m actually shocked you got it to play games like that. I have several nvidia laptops that I use ranging from a 750M, to gtx 1650, to a rtx 4050. Every couple of months I’ll switch back to the dedicated GPU to run a sanity check for features, and do a 180 in an hour. I understand making compromises on shadowplay, GeForce streaming, the control centre, and the nvidia app as a whole. But I always notice microstuttering that shouldn’t be there and draw the line at having to manually set up VDPAU/VAAPI and keeping up with the trends of what this year’s optimal way to install games is (which DE on which back end, playonlinux vs lutris vs winetricks vs proton, etc).
I’m glad you got your 3050 to do basic things and hope you get more use out of it as software improves.
NB: IMO the best Linux nvidia laptops are the Lenovo legions. They have a bios switch to force the use of the nvidia chip and mask the iGPU. Half the issues are gone then.
> which DE on which back end, playonlinux vs lutris vs winetricks vs proton, etc
KDE on Proton is the way.
Are you using Wayland? One thing I’ve noticed is that windows are allocated greedily in Wayland and Chrome in particular is more than happy to eat all your VRAM. There’s nothing like there is in Windows/Mac to swap out / drop and recreate existing allocations when you’re out of VRAM.
Yes I'm using Wayland. The problem has nothing to do with Chrome usage or whatever. The desktop is super smooth no matter how many Chrome tabs I have or other apps. Also Gnome likes to use the iGPU by default so nothing to do with the Nvidia GPU really. For games I've tested both with iGPU or forcing them to use the Nvidia GPU.
The problem is games which have a lot of high res textures, it's obvious the dedicated GPU runs out of RAM. It's pretty speedy on games running at half-resolution and it can render a lot of effects like bloom, fancy lighting, reflections, etc... But I'd say my current go to game is Civ 6, I like to play at full resolution with high textures, which the dedicated GPU can't handle but the iGPU can without even heating up all that much.
You’re talking about swap? You can allocate a swap partition and register it in the fstab and the kernel as well and happily swap out to it. Unlike windows and mac, you can set the swappiness too to go from conservative to aggressive.
I doubt it.
It's likely people might ditch their Windows machines to something like Steam Deck, and I don't think people have a remotely good reason to pick up a DIGITS system unless they want to run low end inference.
The fact that there is no daily driver reason to pick up a Linux box that is DoA tells me this is being approached incorrectly.
NVIDIA did not succeed at Android (I had a Shield) and they did not bother integrating x86 emulation nor any existing applications with WoA mean that they never thought of anything remotely useful that people seem to run on their existing computers.
If NVIDIA actually cared and got SteamOS to run and integrated Blackwell Cores and Mediatek SoCs with it, wake me up.
Until then, it will be a box on the shelf competing with the likes of the M4 Mac Mini.
Even after reading I don't get why anyone would consider a laptop with nvidia over amd. Buying an amd thinkpad was one of my best choices of 2024
I say this as someone happily using Linux on an all AMD laptop.
The AMD GPUs still perform worse, generally. In overall performance, but especially in RT, CUDA, and other specified workloads. There's a reason the next (current?) gen high end AMD laptops are mostly switching to muxed Nvidia 4000s (ASUS, Razer, etc).
"I know: "Year of the Linux desktop ... yadda, yadda." You've heard it all before. But now there's a Linux-powered PC that many people will want: Nvidia's Project Digits, …"
I'm a Linux devotee but I doubt very much if there'll be a 'Year of the Linux desktop' anytime soon (as much as I'd like there to be one).
Yes, I'm aware of the recent upsurge in Linux desktop usage to around 4% and that's a good thing but it's not going to usurp Windows in the near future, if ever.
It seems to me what's particularly relevant with this Nvidia information is that hopefully it will spur on this modest increase in desktop usage to the point where more manufacturers will enter the market with machines either especially manufactured for Linux or that they improve their machines (with improved drivers etc.) so Linux becomes even more flexible and easier to use.
It's all very well that Linux needs no introduction to the cognoscenti but a more visible and solid Linux desktop ecosystem would help to bring many technical and engineering users into the fold. I personally know of techies who are aware of the benefits of Linux but who are reluctant to switch from Windows for fear that their work may be disrupted by various gotchas. Even a slight improvement to Linux's desktop would likely shore up the ecosystem to the point where many of these tech-savvy users would be prepared to switch.
I'm curious to see whether they run any Linux, or just nvidia's Linux.
Nvidia has a long history with "Linux for Tegra" (l4t) and "Jetson Linux", where it's nearly unheard of run to a regular boring Linux distribution. Instead there's a special magic distro Nvidia has cooked up that's essentially the only good way to use the hardware.
If Nvidia actually starts building systems that behave like a reasonably supportable computer I'd be much more afraid of them.
In all these systems expect OEM Linux to be the case.
Even if they do support regular distros, that only works with the drivers they provide, and are naturally frozen to a specific kernel version.
I think they’re saying that NVIDIA is already making high performance arm processors, and announced a high-end desktop arm that’ll run linux by default.
Not sure though. It would let them compete with my Ryzen SoC mini-pc, assuming they fix their drivers (and get the linux taint bit to stay off).
Hmm, it's Arm and Windows most definitely runs on Arm, Microsoft already sell a bunch of Arm based Surface PCs.
Yes Linux will definitely be one of the operating systems used on these new PCs, and they may even run Linux more often that not but if we assume computers largely exist for business to happen and money to be made, Windows is never that far away.
> Thanks to Nvidia, there's a new generation of PCs coming and they'll run Linux
What are these PCs ? Do they have any resemblance to PC architecture ? (UEFI, etc). Do they run stock kernels ?
> But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo? All three of these companies are already selling MediaTek-powered Chromebooks.
$1000 for a toy is too much.
Why does any of that make sense? It’s an enterprise play for them. You see Mac minis used all over for their compact form factor behind tvs. This is a similar play for enterprises but development and IT deployment of AI chips. I don’t even know if it will pan out
It’ll probably be cool for the desktop ARM ecosystem and people wanting small inference servers. Not sure about the rest.
So many ads and scrolling jumping around the page, such a mess of unreadable content old friend zdnet
they were 5 years behind AMD on drivers, maybe now they're 3, so maybe in their next generation
echo "$(($(date +%Y)+1)) is the year of the Linux desktop."
What a bunch of paid marketing dribble.
SVN is such a shit-ass writer and keeps chirping with next to nothing backing up anything he publishes.
I'm surprised his articles get any traction any more.