And it happened again, my old trusty HP Omen 17" i7 laptop passed away.
So it was about time, and I had to renew my old trust Acer V5 15" i5 Laptop. After digging and digging I decided to get an HP OMEN 17.3" i7-8750H Laptop. Although it is hardware built for gamers, the fact that it has 12 CPU cores makes it attractive for coders and people who need power for other things than playing.
I will write here how I managed to make it work almost flawlessly under Linux Mageia 7 (and keep updating Mageia).
MSI Kanata 17 B13V Laptop Specs
Model: 17 B13VGK-802CA
So, here is what the websites claim this laptop has:
- Display: 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) IPS anti-glare WLED-backlit at 144 Hz
- Processor: Intel® Core™ Intel Core i9-13900H (20 cores @ 5.4 GHz)
- Memory: 16 GB DDR5-5600 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
- Storage: 1TB PCIe NVMe
- Graphic: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 4070 Ti (8 GB GDDR6 dedicated)
- Connectivity: 1 HDMI 2.0
- 1 headphone/microphone combo
- 1 Mini DisplayPort™
- 1 RJ-45
- 1 USB 3.2 Type-C™ (Data Transfer up to 5 Gb/s, DP1.2, HP Sleep and Charge)
- 3 USB 3.2 Gen 1 (1 HP Sleep and Charge)
- Battery type: 3-cell, 52 Wh Li-ion
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home
- Optical Drive: No
Before You Wipeout Windows for Good
- Take note of the recognized hardware, interrupts, ports, and everything you can.
- Upgrade your BIOS. When I got this laptop, there was an update. You will need to go to the MSI Support website and download it.
Installing Linux Mageia in Your MSI Pulse Laptop
The installation is straightforward. No big deal. The issue is later when we start configuring things the installer didn't do. Don't panic, the installation kernel won't recognize the wifi radio but the installed kernel will.
Grub Parameters
Make sure to remove the nokmsboot parameter and add rfkill.default_state=1. nokmsboot prevents the high-resolution graphics from working. The rfkill.default_state=1 fixes an issue where the wifi is off after each restart.
Nvidia or Nouveau?
Go for Nvidia proprietary modules. You will need to blacklist the nouveau module. Edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-compat file and add the following line: blacklist nouveau. Add options nvidia-current NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1 to fix an issue that prevents the NVIDIA from waking up properly.
After that type: depmod -a and after that you will need to recreate the Dracut image by typing dracut --force.
You may want to install Bumblebee to take advantage of your Nvidia card. Here is a little side effect, do not let Bumblebee start when booting, it freezes. But if you call it later, it works. I will update this article if I find a solution.
X
X will not recognize your keyboard and touchpad right away. You will need to force some drivers. Put the following files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/
00-keyboard.conf
# Read and parsed by systemd-localed. It's probably wise not to edit this file
# manually too freely.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "system-keyboard"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbOptions" "compose:rwin"
Option "XkbVariant" "alt-intl"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection10-synaptics.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Touchpad" # required
MatchIsTouchpad "yes" # required
Driver "synaptics" # required
Option "MinSpeed" "0.5"
Option "MaxSpeed" "1.0"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.075"
Option "TapButton1" "1"
Option "TapButton2" "2" # multitouch
Option "TapButton3" "3" # multitouch
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1" # multitouch
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1" # multitouch
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "CoastingSpeed" "8"
Option "CornerCoasting" "1"
Option "CircularScrolling" "1"
Option "CircScrollTrigger" "7"
Option "EdgeMotionUseAlways" "1"
Option "LBCornerButton" "8" # browser "back" btn
Option "RBCornerButton" "9" # browser "forward" btn
EndSection40-libinput.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "libinput"
Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSectionRun Applications using the NVIDIA
After starting bumblebee daemon, use the optirun command.
I highly recommend you to read my article about how to set up Darktable with the NVIDIA in this laptop as I have another approach where the Inter chip is used only on frame-buffer and text while the GPU is used in the high-definition graphics.
The /tmp Directory
The NVIDIA module uses the /tmp directory to save the state of the memory when going to sleep. If you have an 8 GB GPU, they you should grow the /tmp directory 8 GB + 5% (at least). To do this, type systemctl edit tmp.mount and add the following lines:
[Mount]
Options=mode=1777,strictatime,nosuid,nodev,size=12G
Then type systemctl start tmp.mount (you may need to restart)
Good luck!
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