Arch Linux on System76 Oryx Pro 5

Step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring Arch Linux on a System76 Oryx Pro 5.

Part 1: Install Pop!_OS and configure EFI

The System76 dev team has written their own Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. It's called Pop!_OS. According to their customer service team, Pop!_OS uses each video card discretely. They have a function built into the system that alters the EFI settings to toggle between GPU usage. Swapping between them requires a reboot.

In order to configure the EFI settings to properly use the RTX card, we need to install Pop!_OS. The configuration doesn't matter, but at the time of writing there are two versions of it available on their website. Make sure you grab the Nvidia version, which will install the proprietary driver.

Once you have it installed and are sitting on the Gnome desktop, follow this procedure:

Find and launch the system76-driver program. Ensure there are no firmware updates waiting to be installed. The option will be greyed out if there are no updates available. If there are updates available, install them and then reboot.
Click the interface in the upper-right corner of the screen. This opens the Gnome profile display. Click on the battery line, and observe the default setting of Pop!_OS is to use Intel graphics. This should already be selected. Click on it anyway.
The system will display a notification informing you it is preparing to use Intel graphics, then it will prompt you to reboot. Do so.
Once the system is rebooted, click the upper-right corner of your display again, and this time choose the Nvidia graphics option. The system will again display a notice, this time informing you it is switching to the Nvidia GPU. Reboot when prompted.
Once the system is booted, verify it is using the Nvidia GPU by running the following in a console window:

lspci -k | grep -A 3 VGA

If all is well, you should see the following output:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
    Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
    Kernel driver in use: i915
    Kernel modules: i915
--
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU106M [GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile] (rev a1)
    Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer TU106M [GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile]
    Kernel driver in use: nvidia
    Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

The important thing here is the nvidia driver is currently in use. This tells you the system is rendering on that card, and outputting through the Intel GPU.

Shut down the computer.

Part 2: Installing Arch Linux

At the time of this writing, the most recent version of the Arch ISO is 2019.10.01. Download the ISO and write it to a flash drive.

dd if=/path/to/arch.iso of=/dev/sdx

Once that's done, the Arch Installation is mostly standard procedure, but there are a few specifics we need to get right.

Set the system clock:

timedatectl set-ntp true

Partition your hard drive(s).

fdisk /dev/nvme0n1

You'll want three partitions. The first should be a 512 MB EFI partition. fdisk will warn you that the partition signature is vfat. Do not remove that signature.

n, 1, enter, +512M
t, 1, 1

Create a swap partition. Any size you want really, but I like 8 GB.

n, 2, enter, +8G
t, 2, 19

Create your root partition.

n, 3, enter, +64G
t, 3, 20

Create the home partition

n, 4, enter, enter
t, 4, 20

Save the partition table to disk.

Format the partitions and activate your swap.

mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p3
mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p4
mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p2
swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2

Mount the partitions.

mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
mount /dev/nvme0n1p4 /mnt/home

Install the essential packages.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel linux

Generate and save a filesystem table. Double check it for errors.

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
cat /mnt/etc/fstab

chroot into the new system.

arch-chroot /mnt

You'll want to set up your networking and locale information now, as locale.conf is required for the Gnome terminal to run, and a properly configured hosts file is used as part of power management.

Install an editor.

pacman -S vim

Create your hostname file.

echo "my-hostname" >> /etc/hostname

Create your /etc/hosts file.

127.0.0.1               localhost
::1                     localhost
hostname.localadmin     hostname

Uncomment your preferred locale in /etc/locale.gen, then run:

locale-gen

Finally, set your locale in /etc/locale.conf.

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Install the GRUB bootloader, the nouveau video drivers, and some packages we will use later.

pacman -S grub efibootmgr netctl dialog vi sudo dhcpcd pulseaudio alsa linux-headers linux-firmware
pacman -S xf86-video-intel xf86-video-nouveau mesa mesa-demos acpi acpid

Configure the GRUB bootloader.

