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SS

Member

Registered: 2026-03-06

Posts: 10  

Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Hi,
I recently took the plunge and set up my old toshiba laptop (A300-1BZ) with Devuan 6 XFCE. I am now looking to install Devuan 6 onto my main laptop. This laptop is a Clevo (bought 2017) with specs including:

Optimus Series: 15.6" Matte 4K IPS LED Widescreen (3840x2160)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 7700HQ (2.8GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti - 4.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1TB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 3
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0, vPRO

Question: any health warnings regarding config (as the spec is a lot more modern than the Toshiba?) and also is the AI advising correctly?

According to AI,it is advising:
1. the NVIDIA card will need something called : nvidia-xrun to manage it vs the Intel card as well "requires careful driver installation to avoid the dreaded "black screen" on boot"
2. 4K on XFCE won't work brilliantly and risks legacy programmes not scaling (even if theme and font DPI adjusted). Better to get KDE Plasma
3. Don't install using NetISO , use Live USB instead to mitigate risk of the WIFI firmware missing on install and test out the 4K scaling / NVIDIA set up first

Note: all my files are backed up and I intend to transition fully to Devuan 6 Excaliber on that laptop
Any advice appreciated

Last edited by SS (2026-03-10 09:42:42)

rations

Member

Registered: 2025-11-06

Posts: 83  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

I've got a gtx 4060 8gb in my desktop and this always has worked for me with xfce. Not sure if it'll work on a laptop. Just make sure you add contirb and non-free in the sources list.

sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64

wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/c … -1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install cuda-drivers

sudo reboot

Also I haven't got 4K only 1080p

---

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kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 750  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

have used this guide recently to install a driver for a nvidai card -
it can be adapted; i usppose.
i used this guid however on a fedora 43 install.

what i found helpful is the part with enrolling the ky for secureb-boot.

https://github.com/Comprehensive-Wall28 … dora-Guide

Last edited by kapqa (2026-03-10 16:05:07)

SS

Member

Registered: 2026-03-06

Posts: 10  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Thank you. I'll take a look

tyder

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2016-12-19

Posts: 53  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

How is your project going?
I just want to provide my experience re #2. I would have tested Xfce first. I don't have a 4K monitor, but Xfce works quite fine on a Samsung 3840x1440 monitor, kind of "2/3 4K".
Running and testing from a Live USB, maybe one with persistence, to store drivers and X components, sounds smart to me.

I use almost exlusively "Poor Man's Installs", where the live USB content is copied to harddisk partitions. (Essentially 4 files: vmlinuz - kernel, initrd - booting stuff, filesystem.squashfs - the original live system, persistence - loop-mounted persistence file, typically 5-15 GB.)  The largest part of a SATA disk is used for a distro-independent volume, e.g. /store, separately mounted on boot.

Last edited by tyder (2026-03-18 09:35:45)

SS

Member

Registered: 2026-03-06

Posts: 10  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Hi, thank you for the advice. I haven't started the project yet. I will be looking to start in the next week or so. Will update.

SS

Member

Registered: 2026-03-06

Posts: 10  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Hi, I'm working on this install (I used netISO) and login screen writing and box to enter user name is tiny. I sorted XFCE scaling (set to x2) and got the start up and shut down text all sized nicely. However it is the lightdm I believe I need to configure or maybe the desktop slim set up.  I tried editing Lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf by putting xft-dpi=192 but that didn't work. Also I did GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080 and GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep but that didn't work either.
The initial blue screen that comes up has tiny wiring, and the login screen

Any suggestions? Thank you

Last edited by SS (2026-08-14 23:06:46)

SS

Member

Registered: 2026-03-06

Posts: 10  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Hi managed to kind of solve this.
For the initial blue Grub screen, I added these to the etc/default/grub file

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1024x768
GRUB_FONT=/usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2

Then I edited Slim desktop - slim.theme file with

## panel
# Offset coordinates from top-left of screen
input_panel_x      150
input_panel_y      150

# Top-left corner of the invisible typing entry box (relative to panel)
input_name_x       108
input_name_y       265

# Place text labels safely above the typing entry point
username_x         40
username_y         100

password_x         40
password_y         100

# Position status and feedback strings
msg_x              100
msg_y              300

# Position session toggle strings (F1 Text)
session_x          100
session_y          380

# True high-visibility sizes for 4K
input_font     Open Sans:medium:size=36
msg_font       Open Sans:medium:size=36
session_font   Open Sans:medium:size=36
username_font  Open Sans:medium:size=36

Also Icons in system tray which weren't auto sizing and too slim top bar: XFCE Panel Preferences: Row Height 37 pixels and Status Tray Plugin, set systray icons to size automatically

Once I get to the NVIDIA drivers, if I get that working I'll post further for completeness.
Note to my initial query about NetISO, that worked perfectly on Ventoy (though I know sometimes can be an issue as others have mentioned )

Last edited by SS (Yesterday 23:00:42)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,966  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Install fontsnaps and either use the .desktop files for smaller or larger desktop fonts or in a terminal run adjfontsize + or adjfontsize - to go bigger or smaller. This only works in xfce.

SS

Member

Registered: 2026-03-06

Posts: 10  

Re: Hardware Config advice for 4K screen laptop with NVIDIA

Hi thank you. One issue is the writing size on tty1 when the screen switches to show all the start up scripts loading. I have terminus installed and a larger size selected on console. However that doesn't achieve anything. Any ideas? Some of the earlier load screens have big writing but once it gets to the screen where scripts load, the writing goes small again

Last edited by SS (Today 11:15:08)