I dont really want to use that proprietary driver, but I plan on getting an old Thinkpad W530 that has some probably pretty slow NVIDIA GPU. Do you know if these are well supported by Noveau? Would be great!

I want to play around with coreboot, flashing heads onto that laptop and all.

  • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    1 year ago

    I'm running coreboot on a Thinkpad W530 and I've been doing fine.

    I'm encountering some overheating issues and it might be due to the subpar dynamic power management thing, but only when it's under heavy load. I am running Gentoo and would be compiling big stuff like KDE, qtwebengine, and libreoffice. Sometimes the thermal shutdown would kick in, but thing's been better with cooling pad and air conditioning. I'll probably reapply the thermal paste soon.

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      Whoo, that sounds bad. I hope a more aggressive fancurve could fix this, it shoould be possible using thinkfan? Never succeeded with that software and its weird old documentation.

      Btw, do you have any guide for flashing? A photo of your process, the location of the chips, names, order, extracting blobs etc? Documentation is so important! I will write some for the T430 and maybe W530 for heads

        • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          Great post! I didnt get the W530 in the end as 350€ is pretty much for such an old laptop, but someone else wanted it so bad…

          I destroyed my CH341A and now I got a blue one but still shipping, then I will flash my T430 which should make no problems, no NVIDIA and all

          • timkenhan@sopuli.xyz
            1·
            1 year ago

            Should be more straightforward without the Nvidia stuff since you don't need the option ROM for it.

            I never have T430, but all the 30 series should be the same in term of flashing procedure except for the chip locations.

      • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        The overheating isn't much of an issue in other cases. When I'm not building packages, the temperature is on safe level. I've also ran Debian & Linux Mint on it with no issue (with nouveau)

        I don't have any writeup on it, unfortunately…

        • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          I mean, the fans should kick up to highest level. I remember thinkpadfancontrol on windows, great software. This never happened and on Linux I never had my fans at level 7 no matter the heat

          • pastermil@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            1 year ago

            The fan did maxed out. Seems it's not enough. Maybe it's the hot weather. The AC helps a lot. I'll also be checking the thermal paste soon.