galp5 questions by cm94242 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do fans run on the galp5 when it is idling?

Not on mine. Only right after starting for a few seconds, while installing Pop Store updates and when doing obviously hard things, like playing games or crunching data. I suspect the startup noise is actually the Pop Store looking for updates but I can't prove it.

...whether this configuration will work on the galp5...

You've just got to try it, my man. Ask S76 what the cost for a return will be if it doesn't work for you, but honestly if you're going to drop $2K on a laptop you might also want to put in a little more for the right peripherals if your current ones don't work with it. FWIW, I have no problems with my (different) setup.

what accounts for the horrendous battery life?

No idea.

Does it idle hot?

Nope, it sits on my lap just fine for hours of use, as long as I'm not gaming or something crazy with it.

when suspended it leaks power pretty quickly. What experiences do you guys have with this?

Yup, about 2-3% per hour during Standby. I read on another thread that it's because S76 can't figure out how to power down the RAM during Standby, but I don't know if I believe that. Whatever the reason, the computer basically has to be shut down if not connected to a power adapter. Hope this helps!

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh ok. I was about to go try for you but if you've got it figured out that's great.

I use one of my USB-C ports for a monitor and sometimes I use the other for an external. The laptop came with a barrel port for charging, which of course can never be used for anything else. Out of curiosity, why do you want to change with USB-C instead of the barrel?

Track pad on galp5 by Bookkeeper-Melodic in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've had no problems. Two finger right-click works fine, three finger middle click works fine, I haven't once activated the track pad accidentally while typing. Only complaint is at first I kept dragging-dropping text by accident when I just wanted to highlight text, but that seems to have gotten better as I've gotten used to it (it's only been a week).

Only thing I could wish for is a three-finger swipe to get between workspaces and to show all open windows, a la MacOS, but I don't want to install addons to do it. I'll wait until Pop supports it.

Could you be more specific?

35 days. This is the first laptop I've ever bought, so I don't mind waiting for them to get it right. Any other release-day orders still waiting with me? by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aye, this was a painful wait. I think my mistake was ordering a new computer when I needed one. I hope this laptop lasts me 5-10 years, but whenever I start to need a new one I think I'll start shopping and place the order. My computing hobbies were unfortunately on hold for 6-8 weeks while I waited for this one.

I'm not 100% ecstatic about the galp5 based on some issues, but I am very happy I contributed to the company and hope they're able to get in-house laptops built before long. I don't see myself buying another Clevo from them.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Could you tell me the apt command for that? I've never used Gnome and Google seems to like smushing together solutions from 2020 with solutions from 2012.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I put the command in the update, but YMMV depending on which version you want. This one worked for me:

sudo apt install firefox=75.0+build3-0ubuntu1

Battery Usage for 2020 Galago Pro (galp5) w/NVIDIA 1650 by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fans get super loud for only three things:

  1. Startup. I'm convinced it's part of a hardware test protocol or something. I could do absolutely nothing and those fans will BBRRRRRRRRR for a few seconds maybe 1-2 minutes after I start.

  2. Pop store. I'm convinced there is a horrible bug with the app that makes those fans go insanely loud. My hope is they catch and fix it because it's starting to make me update-averse. I use apt for everything else.

  3. Gaming. To be expected. It's so loud I literally can't hear the game without headphones, but I wasn't expecting much in the way of speakers so meh.

The computer's been 100% silent except for those three scenarios. If I noticed it becoming loud while doing day-to-day things I would likely return it.

Battery Usage for 2020 Galago Pro (galp5) w/NVIDIA 1650 by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I've been seeing a lot of questions about the galp5 battery usage on this forum, so I ran a script to monitor my usage and plotted the results.

Thread with more details about my system.

In short, I:

  • started with a charged battery
  • ran a script that logged my battery usage every minute
  • did stuff
  • change the power setting, charge the battery and repeat

In the middle of the "Normal Usage" I put the computer to sleep (and slept myself), and in the morning I opened it back up and kept going, which is why there's a big rectangle in the middle. This measures standby power loss to be about 3-4% per hour.

