New Laptop...

[jedi]

Hi all...

Got a new laptop on the last day of Feb.  (that'll give you some idea of how long I've tried to get it running)  Best laptop I've had to date.  Bar NONE!!!!  MSI GT72S 6QE Dominator Pro G.  Rolls right off the tongue eh?     Anyway I have it running fine with Arch, but have had no joy at all with anything else.  Yeah, I do have a little hackery going on to make it all work, but well worth it imo.

Anybody runs into a decent link concerning the above mentioned laptop and Linux, please post a link for it if it's a "real" link...

Mines a beast!
Intel Quad Core i7 Skylake 6820HK
intel CM236 chipset
32GiB (dual channel 1366Mhz)  DDR5 2666MHz RAM
512GiB Samsung pro 951 NVMe m.2 SSD
Hitachi 1TB 7200 rpm HDD
Nvidia GTX980M 8GiB's gDDR5 vRAM
6 USB 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI, 1 Mini Display port, 2 Thunderbird ports...  (ports, ports, ports,)
Blue Ray Burner

[PackRat]

No joy as in nothing else installs, or are there some hardware issues?

Found a couple links related to the wireless and graphics -

Wireless on Ubuntu

Hardware - Arch Wiki

Looks like you may need to get some current drivers and do some blacklisting of modules.

[jedi]

Ubuntu=Hopeless!  Arch=currently running!

hehe, hardware issues!  Yeah, you could say that for sure.  The new Killer Wireless is a real beyatch!  Finally got it working but it is not very good considering it is the latest and greatest tech.  Basically it boils down to me not doing my homework when buying a new laptop.  About the only thing I made sure of was that it did not have hybrid graphics.  (it doesn't)  I've had zero issues with graphics on it though.  Mostly boot issues, (or maybe I should say Non-Boot issues!)  Debian 8 is a good example.  Totally will not install.  VSIDO is the same.  I've tried ISO's of VSIDO from over 3 years ago to the latest working 64bit ISO with 'no joy'!

Besides Debian, Arch is really the only other distro I've ever used.  I will tell you this; once you are used to VSIDO, imo, everything else is a far second place.

I actually left Windows 10 Home on it for a couple of weeks.  It was awesome!  No, really!  The keyboard lit up in a rainbow of colors!  Oh, actually that is all that Windoze did do.  It allowed the SteelSeries Engine keyboard to light up correctly.  Like I give two s4!ts about the keyboard "breathing" or doing "the wave"!  I have seen on the web that there is a way to get it to work on Linux as well, but seriously, who needs a rainbow colored keyboard?  Being a mechanical keyboard, it is a fine piece of workmanship I will say,  Probably the best keyboard I've ever typed on!  The backlight for it also works though only in the color of white.  I'm not sure why the need for the full color spectrum on backlit keys?  Gaming maybe?

So far I have everything working under Arch, and looking as close to VSIDO as I've been able to make it!  I still have a very nice HP Pavilion laptop with a touchscreen that I have VSIDO on.  For any of you who are curious, the touchscreen works OOTB with VSIDO!!!  I have not got the microphone or the built-in web-cam to work.  Actually to be fair, I have not even tried to get them to work.  When I talk to someone I still do it the old fashioned way, face to face, or on the phone.  I'm not sure if I've ever even used a web-cam before.

For now, it is working well enough for me to have it turned on and Linux running on it.  Like VastOne has told me, the rest will catch up eventually.

For those of you that are in love with EFI, this machine would suit you well.  It is very difficult to get it to run using Legacy BIOS mode.  The ability is there, but seems to have been an afterthought when they created the firmware.  It is very unreliable on this particular machine.  I have all but given up trying to make a workable system using the Legacy BIOS fallback abilities this system supposedly supports.  Currently I'm setup using UEFI and GPT.  Windows has been totally wiped like it was never even there.  Currently only Arch lives here.  (For the time being)  This will be rectified when I get over my lackadaisical attitude about it, and again find some motivation!  Currently all I'm using it for is to play my Steam games.  I got to tell you, that with all this new hardware, games are TOTALLY UNREAL!!!  XCOM2, The Talos Principle, Tomb Raider, and Tom Clancy's The Division are totally unbelievable.  It is like watching a movie when your playing a newer game.  Graphically, everything runs on ULTRA settings and you can easily get at a minimum 60FPS.  It is also VR ready, though that tech is a little beyond my budget at this time.  Steam is really trying hard to make the Linux community happy these days!  I've had a blast trying out new game demo's since receiving this new lappy...

[airtime]

I tend to stay away from the latest and greatest .. I like to grab a year old laptop since i will be running Linux on it anyway.

Mas

[jedi]

I tend to stay away from the latest and greatest .. I like to grab a year old laptop since i will be running Linux on it anyway.

Mas

I only buy every 4 or 5 years, so it was time for a new one. 

[PackRat]

What do you do with the old ones?

[jedi]

    The wife and kids fight over them...