I really like Linux, but I've just got a few annoying problems I need to solve.
GRAPHICS: - What is the best card to get that works? -> What is the easiest card to get that has good drivers? Maybe something that doesn't require booting to terminal mode to install? - Where do I go so see/select my current graphics drivers? I'm trying to check on my Intel Integrated drivers. - I want to do a KVM so that I can play some games, again is there a specific card that would be good for this in passthrough?
MOUSE - I have a Logitech G700s... very strangely, sometimes the extra buttons work perfectly normally, and other times the buttons randomly don't work or do different/strange/buggy things. Is there any good or easy way to fix this?
SCREENSHOT - This isn't bad, but is there way to assign a hotkey to screenshotting a specific monitor (#3) every time?
GOOGLE DRIVE - I have a Galaxy S7 phone and am looking for some sort of service to sync a few folders going both directions.
NVidia works the best with Linux currently. Get something recent, and the most recent drivers should work fine. For vms you'll need to pass an option that tricks the card into thinking it's not running a vm.
GRAPHICS: - What is the best card to get that works?;
Recent cards (like a couple of generations old) from both companies work fine. Just take a bit more care with the AMD ones cause some older one might have a few issues.
What is the easiest card to get that has good drivers? Maybe something that doesn't require booting to terminal mode to install?
Latest generation cards RX4xxx and GF10xx or 9xx should be a good best. The Nvidia drivers can be installed by the GUI using the ¨Drivers¨ application. These will not be the latest but the will be tested and work. If you want to install the latest you have to do it manually. That might require booting to terminal mode. But the tested driver works absolutely fine.
The AMD drivers are at the point of a complete revamp. The latest open drivers are installed by default and work fine. But their performance is not up to par with the propriety version yet, unless you have the 4.7+ kernel. Mint comes by defaur with the 4.4. So you might want to install the proprietary ones for now. They are not integrated in the ¨Drivers¨ app yet (complete revamp and all), but should at some point. But the process to install using the terminal is very easy. There are instructions on the AMD driver page. And you do not need to boot into terminal mode. Just one thing. There was a bug with Cinnamon on Mint and the AMD drivers. This should be fixed very soon (might already have) but be prepared to use Mate or KDE if you use an AMd card. At least for a while...
Where do I go so see/select my current graphics drivers? I'm trying to check on my Intel Integrated drivers.
You can use this:
sudo lshw -c video
Intel drivers though are open and are always the latest by default as far as I know...
I want to do a KVM so that I can play some games, again is there a specific card that would be good for this in passthrough?
No. Every card will work fine. Just mind you that you need two dedicated GPU for that (one for host and one for the VM) and it is an advanced process.
Nvidia has good performance when you use the binary drivers. But it doesn't work best.
The best working gpu is probably Intel followed by amd (480 for example) so long as your on a recent kernel (4.7 and above). Then nvidia as the essentially require the binary driver to work. Usualy not a problem but they can be a bit funny sometimes.
Pass through just requires you have a second gpu for the most part. Then you just need to set it up correctly.
For the mouse.. not sure this might be down the the desktop environment or the version of the drivers used.
For the screenshot you could assign a command to a key that will take a screenshot of a specific monitor. Just need to look at up.
Google drive is supported in gnome that I know of not sure about in mint specifically with their de. I think there's another 3rd part Google drive thing as well you can look up. Is it just google drive you want to use?
Graphics: -Nvidia works well - as others have stated.
Current Graphics Drivers: -Type lsmod to list your currently running kernel modules. -Type lspci to list your current PCI devices. -Type lsusb for your current USB devices. -Relate those commands together to find what video card you are using for your Host machine and what kernel module it uses. If in doubt Google the name of the kernel module to find out what it does.
KVM: -Pass the PCI-Stubs to your kernel line of your boot loader, for the card you want to use with your host OS. -Enable Intel-VT or AMD-V in your BIOS. -Enable Direct-IO options in your BIOS. -Check to see if your PCI groups are nice, some motherboards they are not and group the USB with some other IDs. This makes them hard to pass through via their USB Root Hub (need to potentially pass through each Device-ID/PCI-ID separately - means you cant just plug in your mouse to a different USB port when you feel like it).
Mouse: -Can be configured via your Desktop Mouse settings or via Xinput - or the equivalent utility.
Google Drive: -There are lots of ways of doing this. Google will be able to provide you with them.
Screenshot: -Usually if you hit PRT SC on your keyboard you can get a dialog box to pop up with the screenshot utility. If it doesn't then you'll need to install Gnome's. You can find it by searching google for the package name and then using your preferred pkg manager to install it.
I like Nvidia 6xx 7xx cards. For my linux build I choose a gtx 770 but i have used a gt 520 also. My reasons are: People who write code for Linux usually have day jobs. Cards that are both a few years old AND as common as dirt just seem a safe bet. It's not like there is a large selection AAA games, those that do get ported are about as old as the 7xx series. The phroronix guy don't get free stuff but he is able to get older stuff, so older cards might actually be reviewed. His site has a ton of reviews, http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Graphics+Cards He benchmarks on game that people actually play like CSGO, anandtech benchmarks on horrible games no one plays like Alien Isolation and Shadows of Morder. Both the 520 and 770 drivers were easy to install.
one thing i feel a lot of people keep omitting is with the NVIDIA GPUs on passthrough, there are certain kvm flags that have to be disabled or the driver within windows will disable. for passthrough AMD is easier to get working. that said when it comes to getting two AMD cards working (one host, one for guest) the AMD driver was notorious for taking full control of both cards so i would recommend an NVIDIA host and AMD guest. just my two cents. mind you i havent done a passthrough project in quite a while so maybe somethings have changed
Can't speak specifically to Mint, but running Arch, my R9 380 is about 3x as reliable and easy to use than any of my GTX 970, GTX 660ti or GTX 560.
I think it's partially the newer kernel that helps with the amd gpu's.
@rockking this is true, but keep in mind that certain amd GPU's don't listen to PCIe bus reset commands properly, so keep in mind that you'll need to make sure the GPU you get is on the vfio compatibility list, otherwise when you restart the guest, you'll have to restart the host. I'm not disagreeing with you, just trying to add some supplemental knowledge.
Unfortunately Drive support for Linux is somewhat convoluted.
According to some (see this reddit thread) there is a linux client for Google Drive that is used internally at Google, though it hasn't been released for Linux and there doesn't really seem to be any future support for a local client in the works.
There are however a couple of third-party alternatives that works adequately, albeit admittedlly not as smoothly as the Windows client. I myself use Grive2, which syncs both to and from your local drive. While syncing with the client currently is manual, a script can easily be set up to automatically sync your folders. I also think there is a graphical client for it, though I haven't used it.
Welp, I'll try to get GDrive tomorrow, seems like something is broken at the moment:
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?