Ubuntu 20.04 and Razer Blade Studio (2020)

Hi, friends!

I am finally receiving my new (actually, replacement, as the first one crapped out on me three days into owning it -- stay away from Razer support at all costs!) RBS2020 today. Previously I tried a Windows Insider build for GPU access through Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). While the CUDA card worked in WSL2 without a hitch, Intel is not quite there yet. I would like to be able to use both GPUs for development, and therefore am planning to install Ubuntu 20.04 (primarily for software compatibility).

After a bit of work, I managed to get Ubuntu 18.04 on my old MacBook Pro; with newer kernels, >5.0, it was even easier. I have experience working with Linux so am not afraid to get my hands a little dirty. However, time is money and don't want to need to get too dirty.

A few questions to the Linux community regarding Ubuntu or other Debian flavors on RBS:

• Anyone have any luck or experience hardware working nominally? Any semi-working or non-working?
• Firmware updating, and best practices for doing so?
• Tutorials, documentation? (N.B. I'm not a fan of YouTube videos for this type of stuff.)
• Any "gotchas" or things I should be aware of?

I may keep a Windows partition just in case I ever find time to play a game.


Thanks in advance,
blankvin

 

If I remember right some silly stuff like the SD card reader wouldn't play nice, but I was able to get all graphics and audio drivers working (the important stuff) on the absolute latest Ubuntu ... 18 didn't have the Intel Wifi drivers bundled in to run updates during the installation process.

I would warn you that I couldn't get GPU passthrough work nice at all into a Windows VM which is why I can't/haven't swapped over to Linux full time. Something to do with Optimus and muxless, doh!

 

I am with Manjaro, and all is working as expected with some ups and downs. Since Manjaro is Arch based I am with latest 5.9 kernel, wifi is working, optimus is working by default (card is turned off). I am using my clone of Razer laptop control(without dkms) driver for lighting and performance control. OLED display is last problem, as there are no direct control. There are experimental patches but they tend to work 50-50. I have not tried passthrough yet, but there are guides for muxless passthrough, I will give a shot with project looking glass

Edit: I am with studio too. There is no direct bios update, there are some workarounds. But from my experience. Bios updates for Razer are not that needed. EC controller is more interesting as it will direct control performance.

 

Let me know how you go with the LookingGlass passthrough - I got so annoyed bashing my head against it I reformatted back to Windows lol.

 

Basically I don't need windows at all. I am not gaming and all programing is under Linux. So even I fail it will be OK. I am doing this exercise just for fun, no real need.

 

Thanks, all!

@phusho I appreciate the piece on firmware/bios updates -- this was my follow-up question. My last RBS 2020 crapped out during such an update and, in addition, was wary about upgrading too for loss of under-volting (should I ever want to do this).

I'm running on Ubuntu 20.04 from USB, and I'm happy to see both GPUs are found, keyboard does its special light stuff (woo-hoo...), and WiFi works. I did notice I cannot adjust the display brightness -- that's kind of a bummer.

 

What about sleep/suspend and wake? Hibernate? I had some minor issues here with my MacBook that I quasi-resolved only when using the iGPU (problem bringing back the AMD GPU from the states), and read others have with RBS.

 

You can use icc-brightness for this it is for OLED displays and works.

 

Suspend and resume works, I don't use hibernate.

 

For brightness control, you can use PopOS!. It works out of the box on my blade 2020 advanced with the OLED. You can even download the nvidia build of the ISO if you choose and have GPU drivers built in which was nice for me too.

 

System76 have OLED workstation laptop, so may be they have made something extra.

 

Had used Razer Blade 2108 Advanced and Pro 17 2019 for a while, both with dual OS installed, Windows 10 and Manjaro Linux (KDE). Everything worked normally without any issue. Brightness control should function normally after installation of the proprietary NVidia driver.