I’m retired and supplement my income by doing wedding photography, a potential client is trying to negotiate a deal which includes a new and unused laptop as part payment. I’m tempted to accept, but…
OK…
All my existing PCs are desktops / nvidia graphics / wired network. I’ve never installed openSUSE on a laptop, so was wondering what pitfalls I may encounter.
Hopefully laptop users far more experienced than I can offer some advice.
The laptop is a HP 255 G7 Ryzen 3, from the specifications it has “AMD Radeon Vega 3” graphics and the wireless controller is a Realtek RTL8821CE.
I’d probably be looking to install 15.1 but would consider TW if it was more likely to succeed.
From what I’ve discovered initially the Realtek RTL8821CE may be a problem, but it seems that forum user @sauerland has drivers for that in his home repository.
Is the fact it’s a Ryzen likely to cause any grief, and how about the “Radeon Vega 3”, will that require any special treatment.
Comments, tips, and suggestions welcome, including “don’t do it” …
I’ve done quite some laptop installs, both Leap 15x and Tumbleweed, older and more recent laptops, but have not yet met the Ryzen 3 AFAIK. The issues I’ve met with wireless cards were on two Lenovo’s where wifi was Broadcom, and wired not working either with Leap 15.0, TW did have a working kernel driver. And one laptop ( don’t remember brand ), where neither Bumblebee, nor suse-prime would let the NVIDIA work. User later reported that he flashed a new BIOS/UEFI and got it working. Last is hidpi screens, on my own I have to set EnableHiDpi=true in /etc/sddm.conf’s [X11] section to have proper fontsizes etc.
Hi
How much system RAM? Is it a rotating disk or SSD?
AFAIK, Ryzen kernel fixes are backported, but if it becomes an issue can always use the newer kernel(s) from the various repositories. You may need to do some kernel boot options for the GPU, eg amdgpu.ngg=1 since it’s a newer card (you can check the amdgpu module parameters).
My experience with HP laptops has been excellent (Retired a HP 255 G4 a few months ago…too many laptops ;)), still use two HP’s (one with dual amd gpu’s runs tumbleweed).
If it’s wireless only I have a USB to ethernet dongle (Plugable USB 3.0 Portable Hub with Ethernet - 3 port USB 3.0 Bus Powered Hub with Gigabit Ethernet) so can still stay with a wired connection.
Thanks guys… That’s quite encouraging, I’ll likely go ahead.
8Gb RAM and a 256Gb M.2 SATA-3 SSD. The SSD has Win10 pre-installed, I was thinking of maybe replacing that, keeping the original as a fallback if it all went disastrously wrong.
You may need to do some kernel boot options for the GPU, eg amdgpu.ngg=1 since it’s a newer card (you can check the amdgpu module parameters).
AMD graphics is foreign territory to me… there may be further requests for help …
My experience with HP laptops has been excellent (Retired a HP 255 G4 a few months ago…too many laptops ;)), still use two HP’s (one with dual amd gpu’s runs tumbleweed).
That’s good to hear. As an aside, what’s the average battery run time like, in terms of HP’s claimed times.
If it’s wireless only I have a USB to ethernet dongle (Plugable USB 3.0 Portable Hub with Ethernet - 3 port USB 3.0 Bus Powered Hub with Gigabit Ethernet) so can still stay with a wired connection.
According to the specifications it also has a wired connection, so initial network connection shouldn’t be a problem.
Hi
Sounds like a good system, meh windows 10, you can download the latest iso image pop it onto a USB device from within windows with rufus, then if push comes to shove can just re-install that without all the HP cruft
Or if you want to keep WinX, reformat the SSD and stick it at the end
HP 14-an013nr (SLED 15 SP1/Windows 10)
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 111.8G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 260M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2 8:2 0 16M 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 25G 0 part /
├─sda4 8:4 0 15G 0 part /data
├─sda5 8:5 0 1.5G 0 part [SWAP]
└─sda6 8:6 0 70G 0 part
/sbin/lspci -nnk | egrep -A3 "VGA|Display|3D"
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R3 Graphics] [1002:9850] (rev 40)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:8305]
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu
HP 15-aw057nr (Tumbleweed)
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 119.2G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 260M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2 8:2 0 40G 0 part /
├─sda3 8:3 0 78G 0 part /data
└─sda4 8:4 0 1011.3M 0 part [SWAP]
/sbin/lspci -nnk | egrep -A3 "VGA|Display|3D"
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] [1002:9874] (rev ca)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:81fe]
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
Kernel modules: amdgpu
--
04:00.0 Display controller [0380]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Topaz XT [Radeon R7 M260/M265 / M340/M360 / M440/M445] [1002:6900] (rev 83)
DeviceName: AMD Radeon (TM) R7 440M
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:81fe]
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
Battery, they last awhile but mainly use hooked up to power then once a month or so leave them on to drain. There are tools to optimize battery, never worried about them…
My first PC with GNU/Linux was a laptop (back in 1998) and commencing in ~2001 I’ve been using SuSE-Pro (and later openSUSE) on my home laptop’s since.
One thing I always do first, if feasible, is boot from a live-CD, live-DVD, or live-USB (which ever is relevant for the hardware) first, to see if I can identify any issues prior to committing to an installation. Then having identified any issues, I prepare for potential problems prior to the installation, and then typically (albeit not always) the installation goes relatively smooth.
Technology is changing, and sometimes I will encounter a new issue that I have never encountered before, as the new hardware creates issues / different approach needed for the OS.
I’m retired and supplement my income by doing wedding photography at tara weddings, a potential client is trying to negotiate a deal which includes a new and unused laptop as part payment. I’m tempted to accept, but…
OK…
All my existing PCs are desktops / nvidia graphics / wired network. I’ve never installed openSUSE on a laptop, so was wondering what pitfalls I may encounter.
…
I advise you to go to the electronics store and ask to set up your laptop. For a small fee, they can solve your problem. They may not even ask for money for this.
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