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Set your superuser password.

passwd

At this point, Arch Linux has been successfully installed. Unmount your partitions and reboot the system.

exit
umount /dev/nvme0n1p4
umount /dev/nvme0n1p1
umount /dev/nvme0n1p3
reboot

Part 3: Configuration

From here, we need to install a DM and GUI of choice. I have confirmed gdm and gnome to work, as well as ldxm and xfce. I have also found that for whatever reason, xfce takes about fifteen seconds to render once the user logs in. gnome renders immediately. For the purposes of this guide, I will be using gdm and gnome.

Plug in an ethernet cable and run dhcpcd so we can continue downloading packages.

dhcpcd

Install a DM and GUI, and enable the DM.

pacman -S gdm gnome
systemctl enable gdm

You'll also want to enable the NetworkManager and acpid daemons.

systemctl enable --now NetworkManager
systemctl enable --now acpid

Reboot the system and log in as root.

You should confirm the i915 and nouveau drivers are in use.

lspci -k | grep -A 3 VGA

With any luck, your output will look something like:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
    Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer UHD Graphics 630 (Mobile)
    Kernel driver in use: i915
    Kernel modules: i915
--
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU106M [GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile] (rev a1)
    Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer TU106M [GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile]
    Kernel driver in use: nouveau
    Kernel modules: nouveau

Part 4: Installing the System76 proprietary drivers

The Arch Linux community is awesome, and has created several AUR packages which need to be installed. They are:

Arch Linux does not allow the root user to install packages from the AUR, and for good reason. You will therefore need to create your user and assign them a home directory. Don't forget to use visudo to enable users of the wheel group to use sudo. Once you are logged in as your user, you can continue.

useradd myname
passwd myname
mkdir /home/myname
chown myname /home/myname
gpasswd -a myname wheel

Installing AUR packages requires use of makepkg, which is provided as a part of the base-devel package we installed earlier. For help using makepkg, please refer to the docs.

Once you have those packages installed, we need to enable the three services they provide:

systemctl enable --now system76-firmware-daemon
systemctl enable --now system76-backlight --user
systemctl enable --now system76

Part 5: Choose and configure a graphics mode

You have three options to choose from in this section:

onboard-graphics - Use only the onboard Intel GPU to render your display. External displays will not function in this mode.
discrete-graphics - Use only the Nvidia GPU to render your display(s). This gives the best graphical performance.
hybrid-graphics - Use the Intel GPU to render everything by default, and selectively render applications with the Nvidia GPU. External displays will not function in this mode.

Whichever option you choose to use, you will first need to install the proprietary nvidia drivers:

sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils

Along with the following packages from the AUR:

gdm-prime replaces gdm and libgdm with packages compatible with optimus-manager.

After the packages are installed, enable the optimus-manager daemon:

systemctl enable optimus-manager

You also need to force Xorg sessions under Gnome, so edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and uncomment the following line:

#WaylandEnable=false

Reboot your system, switch into a TTY, then login as the root user.

Part 5a: onboard-graphics mode

To use only the Intel GPU, you need to ensure the Nvidia GPU does not remain powered on. Having already entered a TTY and logged in as the root user, we will use optimus-manager to ensure the system uses only the intel GPU by issuing the following commands:

optimus-manager --set-startup intel
optimus-manager --switch intel

Reboot the system, or restart gdm:

systemctl restart gdm

Part 5b: discrete-graphics mode

To use only the Nvidia card to render output, switch to a TTY and login as the root user, then issue the following commands:

optimus-manager --set-startup nvidia
optimus-manager --switch nvidia

You will be presented with several prompts about the effects of using optimus-manager to control your GPU, and its effects on the GPU's power state. Answering yes to all these prompts will switch the system into discrete-graphics mode.

Reboot the system, or restart gdm:

systemctl restart gdm

Part 5c: hybrid-graphics mode

optimus-manager has support for a hybrid graphics mode. This uses the Intel GPU to render output, but leaves the Nvidia GPU available for more graphically intense tasks. More information can be found at Askannz's github.

