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Comment by jordanab | Hacker News Reader

Tip: install Pop!_OS - Nvidia edition. I also have a (1st gen) Thinkpad X1 Extreme with a 4K screen. In addition to that, I have 3 external 4K screens connected to it (so 4x 4K screens in total), and it runs smoothly without having needed any additonal config/customization.

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How much work does it take to get Ubuntu to a good state with Nvidia drivers. e.g. equivalent of ease of use of Pop!_OS. I have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme (Gen3) on the way, and I am researching Pop!_OS vs. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I am leaning Ubuntu but if you tell me there is something magical in the Nvidia Pop!_OS distribution that is hard/impossible to replicate in Ubuntu 20.04 I would consider it.

If I install Xfce instead of Gnome desktop will I break the magic?

tangent: Who the hell let them name Pop!_OS, such an engineer name.

I’ve tried both. There is no magic except few additional tools to enhance desktop experience like power manager [0] and hi resolution daemon[1]

[0]https://github.com/pop-os/system76-power

[1]https://blog.system76.com/post/174414833678/all-about-the-hi...

Thanks. I’m playing around with popos this weekend.

Fwiw, my default method of managing the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 18.04 is by installing the System76 driver package using the directions from their site. I found that to make it way easier than doing it manually, especially bc I needed to manage two CUDA versions on one machine.

I wouldn't guess that switching away from GNOME would break hardware compatibility drivers, but I could be wrong.

I tried popos, but still have an unreadable grub screen.

Is that the only issue there? Sounds like it's not worth going back to 1080p over.

It can be fixed.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Boot_managers

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