# New laptop suitable for Gentoo

## alogim

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night according to your location.

Currently I am in the process of gathering information to buy a new laptop. My main and only operating system is, of course, Gentoo. 

Now, I have read some blogs and websites, and many of them suggest considering system76 laptops. Are they any good? I see no mention here on the forums, either they work perfectly fine with Gentoo or no one has ever installed Gentoo on them. They come with either Ubuntu or Pop!_OS pre installed. 

The model I am specifically interested in is the system76 Gazelle. It comes with an Intel Core i7-8750H, which I guess it would be more than enough for Gentoo. I would set it up with 16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB NVMe SSD. It comes with just the integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 graphics card, which prevents the hassle of having both an integrated and a dedicated graphics card.

So, what do you think about it? Anyone with some experience with it, even without Gentoo?

----------

## The Doctor

I have not, but as of about 5 or more years ago the reviews are good.

Remember, Linux compatibility is Linux compatibility. If it runs Ubuntu it will run Gentoo. Personally, I like Lenovo for hardware but when buying windows laptops you have to read the specs and do your homework. Failure to do so can lead to usb wifi and other hacks. It can be as simple as googling the hardware or brand of the components (not the laptop) to see what their linux experience is.

----------

## bunder

I'm happy with my 7th gen gazelle.  Get the nvme disk and 8/16gb of memory, you won't be sorry.   :Very Happy: 

edit:

```
lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 05)               no driver needed

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 591b (rev 04)                                             i915

00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 31)                                 xhci_hcd

00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H Thermal subsystem (rev 31)                           intel_pch_thermal

00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H CSME HECI #1 (rev 31)                                 mei_me

00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 31)                              ahci

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f1)                                    pcieport

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)                                    pcieport

00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #7 (rev f1)                                    pcieport

00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f1)                                    pcieport

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller (rev 31)                                          no driver needed

00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PMC (rev 31)                                             no driver needed

00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation CM238 HD Audio Controller (rev 31)                                             snd_hda_intel (realtek codec)

00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SMBus (rev 31)                                                      i801_smbus

02:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8411B PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)                     rtsx_pci

02:00.1 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)      r8169 (needs linux-firmware)

03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak] (rev 10)                           iwlwifi (needs linux-firmware)

04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM961/PM961                           nvme 

lsusb

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0aa7 Intel Corp.                                                                  btusb (needs linux-firmware)

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04f2:b5a7 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd                                                      uvcvideo

```

ugh forum formatting...  hopefully you can decipher that.   :Laughing: 

----------

## Spargeltarzan

I find my hardware like The Doctor explained you, personally I use a Lenovo too.

You might be interested in Purism:

https://puri.sm/

----------

## alogim

 *Spargeltarzan wrote:*   

> I find my hardware like The Doctor explained you, personally I use a Lenovo too.
> 
> You might be interested in Purism:
> 
> https://puri.sm/

 

Yes, I have heard and checked them already, however they "only" offer laptops with 6th generation Intel CPUs, and considering we are currently at the end of the eighth, they are a little old, especially considered the price they come at.

Unfortunately, even though system76's laptops look like the best for me, living in Italy, they come with more than a hundred dollars of delivery costs, not to mention potential customs fees. Also, should I have some problems and send it back for repair, it will take about another hundred bucks, which really is not a good thing.

Instead, I am taking into consideration Tuxedo, which is another  good brand, placed in Germany, which is way nearer to me. Also, it looks like their laptops are basically the same provided by Schenker. 

So, I now have some questions: 

 Is an Intel Core i5-8550U any good for Gentoo? It is a quad core with hyper-threading technology, that is, it runs with eight thread. The top speed is set to 4.0 Ghz (for just one core running), however, while under prolonged and heavy tasks, it tends to cruise between 2.2 and 2.5 Ghz. So, jsut to make a comparison, would the compile times offered by the i7-8550U better, worse or way worse than my desktop i5-3570k? Considering that we are speaking about a 5 generation difference, a comparison can make sense, even if they are on different architectures (desktop vs mobile).

 The majority of the laptops I have seen so far, except for the ones provided by system76, all comes with either:

 an Intel Core i5-8550U and no dedicated graphics card, or

 any other more powerful CPU, such as the i7-8350H/8750H and a powerful dedicated graphics card, such as the GeForce GTX 1050 and above.

Now, I read that, for example, on the Dells, setting the nVidia VGA to work properly used to be a rather difficult task, often ending with frustration. Now, maybe the drivers are better, I have no experience with nVidia. I would not use it at all, certainly not for gaming, and I know that having a dedicated graphics card means more battery drain. 

Do you think it would be a real problem to by a laptop with both an integrated graphics card and a dedicated graphics card? 

 Is there a site out there comparing CPUs in terms of compile times?

Thank you in advance.

----------

## bunder

U processors are low-power, I doubt they would be any good for real number crunching, which you need if you're compiling packages.  If you're okay with longer wait times, then I guess it would be fine.

----------

## hhfeuer

See openbenchmarking for that:

https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/build-linux-kernel

timed linux compilation

i5-3470 259s

i7-8550U 204s

Only take a dedicated GPU if you're a gamer. Otherwise, save yourself the hassle.

----------

## skellr

 *hhfeuer wrote:*   

> See openbenchmarking for that:
> 
> https://openbenchmarking.org/showdown/pts/build-linux-kernel
> 
> timed linux compilation
> ...

 

259s for what? Make allnoconfig && make -j9?

----------

## alogim

 *skellr wrote:*   

> 
> 
> 259s for what? Make allnoconfig && make -j9?

 

Well, I performed that test with my i5-3570k, however the test suite has been updated and now uses kernel 4.13.x and not 3.1.x. Anyway, it took about 237 seconds, that is, almost 4 minutes. I see another result on that site for my same CPU, saying it takes only 96 seconds... I hardly think so.

Anyway, after doing some research I discovered that the i5-8300H and i5-8400H CPUs are actually more powerful than the i7-8550U, which makes sense, since the latter is designed to save power, while the former are designed to be performant. I would really like if anyone could point me to a laptop with an i5-8300H with no dedicated graphics card that does not cost like if it were made out of gold   :Very Happy: 

----------

## Anon-E-moose

 *bunder wrote:*   

> U processors are low-power, I doubt they would be any good for real number crunching, which you need if you're compiling packages.  If you're okay with longer wait times, then I guess it would be fine.

 

Don't really need number crunching for compiling packages.

Times are a little longer, but not that bad.

My fx8320 (8 core 3.5ghz)

sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0-r3  merge time: 33 minutes and 40 seconds.

www-client/palemoon-27.9.2 merge time 17 minutes and 31 seconds

My acer i3-7100u (4 core 2.4ghz)

sys-devel/gcc-7.3.0-r3  merge time: 51 minutes and 15 seconds.

www-client/palemoon-27.9.2 merge time 32 minutes and 47 seconds

They are indeed low-power though, I get 8-12 hours on battery depending on what I'm doing.

----------