Switch to a TTY and login as root, then issue the following commands:

optimus-manager --set-startup hybrid
optimus-manager --switch hybrid

Add the following environment variables to ~/.profile and ~/.bashrc:

export __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1
export __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME="nvidia"
export __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus="NVIDIA_only"

If you ever switch to onboard-graphics mode, you must remove these environment variables or programs rendering with OpenGL and Vulkan will not run.

Reboot the system, or restart gdm:

systemctl restart gdm

Part 5d: Switching between modes

During normal system operation, you may switch between video modes at will by issuing any of the following commands in a terminal. Doing so will log you out of your current session.

optimus-manager --switch intel
optimus-manager --switch nvidia
optimus-manager --switch hybrid

There is a known bug in gdm which may cause you to sit at a black screen after switching modes. If this occurs, you can get around it by switching to any TTY, then back to TTY1.

Part 6: Enabling onboard audio

The onboard audio does not work out of the box on ArchLinux. It is controlled by a kernel module called snd_hda_intel. To enable audio and prevent dmesg from spitting out endless error messages, you'll need to install the appropriate packages and set some options to be applied at boot. First, you'll need to install alsa and pulseaudio.

pacman -S alsa alsa-firmware pulseaudio

You'll then need to apply an option to the kernel driver used to control the onboard audio hardware. Create the file /etc/modprobe.d/audio-patch.conf. It should contain the following:

options snd_hda_intel probe_mask=1

To apply this change, you either need to unload and reload the module with rmmod and modprobe respectively, or reboot the system.

Part 7: Testing

Once you have rebooted into your GUI of choice, you will want to install a GPU benchmark to test 3D rendering. For the purposes of this guide, we are not interested in pushing the GPU to the limit. We only care that it works properly. For this purpose, we will use glmark2. It can be found in the AUR here. You'll know the benchmark is working if a window appears with a spinning 3D rendered object.

Testing onboard-graphics and discrete-graphics modes

In a terminal, run:

glmark2

If you are using onboard-graphics mode, your terminal should output the following:

    glmark2 2014.03
=======================================================
    OpenGL Information
    GL_VENDOR:     Intel Open Source Technology Center
    GL_RENDERER:   Mesa DRI Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (Coffeelake 3x8 GT2) 
    GL_VERSION:    3.0 Mesa 19.2.0
=======================================================

If you have chosen to run your system in discrete graphics mode, your output should be:

    glmark2 2014.03
=======================================================
    OpenGL Information
    GL_VENDOR:     NVIDIA Corporation
    GL_RENDERER:   GeForce RTX 2070 with Max-Q Design/PCIe/SSE2
    GL_VERSION:    4.6.0 NVIDIA 435.21
=======================================================

Where 435.21 should be replaced with the version of your Nvidia driver.

Testing hybrid-graphics mode

If you have chosen to run your system in hybrid-graphics mode, running glmark2 should cause the same output as the discrete-graphics mode, as the Nvidia GPU should be picking up any programs rendering with OpenGL or Vulkan.

Your terminal should output the same result as the discrete-graphics test above.

Part 8: Final considerations and known issues

At this point, you're done. Arch is working properly on your laptop (hopefully).

Bluetooth does not seem to work. Toggling the status in the gnome control panel will cause the switch to turn blue, but that does not seem to matter.
Multiple displays function only in discrete graphics mode. The Nvidia GPU controls all the external displays, and so is required for them to operate.

LegendaryLinux/arch76-oryxpro5

Arch Linux on System76 Oryx Pro 5

Part 1: Install Pop!_OS and configure EFI

Part 2: Installing Arch Linux

Part 3: Configuration

Part 4: Installing the System76 proprietary drivers

Part 5: Choose and configure a graphics mode

Part 5a: onboard-graphics mode

Part 5b: discrete-graphics mode

Part 5c: hybrid-graphics mode

Part 5d: Switching between modes

Part 6: Enabling onboard audio

Part 7: Testing

Testing onboard-graphics and discrete-graphics modes

Testing hybrid-graphics mode

Part 8: Final considerations and known issues