[PlanetCCRMA] new computer - hp spectre

Sun May 7 19:52:56 PDT 2017

On 05/07/2017 01:29 AM, Oded Ben-Tal wrote:
...
> Thanks for the links I'll check things. Do you know how I find out if
> the omputer has optimus or not? I see that the nvidia card I have
> (GeForce 940MX) is listed by nvidia with optimus technolgies does that
> mean I should try following this
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus
> and hope that it works?

What I ended up using in my laptop is the binary NVidia driver (yes, 
yuck!) plus bumblebee - there is a repository for it and Fedora:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bumblebee

 From what I understand in my laptop there is no direct hardware 
connection between the GPU and the graphics output hardware so bumblebee 
does that, if needed. The end result in my case is that I pretty much 
never use the NVidia part of the graphics system and just use the Intel 
graphics. The NVidia hardware is turned "off" by bbswitch so that it 
does not use power.

> I'm getting used to working with the touchpad without buttons (and its
> also a touch screen and comes with the pen so I'm trying that as an
> interface).

Lucky you. Maybe your touchpad is better. The one I had before was very 
frustrating even after tuning its operation with a configuration file.

-- Fernando

> On 7 May 2017 at 01:35, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando at ccrma.stanford.edu
> <mailto:nando at ccrma.stanford.edu>> wrote:
>
>     On 05/05/2017 12:54 PM, Oded Ben-Tal wrote:
>
>         So, I finally got my new computer on Wednesday and I can give some
>         preliminary report in case you are interested.
>
>
>     Thanks!,
>
>         I got a 15" HP spectre with SSD HD.
>         Install Fedora was not a real problem (I made some mistakes
>         along the
>         way about partitioning but that is entirly my own fault. No
>         damage just
>         lost a few hours trying to sort the mess I created )
>         I tried getting the nvidia card to work but I couldn't get the akmod
>         kernel to compile.
>
>
>     Any errors you can see?
>
>         I also see some acpi related errors, and yesterday it
>         froze when I tried to shut it down. Many restarts were fine. I
>         got the
>         rt kernel installed and was able to get the sound interface (rme
>         babyface as recommended here) working. It seems to be working better
>         then on my older thinkpad. But only tested very briefly.
>         So I'm using the integrated graphic for now, not nvidia.
>
>
>     What kind of graphics architecture does it have? Optimus? Or a true
>     dual graphic card?
>
>         The screen is
>         large and very high resolution and I'm not sure the desktop
>         environment
>         (I've been using xfce, maybe I should have chose kde?) is
>         designed for
>         that. Still, after tweaking the settings, enlarging the fonts
>         etc. I'm
>         getting used to it.
>
>
>     I went through the same when I got the Lenovo a while back (W540 -
>     not buying Lenovo again for many reasons). The display is 3K, 2880 x
>     1620. It is great and I would not go back to 1920x1080 :-) I also
>     had to do a lot of tweaking to get things to render more or less right.
>
>     I'm using the Cinnamon desktop and I kind of like it (old style and
>     look - I added the Chrome theme and it looks pretty nice).
>
>     Cinnamon detects the display density and tries to correct for that,
>     it has a setting you can change but with a 3K display things are
>     wither too small or a bit too big (I see you have a 4K display so
>     maybe it will do the right thing for you). This is from notes that
>     are old so things might have changed:
>
>     ----
>     the current solution is to set "scaling-factor" to "1" in
>     dconf-editor, org.cinnamon.desktop.interface; then
>     text-scaling-factor = 1.5 or 1.6. This fixes the font size, sort of.
>     Window decorations are a bit too big, that apparently is a known
>     problem. Then the panels are too small so change the size to a
>     bigger one. Almost usable.
>     ----
>
>     And:
>
>     ----
>     - Firefox and DPI:
>
>     https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox_tweaks#Configure_the_DPI_value
>     <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox_tweaks#Configure_the_DPI_value>
>
>     ----
>     Configure the DPI value
>
>     Modifying the following value can help improve the way fonts looks
>     in Firefox if the system's DPI is below 96. Firefox, by default,
>     uses 96 and only uses the system's DPI if it is a higher value. To
>     force the system's DPI regardless of its value, type about:config
>     into the address bar and set layout.css.dpi to 0.
>
>     Note that the above method only affects the Firefox user interface's
>     DPI settings. Web page contents still use a DPI value of 96, which
>     may look ugly or, in the case of high-resolution displays, may be
>     rendered too small to read. A solution is to change
>     layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to system's DPI divided by 96. For
>     example, if your system's DPI is 144, then the value to add is
>     144/96 = 1.5. Changing layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 1.5 makes web
>     page contents use a DPI of 144, which looks much better.
>     ----
>
>     layout.css.devPixelsPerPx = 1.7 seems to give a "normal" size to the
>     pages
>
>     layout.css.dpi = 0
>     ----
>
>     For Thunderbird:
>
>     ----
>     https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Thunderbird
>     <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Thunderbird>
>
>     Same as in Firefox:
>
>     ----
>     layout.css.devPixelsPerPx = 1.7 seems to give a "normal" size to the
>     pages
>     layout.css.dpi = 0
>     ----
>
>     In Ardour there is a text zoom factor you can use to get things to
>     be readable. But, for example, Ambdec and other utilities look small
>     - but I got used to them.
>
>     There is also an xrandr scaling option but I finally decided to not
>     use it. The scaling is not that pretty and I like my very high
>     resolution.
>
>     Hope this helps...
>
>         On the plus side - it is very, very quiet which was one of the main
>         reasons I opted for this one.
>
>
>     I really really like that! One of the things I hate in my w540 is
>     the fan noise. Worse than the previous Thinkpads I had before. The
>     touchpad was also atrocious. I finally replaced it with one that has
>     three physical buttons. Still the buttons are on top of the touchpad
>     but that is better than nothing. Will definitely look for a proper
>     touchpad with physical buttons in the right place when I upgrade.
>
>         One other thing, though, it onlyl has one usb port. Which may be a
>         limiting factor I have not considered carefully enough.
>
>
>     Ouch. Only one? Hopefully enough...
>
>     -- Fernando
>
>
>
>
> --
> Oded Ben-Tal
> obental.wixsite.com/main <http://obental.wixsite.com/main>
> http://soundcloud.com/odedbental
>
>
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