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NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

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Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#41

Post by pjmlp »

microtonal wrote: post #22

Motorcomm YT6801 LAN drivers Why does a Linux laptop brand ship with an Ethernet NIC (Motorcomm YT6801) that requires an out-of-tree driver? (And a hack to fix ACPI issues.) I think I know the answer, but...

This is why I stopped caring about Linux brand laptops, in the end they are simply white brands where Linux mostly works, not everything, not everything out of the box as any laptop I might buy on the shopping mall computer center.

Maybe when they get System 76 devices on display.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#42

Post by pjmlp »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #28
microtonal wrote: post #22

Motorcomm YT6801 LAN drivers Why does a Linux laptop brand ship with an Ethernet NIC (Motorcomm YT6801) that requires an out-of-tree driver? (And a hack to fix ACPI issues.) I think I know the answer, but...

If I were designing a laptop specifically for Linux it’s hard to image going for anything but Intel for networking, but it’s possible Tuxedo’s ODM doesn’t give them the choice.

Dell XPS and Asus netbooks supposedly were designed with Linux in mind, and I had my share of wlan adventures.

On Asus netbook, only the original proprietary driver from Asus worked properly, the open source replacement, always kept dying when under load, regardless of how many improvements were made to it.

Something like updating Rust, instead of seconds, took minutes with all the network reconnection happening, or I had to pull the lan cable instead.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#43

Post by microtonal »

pjmlp wrote: post #42
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were designing a laptop specifically for Linux it’s hard to image going for anything but Intel for networking, but it’s possible Tuxedo’s ODM doesn’t give them the choice.

Dell XPS and Asus netbooks supposedly were designed with Linux in mind, and I had my share of wlan adventures. On Asus netbook, only the original proprietary driver from Asus worked properly, the open source replacement, always kept dying when under load, regardless of how many improvements were made to it. Something like updating Rust, instead of seconds, took minutes with all the network reconnection happening, or…

I guess my point is that brands like Lenovo use bog-standard Realtek and Intel NICs and they just work well out of the box. Somewhat similar with WiFi chipsets - my ThinkPad uses a standard Qualcomm chipset and it works without any issues.

It seems like these small Linux laptop vendors do not have enough clout to ask ODMs for devices with better-supported hardware. On the other hand, there must be ODMs that use more standard hardware, no?

At any rate, it creates the weird situation that it is better to purchase something like a ThinkPad if you want good Linux support. But if the Linux laptop vendors do not become large enough, they will not have enough sway over ODMs.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#44

Post by pjmlp »

microtonal wrote: post #43
pjmlp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell XPS and Asus netbooks supposedly were designed with Linux in mind, and I had my share of wlan adventures. On Asus netbook, only the original proprietary driver from Asus worked properly, the open source replacement, always kept dying when under load, regardless of how many improvements were made to it. Something like updating Rust, instead of seconds, took minutes with all the network reconnection happening, or…

I guess my point is that brands like Lenovo use bog-standard Realtek and Intel NICs and they just work well out of the box. Somewhat similar with WiFi chipsets - my ThinkPad uses a standard Qualcomm chipset and it works without any issues. It seems like these small Linux laptop vendors do not have enough clout to ask ODMs for devices with better-supported hardware. On the other hand, there must be ODMs that use more…

Ironically that driver I was talking about was the Qualcomm driver, Ubuntu the distribution Asus was using on the netbook I had, decided to replace the proprietary blob with the open source on, back then in its early days.

Not only did we had to endure it getting feature complete, or rollback kernel updates as means to be able to use the proprietary one, it was never as stable during the last decade.

Point being if not even Dell and Asus, with their might care enough for a flawless Linux experience, how can we expect better from small shops doing Linux installations on random asian models?

Last year I got burned with 300 euros, buying something that was supposed to work with Linux, but only did so when using external storage via USB, booting never worked from the internal SSD drive, pity that forgot to mention that anywhere.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#45

Post by rowanG077 »

rgoulter wrote: post #38
tombert wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people say this, but honestly this kind of sounds like someone who doesn't understand the ethos around NixOS. NixOS isn't just a vanilla Linux distro with Nix preinstalled The whole point of NixOS is that the entire system is managed by Nix. The entirety of everything is declarative in your configuration file(s) and the entire system can consistently be rebuilt from the configuration. The root system is immu…

OP had a situation where software he wanted to run didn't work with NixOS. If OP wanted the benefits of the Nix package manager (e.g. per-project development environments, using Nix to build container images, etc.), and didn't want the friction of "how do I run this software on NixOS", I think it's straightforward that using Nix on a non-NixOS distro is a practical choice.

Using nix on non-NixOS definitely has benefits, I don't think that's disputed. But it's not "the best of both worlds" as the things NixOS gives are immense and not at all fully provided by just using nix on another OS.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#46

Post by akimbostrawman »

xorcist wrote: post #8
dangus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the Atomic Linux approach is already a better fit for desktop usage. Flatpaks for most user software along with other options to install packages with different methods if there are special/legacy requirements. I think the only negative aspect of the approach is the sheer quantity [1] of package installation options available. [1] https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/

Flatpaks are a potential security disaster where people learn to install software of questionable provenance, not much different from other desktop operating systems where users learn to click past the warning to install binaries found on random web pages.

People will do that anyways if not from 3rd party repos like incredibly popular AURs or PPAs then good old curl | sh.

Flatpaks at least have a sandbox that can be easily configured to protect the user, does not require elevated privileges and get some limited vetting on flathub. Not to mention additional security feature like portals.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#47

Post by akimbostrawman »

mhitza wrote: post #6
dangus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the Atomic Linux approach is already a better fit for desktop usage. Flatpaks for most user software along with other options to install packages with different methods if there are special/legacy requirements. I think the only negative aspect of the approach is the sheer quantity [1] of package installation options available. [1] https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/

Flatpak makes it very hard to see who packages what. There are apps that look official, buy are built in third-party repositories. With distributions packages, there's a bigger barrier to entry which is at least better in avoiding sneaky malware from easily creeping in.

Flathub is VERY transparent which packages are not verified and unlike system packages they come with sanboxing which if correctly configured (also transparently displayed) can mitigate malicious access.

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#48

Post by [deleted] »

bjackman wrote: post #34

It's rather bleak that these special "Linux computers" require this much fiddling. None of my laptops are sold as running Linux but all of them were easier to set up than this (only the MacBook Air 2013 required anything at all other than running the Ubuntu installer and clicking "yes").

[deleted]

Re: NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop

#49

Post by antonvs »

bjackman wrote: post #40
antonvs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge here is installing NixOS. The ease of installing Linux on the laptops you've used is because someone else has already done this kind of work.

I have installed NixOS on mainstream hardware and it doesn't involve any of the faffing discussed here. The HW-specific aspect of setup is normally completely automatic.

Again, that's because the work has already been done to support mainstream hardware.
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