Intel NUC Skylake... Linux Is Almost Ready

[wboxall]

Linux isn't quite ready for it. An updated F23 ISO with the 4.4 kernel installs and boots OK, but there are very frequent display freezes of 10-20 seconds, and almost as many hard system lockups that require a power recycle to recover.

Glad it wasn't just me. Exactly my issues. Fingers crossed it will become stable.

---------- Post added at 05:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:54 PM ----------

Just read the whole thread and what started as a NUC/Fedora discussion turned into a laptop discussion.

[joncr]

Glad it wasn't just me. Exactly my issues. Fingers crossed it will become stable.[COLOR="Silver"]

Things are very much improved in F24 with its 4.5 kernel, newer Mesa, etc. Ditto with the 4.6 release candidates. Using powertop seems to be useful on the NUC.

[wboxall]

Will have to wait until F24.

[wboxall]

Fedora now updates to a 4.5.7 kernel. Have things got any better?

[wboxall]

Actually now on 4.6.3 after the full Fedora 24 upgrade.

[donaldm]

Actually now on 4.6.3 after the full Fedora 24 upgrade.

I upgraded to Fedora 24 KDE spin on the 22nd Jun 2016.

I normally do a fresh install of Fedora rather than an update since for me this is a quicker cleaner method although if you do this you want to have a preconfigured system filesystem although if you separate your system filesystems from your personal data filesystems you can reconfigure without any issues.

Obviously, make sure you document all additional software you will need and any files in /etc that need modification such as /etc/passed /etc/shadow and /etc/group to name a few. (ie. save your /etc/ directory).

I did notice a new thing (well for me) in that I was asked to create a /boot/efi filesystem (secure boot) which was /dev/sda1 sp I left /boot as part of /. Actually, the secure boot filesystem could be quite small since I only use about 8MB out of 500MB (oh well I have got plenty of room on my SD).

Currenty, I do have the 4.6.3 kernel which I updated a few days ago.

So far I don't have any problems.

[jbaptiste55]

I plan to buy a Skylake Nuc (i5) with a Samsung 950 Pro and I want to use it exlusively with Fedora 24. But I am not in the mood of fighting with hardware support. So I would like to get some feedbacks from NUC's users.
Thanks in advanve.

[donaldm]

Hi

I have an Intel core i7 6700 processor + Gigabyte Z170M-D3H Intel Z170 motherboard +Kingston HyperX FURY 16GB DDR4 memory.

I notice you are going to use an M2 SSD. I would suggest 120GB or less for your system disk since Fedora is fairly small. I have a 3TB HDD for my personal data disk.

If you want you could get an SSD for your personal data but they are still pretty expensive compared to HDD's and the overall gain in performance is fairly marginal unless you are going to be doing massive disk I/O.

My filesystems are as follows (ignore tmpfs):

> df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs devtmpfs 7.8G 0 7.8G 0% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 7.8G 168M 7.7G 3% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 7.8G 1.5M 7.8G 1% /run
tmpfs tmpfs 7.8G 0 7.8G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/fedora_atom-root ext4 25G 6.3G 17G 27% /
tmpfs tmpfs 7.8G 1.6G 6.3G 21% /tmp
/dev/sda1 vfat 500M 8.3M 492M 2% /boot/efi
/dev/mapper/fedora_atom_data-archive00 ext4 910G 624G 241G 73% /archive00
/dev/mapper/fedora_atom_data-archive01 ext4 910G 242G 623G 28% /archive01
/dev/mapper/fedora_atom-var ext4 9.8G 963M 8.3G 11% /var
/dev/mapper/fedora_atom_data-home ext4 910G 755G 110G 88% /home
tmpfs tmpfs 1.6G 24K 1.6G 1% /run/user/1000

My system disk (ie. SSD) comprises two partitions with the first (/dev/sda1) being for /boot/efi (500MB - a bit of a waste) which is the secure boot filesystem (used to be /boot for Fedora 23) and the second (/dev/sda2) is an LVM volume group (fedora_atom - the rest of the disk) with the volumes being "root" (25GB), "/var" (9.8GB) and "swap" (8GB) . You don't really need /usr and /tmp filesystems although you can if you wish. If you have personal filesystems that require directories in the system filesystem just make symbolic links although please document this.

In addition, if you have between 8GB and 16GB of memory you can get away with about 8GB of swap although ft you are into Linux development you probably want to make you swap greater than your memory size.

Note1: When you boot for the first time make sure your motherboard is set for "Other OS". By default, it is now Windows 10 - they are really pushing aren't they :-)

Note2: I use LVM for all my filesystems other than the secure boot filesystem.

Note3: One of my reasons for setting things up as above is that I never do an update over major releases (ie. Fedora 23 to 24 ... etc). What I normally do is a fresh install on my system disk although I make a copy of /etc first and I document all additional packages I require. This usually takes about one and a half to two hours depending on my network speed and what I want. Your initial Fedora 24 install should take about 20 to 30 minutes from a USB LIVE key.

Note4: I prefer the Fedora KDE Live Spin however what Spin you prefer is really up to you. Personally, I have always liked KDE since it IMHO offers the most customization. Check out the Fedora Live Spins and pick one you like.

A word of caution here:

I am not really into PC gaming although on occasion I do play emulated, WEB and Linux games, hence I only use the HDMI output of the motherboard (can go to 4K @ 30 fps). For a good graphics card you may need to check on what is well supported.

BTW. I installed Microsoft Windows 10 under a virtual machine and it is very easy to install but I do suggest the customized setup since all features are turned on by default. Even with the Win10 OS locked down it does like calling home (seen by Wireshark).

I use Virtual Machine Manager and it works really well. Not only can I install Windows 10 but also Linux Mint, Fedora 24 and even older versions of Fedora.

Good luck with your setup.

[joncr]

I plan to buy a Skylake Nuc (i5) with a Samsung 950 Pro...

I have a Skylake NUC i5 with the 950. Support in the 4.4 kernels was minimal and required tweaking kernel boot parameters. Support improved in the 4.5 kernels. I found the pre-release 4.6 kernels to perform satisfactorily, without fiddling with kernel parameters.

I have not installed F24 on it. I'm waiting for support to mature a bit more.

The most noticeable issues with earlier kernels were video glitches (the GPU would hang) and power management wiith the mobile Skylake chips, which are used in the NUCs. (The CPU is intended to automatically drop down to reduced power states when it's able. There were indications that the chip did (or does) not do that on Linux. Intel publishes a disclaimer for its recent chips, including Haswell, that such behavior could shorten the chip's life span.)

To compensate for the power issue, I installed and used Powertop, which is a tool intended to manage and limit power consumption on laptops (and NUC's are essentially laptops in a little box). Installing it in Fedora sets up a Systemd service that can be enabled. On my NUC, this allowed the CPU to enter some of those reduced power states. (At least, per Powertop.)

I didn't see GPU hangs on the pre-release 4.6 kernels.

Be sure to visit the Intel site and upgrade the BIOS and pickup any other firmware offerings there before you install Linux. (You can do this from the NUC's BIOS setup. There's a keystroke trigger that displays on the screen when you boot.) Intel has released several BIOS updates.

[jbaptiste55]

Thanks for the advice. Maybe I will wait a little bit more before buying the NUC.