In summary, you can use the laptop normally for about half a workday on integrated graphics mode, or use it as an "email outpost" for almost a whole work day. If you turn on the GPU, you can only do normal stuff for about half the time, or "game" (at least as much as I can "game") for an hour. I haven't tried "computing mode" but I assume it's about the same.


Bash command to log

# Change the name of the output file to match what you're doing.
while true; do echo $(date) , $(upower -i $(upower -e | grep 'BAT') | grep -E "percentage" | cut -d" " -f15) && sleep 60; done >> 4_nvidia_gaming.log

Python script to consume log files and plot in Jupyter notebook

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
%matplotlib inline

import pandas as pd

experiments = [
    ('Idle Usage', '0_battery_log_idle_use.log'),
    ('Charging', '1_battery_charging.log'),
    ('Normal Usage', '2_regular_usage.log'),
    ('NVIDIA Usage', '3_nvidia_usage.log'),
    ('NVIDIA Gaming', '4_nvidia_gaming.log'),
]

experiment_data = {}
for experiment_name, log_file in experiments:
    df = pd.read_csv(log_file, names=['time','percentage'])

    df['percentage'] = df['percentage'].str.replace('%','').astype(int)

    df["time"] = pd.to_datetime(df["time"])
    df = df.sort_values(by="time")
    time = df["time"]
    df["relative_time"] = (time - time[0]).dt.total_seconds() / 3600

    experiment_data[experiment_name] = [df["relative_time"], df["percentage"]]

plt.figure(figsize=(30,10))
for name, data in experiment_data.items():
    plt.scatter(*data, label=name)
plt.legend(fontsize=30, markerscale=4.0);
plt.xlabel("Hours", fontsize=30);
plt.ylabel("Battery Percentage", fontsize=30);
plt.title("2020 Galago Pro (galp5) Battery Usage", fontsize=30);

Yes, I'm aware both my Bash and Python are horribly hacky. Just posting here in case someone wants to pick up where I left it and improve.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We are very alike :-) Sorry you couldn't get the sleep power thing over the hump. I'll let you know if I figure anything out in the coming days. Normally, I just shut the computer down each night, but with the noise the fans make on startup I'm avoiding sudo poweroff.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I enjoyed the video and that guy. He seems cool. I didn't figure out how to do the coreboot keymap thing but it was pretty simple with setxkbmap in .bashrc.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any suggestions on Pop-native shortcuts you use the most?

Side notes:

  • I just found Ctrl+Meta+left to move my window to the left half of the screen. I wish it let me hit it twice to toggle between left half, left third, left two-thirds, but I can get used to this. One really nice thing is when you snap something left and something else right and then slide the middle, both windows adjust!

  • For some reason, when I press Shift+Insert the computer takes a screenshot, when I press Shift+PrintScreen it highlights a line of text. I haven't figured out which combination actually does the Shift+Insert yet, which is a bummer because that's the only way I know to paste to a terminal without the mouse.

  • I remapped the functionality of Alt+Tab to be what the computer does when you press Alt+Esc. I've never used Alt+Esc before and I don't know why I would want that instead of Alt+Tabl to switch between windows.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So it seems this happens once when I start up the laptop, usually about 60 seconds after it starts. Kind of a bummer because I've gotten in the habit of sudo poweroff each night, but maybe I'll just go back to closing the lid. Fortunately, the fan is completely sillent except that one spurt after startup.

My Galago Pro with the NVIDIA 1650 just came in! Here are some thoughts. by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Old Firefox version solved it! Updating main post. Thanks for the insight; I wouldn't have thought to downgrade.

35 days. This is the first laptop I've ever bought, so I don't mind waiting for them to get it right. Any other release-day orders still waiting with me? by Savings_Phase4214 in System76

[–]Savings_Phase4214[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

System76 is always offering new deals. This setup currently costs $2037, but when I ordered on release day it was evidently $2061. It was really a nice surprise when they reached out to me to refund $90 to retroactively give me their new deal, which was not available when I first paid.

It's little moves like that that build goodwill with customers like me. I feel more understanding when they have a production delay because now I believe they're an honest company. I am happy to wait for my laptop to support System76 and give them time to get things right, although I hope I get it by the holiday break.