ExpansionCards VS bbswitch

I think the SD module won't be able to have the card flush, as the modules are only and SD cards are 32mm long, and you need some PCB space for the socket cage and the USB-C on the other side. The retrofit PCB outline they provide is only 26.9mm from front edge to back edge, so an SD card will stick out a little bit.

So perhaps they decided to go for the one that lets users have the card flush for use like an expansion bay as well as for data transfer to/from devices.

https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards/tree/mai...

There are many laptops and desktops that fit the bill.

Frame.work: https://frame.work/

Dell: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000138246/linux-on-...

System76: https://system76.com/laptops

Kubuntu Focus: https://kfocus.org/land/business

I am sure there are more, this is only what I have found in less than 5 minutes of searching.

I'll buy a frame.work long before I touch system76. Their prices are too high for the general feedback I keep seeing on the quality control. I'm not spending 3k+ to be out a laptop until support responds. Especially, considering they still don't make these in house..

No they didn't, companies just mostly gave up on it.

A Framework Laptop (https://frame.work)

You could get a Framework 13 which comes with your choice of a 7840U or 7640U and a Radeon 780M iGPU. They do officially support Linux, and you don't have to pay for a Windows license, if you go the DIY option and chose to not get a Windows license.

Take a look at the Framework laptops. They're 100% modular so if stuff like that goes bad you can simply order the replacement part and do it yourself. I'm using a desktop right now but Ithink my next laptop is gonna be a framework.

a couple of days ago I tried to order a Framework laptop (13 inch AMD). I chose to create an account during the checkout process and provided my email address. After entering my shipping details, I authorized the transfer of the deposit fee via Giropay. The deposit was deducted from my bank account but when I was sent back to the frame.work website I was greeted by an error message. Unfortunately I could neither complete the checkout process nor continue my account registration.

[0] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch/issues/78

> How did you "power down" your nvidia card?

First I made sure X was working the way I wanted with Intel graphics. There are a handful of ways to do hybrid graphics on Linux, depending on what you want to be able to do, and how old your hardware is. The Arch wiki has some pretty good guides [1] that are helpful even if you're using a different system.

bbswitch seems to work on my system, and the interface is really simple [2]. But there's also this page on the acpi-call thing [3], which suggests that bbswitch is old and unmaintained and that newer systems do something different. From a quick scan, it looks like the Arch wiki also mentions this approach.

As far as drivers go, I know everyone likes to dump on Nvidia for their closed source mess, but in every system I've used with Nvidia hardware (desktops and laptops), I've found that the Nvidia drivers have universally been more reliable than nouveau, so that's what I use.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/hybrid_graphics (poke around in "Related Articles" too)

[2] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch#turn-the-card-...

[3] https://github.com/geminis3/nvidia-gpu-off

Not sure if you'd want to on a new computer, but you could always try to repaste and undervolt (which is enabled on tigerlake-H processors!). If you don't need to use your DGPU often, you can try to disable it with BBSwitch.

Google tells me, for ubuntu, bbswitch can be used to turn off gpu. Here's the link to its github page. I read the README file, but I'm still new to linux and i couldn't understand the following :

I think what you're looking for is bbswitch. I don't know which Optimus method you're using, but optimus-manager has bindings for it. For example. here is my config that turns it off by default if on batter power at boot:

Check: https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch

Try using bbswitch (you can configure it to exclusively use intel graphics)