Laptop Issues (& Minimal?)

[changj19]

Hi Mr. Robot! I'm loving Salient OS right now!!! Thank you for the work that has gone into creating this distro!!

I currently have Salient OS KDE on my Dell Inspirion 7559 laptop, which doesn't play well with linux at all (due to it's hardware, mainly the Intel/NVIDIA dual graphics chip: GeForce GTX 960M). I wanted to share some of the issues that I've faced and solutions that worked in my case to get Salient (KDE) to run better on this specific machine.

I have yet to install the NVIDIA drivers yet, since I'm still researching the best route to set it up functionally for this machine... (There is no bios option on this machine to disable the Intel HD Graphics 530 component.) Do you personally have any suggestions for this?

Issue:
-Applications not launching -> Display freezes (can still hear audio if playing) when launching applications. --(I don't believe the themeing I've done would have caused this.)
-(Edit:) Applications would appear to be launching (by the cursor) and not launch... Display would freeze if I tried to launch anything else... Selecting already opened windows were fine...
Solution (Haven't had crashes yet):
-System Settings -> Compositor Settings
"Rendering backend": OpenGL 2.0 -> OpenGL 3.0
"Tearing prevention": Automatic -> Never
"Allow applications to block compositing": Enabled -> Disabled

Perhaps an Issue:
-Shutdown/Reboot options sometimes did not work as intended?
Solution:
-System Settings -> Startup and Shutdown -> Desktop Session:
"Default Leave Option": End current session
"On Login": Start with an empty session

Finally, do you have plans to do minimal (software) ISO releases in the future with DE, system optimizations, and themeing tweaks? I really like the handpicked software/suggestions, but there are a few picks I don't think I'll ever use. If not I guess it isn't difficult for users to uninstall software.

Best Regards,
jcs19

(Edit2: Readability)

[Silent Robot]

Hi there and thank you for your kind words and feedback / suggestions for your current setup.

There are a number of solutions for switching between graphics hardwares and one in particular that looks interesting to me is: nvman. https://github.com/quebin31/nvman You may want to look into this particular solution.

Concerning applications not starting, i personally have not experienced this and wonder if it is related to your hardware in this case? Although your suggestions / workarounds to seem plausable in certain circumstances. Something i will look into for sure.

The shutdown/reboot issue i have not experienced myself but what you suggest again seems interesting, something i will look into and test here locally.

I have thought about a minimal build of Salient OS, with just a minimal set of applications but, since everyone has different requirements it would be quite difficult to please everyone in this respect. Although it would be possible to utilise a script based installation system (think Arcolinux) to provide the optional other groups of software provided in the primary build of Salient OS. Certainly food for thought.

Thank you,

Silent

[changj19]

Hi Silent,

I took a look at nvman. It is a good suggestion, but I'm trying to avoid using Bumblebee and recommend against it. The arch wiki states that it has performance issues and doesn't support Vulkan. I've used Bumblebee on my previous Antergos install and although it worked, I experienced major input lag. My understanding is that Bumblebee starts another x server (for the game, etc.) and copies over frames to the primary x server...

A majority of threads point to nvidia-xrun being a better performing solution... I ran across Optimus-Manager on Reddit yesterday and am planning on trying it out later today. (GitHub Link).

---

I can confirm that the following compositor setting fixed the system hangs/freezing for me:
--"Allow applications to block compositing": Enabled -> Disabled
It is definitely hardware related.

---

A minimal build with an install script would be interesting to see. I wonder how other users would take to it? I've installed ArchLabs on a few machines without issues, but I don't think a keyboard-only, CLI installer is for everyone. I'm also curious if it would make maintaining the distro more simple in certain aspects (a single ISO for multiple DEs, etc.). Setting this up would be a big task! I'm looking forward to future releases no matter which routes you take!

Best,

jcs19

Edit:
I've installed optimus-manager, optimus-manager-qt, (and nvidia drivers (latest)) on my machine and can confirm that GPU switching works fine on Salient OS KDE. I do not have the restart the whole machine; GPU switching takes >4 seconds. Both the Intel and NVIDIA sessions run on x11 (not Wayland)!

(I've attatched some rough notes I took during my setup for this.)

Time to test some games!