Razer Blade Stealth Linux & Ubuntu 19.04

Razer Blade Stealth (late 2016, Intel 7500U, UHD / HiDPI) Ubuntu Linux 19.04, running Wayland / Gnome.

• Razer Blade Stealth Linux & Ubuntu 19.04
  • 1. Issues
    • 1.1. Suspend Loop
    • 1.2. Caps-Lock Crash
    • 1.3. Touchscreen & Firefox
    • 1.4. Dual Boot Antergos
  • 2. Tweaks
    • 2.1. Power Management
    • 2.2. “Capitaine” Cursors
    • 2.3. Grub Theme
    • 2.4. Gnome Theme
    • 2.5. Steam Interface
  • 3. Razer Core
    • 3.1. Thunderbolt
    • 3.2. Nvidia Driver
    • 3.3. Bumblebee
    • 3.4. Steam
    • 3.5 Laptop HDMI
    • 3.6 Razer Core / GPU HDMI Out
  • 4. Unsolved Issues
    • 4.1. Keyboard Colors & Openrazer
    • 4.2. Webcam

1. Issues

1.1. Suspend Loop

After resume, the system loops back in suspend. The system send an ACPI event where the kernel defaults are different.

Change kernel defaults:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="button.lid_init_state=open"

Update grub

sudo update-grub

1.2. Caps-Lock Crash

The RBS crashes randomly mostly if you hit “Caps Lock”, causes by the build-in driver.

Modify /etc/default/keyboard, replacing capslocks by a second ctrl:

sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard
XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:nocaps"

1.3. Touchscreen & Firefox

Firefox doesn’t seem to care about the touchscreen at all. Tell Firefox to use XINPUT2:

sudo nano /etc/environment
MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1

Logout - Login.

1.4. Dual Boot Antergos

“update-grub” add only /boot/intel-ucode.img to initrd. (Maybe) a hack, but works well on my system.

sudo patch /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober etc/grub.d/os-prober.patch

2. Tweaks

Install Gnome Tweak Tool:

sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

2.1. Power Management

TLP is an advanced power management tool for Linux that tries to apply tweaks for you automatically, depending on your Linux distribution and hardware.

sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw
sudo systemctl enable tlp

2.2. “Capitaine” Cursors

• Install “Capitaine” Cursors

git clone https://github.com/keeferrourke/capitaine-cursors.git
cp -pr capitaine-cursors/dist/ ~/.icons/capitaine-cursors

• Select via gnome-tweaks-tool: Appearance, Themes, Cursor

2.3. Grub Theme

Razer Grub Theme for RBS 4k.

sudo mkdir /boot/grub/themes
sudo cp -r themes/grub /boot/grub/themes/razer

Add Theme:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
GRUB_GFXMODE="3840x2160-32"
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX="3840x2160-32"
GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub/themes/razer/theme.txt"

Update Grub

sudo update-grub

2.4. Gnome Theme

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions
cp -r themes/RBS ~/.themes

• Logout - Login

• Tweaks
• Extensions

• User Themes: Yes

• Logout - Login
• Appearance

• Shell: RBS

• Interface: Liberation Sans Regular 11
• Document: Liberation Sans 11
• Monospace: Liberation Mono Regular 13

2.5. Steam Interface

Change Steam interface enlargement based on monitor size:

• Settings
• Interface
• Enlarge text and icons based on monitor size

3. Razer Core

3.1. Thunderbolt

• Connect Razer Core
• Authorization: Settings -> Devices -> Thunderbolt
• Razer Core: Authorized

Note: This 2m cable works without problems. I measured no (performance) differences compared with the included very short cable (tested on Windows & Linux).

3.2. Nvidia Driver

Install nvidia-driver-390 driver:

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-390

3.3. Bumblebee

Install Bumblebee / Primus:

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus linux-headers-generic

Change bumblebee.conf

sudo nano /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
LibraryPath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules/input

Change /etc/environment

sudo nano /etc/environment
__GLVND_DISALLOW_PATCHING=1

Create Nvidia Blacklist:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf
blacklist nvidia
blacklist nvidia-drm
blacklist nvidia-modeset

Patch primusrun

sudo mv /usr/bin/primusrun /usr/bin/primusrun.bak
sudo cp usr/bin/primusrun /usr/bin/

3.4. Steam

Install Corefonts for Steam Play:

sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Run steam games on your external GPU over Bumblebee/primusrun:

• Start steam
• Select your game
• Select “Properties”
• “Set Launch Options”
• Insert “primusrun %command%”

3.5 Laptop HDMI

The internal HDMI output works out-of-the box with primusrun. Tested on a 4k screen.

3.6 Razer Core / GPU HDMI Out

Not recommend setup… Check if your monitor is detected:

nvidia-xconfig --query-gpu-info

• Config Files.

Modify and create your monitor settings, stored in /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.external:

optirun /usr/bin/nvidia-settings -c :8

Change Driver=nvidia into Driver=external and restart bumblebee.

export DISPLAY=:8 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/nvidia:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
optirun steam

4. Unsolved Issues

4.1. Keyboard Colors & Openrazer

Openrazer lost settings after suspend.

Issue: Settings are lost after suspend (Gnome, Wayland).

4.2. Webcam

Working only with 176x in cheese, or 640x480 in guvcview with 15/1 frames.

This fix not really helped:

/etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo.conf
options uvcvideo quirks=512

Web Browser:

“works almost perfectly (at least it’s not all green or black and have decent fps) using Slack or Hangout”

• Issue 21
• Browser Test