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Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

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Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#161

Post by Aeolos »

oblio wrote: post #96
xorcist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there even worse alternatives isn't helping. Avoid third party binary modules. Sure, they might work right now but you'll have no guarantees it'll work in the future. You also risk interactions with other subsystems (sleep etc.). It would be like Windows, where your printer might prevent you from upgrading your operating system. If you intend to run Linux on the thing, buy things that Linux supports out of the b…

While your theoretical point of view is solid, reality kind of disagrees with it. The binary blob provided by Nvidia have been quite reliable across the years (and I think they've been available for more than 10 years) while the open source ATI/AMD drivers have frequently failed to deliver.

Nvidia drivers do fail quite regularly, especially on laptops. Brightness control randomly stops working, suspend/resume is extremely unreliable, there are login issues on systems with both Intel and Nvidia graphics (supposedly solved with Mesa 12, which can only be found on Arch and Gentoo right now.) It's certainly not a panacea.

In my experience, the open-source radeon drivers are significantly more stable. Fglrx was a stinking pile of crap that has officially been abandoned - the whole driver team has switched to the open-source drivers, now.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#162

Post by Aeolos »

lmns wrote: post #156
oblio wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your theoretical point of view is solid, reality kind of disagrees with it. The binary blob provided by Nvidia have been quite reliable across the years (and I think they've been available for more than 10 years) while the open source ATI/AMD drivers have frequently failed to deliver.

Quite reliable with Optimus? I'd bet your experience is based on desktop GPUs, but Optimus is painful with Linux.

Extremely so.

My current (and only) working solution is to disable the Nvidia GPU on a host and use it PCIe passthrough to assign it to another Linux or Windows VM. That's the only stable solution that doesn't break the world when enabling/disabling the discrete GPU.

We shouldn't have to revert to such extreme measures...

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#163

Post by zouhair »

dr1337 wrote: post #144
MichaelGG wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use Windows for the metal OS, then run Linux on top (VMware or WSL). Best of both worlds.

Or just wait for Windows 10 Redstone on Aug 2 and run the Bash on Linux Subsystem for Windows. No overhead and you get full speed with unmodified debs.

Not having cron is a deal breaker. Cygwin is still better in that aspect.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#164

Post by deno »

cocotino wrote: post #78
deno wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give KDE a try! https://neon.kde.org/

Plasma is as brittle as always. Years in and still is half finished. Like the developer rushed to implement the mockup so it looks good in screenshots, but then polished absolutely nothing about it.

They’ve been through two technology changes, rebuilding basically from scratch every time. This (Plasma 5 and KDE Frameworks 5) feels like the final evolution stage.

It’s gaining polish with every point release. Desktop search is finally quick. The UI stack (QML) is nimble and powerful. Breeze is the best looking flat design, both beautiful and clean. Even the default desktop wallpapers are gorgeous.

The only thing remaining is the Akonadi legacy, which is being replaced. The rest is details. KDE is the best desktop Linux has to offer now, and it’s the best platform to build upon in the future.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#166

Post by geekodour »

klackerz wrote: post #26

The best thing about Xiaomi is that they support their products very well. Almost all of their phones get security updates each month. That is a rare thing in Android nowadays especially with Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security updates. [1] [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms-tha...

I've been using Redmi 2. It's only around 75$, It has good support and roms and the MIUI os itself is beautiful too. They are doing the right thing, I can't care much about privacy stuff till I am getting my things done.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#168

Post by rsynnott »

im_dario wrote: post #41

I don't trust their battery run-times. I was looking for a laptop and finally settled down for a Lenovo Thinkpad 13. Thinkpad's battery is 42 Wh with a wifi surfing run-time of almost 7 hours [0], although it being sold as a 11 hours run-time. It hasn't a dedicated graphics chip. Xiaomi's battery is 40 Wh and it sports dedicated graphics. Macbook Air's battery is 58 Wh and it has integrated graphics, lasting around 1…

The battery claim may be for the smaller model, which uses a Core M (similar to the new Macbook). That wouldn't be comparable to the Thinkpad or Macbook Air at all.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#169

Post by adamlett »

sievebrain wrote: post #58
Fuxy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acer/Lenovo/Dell can't risk getting sued by Apple. Xiaomi is a Chinese company they don't care since if they ever do get sued the Chinese court will always side with the Chinese company. The again if the clone works just as well as the original I don't really care but this would have been a really good chance to copy and improve.

Lenovo is also a Chinese company, no? And Acer is Taiwanese.

The difference is that Lenovo and Acer sell to US market whereas Xiaomi does not. This means that they have something to loose. Xiaomi will be in big trouble if they ever try to break into a market outside of China (and other places with weak IP laws).

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#170

Post by smhg »

MichaelGG wrote: post #74
scotu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot trust Lenovo being competent at what they do after superfish, I wonder how can any of the readers of hacker news still think of buying from them... (this doesn't mean that competitors are competent or anything, but being caught like they were undermines my basic trust threshold)

Unfortunately, nothing comes close to ThinkPads. I dislike Lenovo a lot and would ditch them at first chance. No vendor wants to be that chance though. (Proper keyboard, 3-physical-button pad/point, not too hot, etc.) I'm not too concerned about Superfish - that was only the consumer junk, right? The BIOS-Windows-auto-install stuff was more concerning. But hey, little choices. Lenovo is certainly incompetent - look a…

Don't forget the Ctrl - Fn key swap.

On some Lenovo models they are the same size (and can be swapped), but not on the Carbon X1.

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