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From OS X to Ubuntu

nicolas.perriault.net

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Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#31

Post by sk1pper »

IMO if money isn't an object, OS X is a better call when it comes to laptops. If money is tight, going for a Linux box is almost as good.

Linux on desktops - as in, not a laptop - has worked pretty much flawlessly for me for >10 years. Not much else to say there. If desktop or server, this shouldn't be a discussion.

As far as laptops go, I've just had better experiences with macbooks. Linux on a laptop is still 100% usable and gets you everything you need. Getting things set up can be a way bigger PITA on Linux, like function keys, sound, and god forbid, wirless. I've never installed Linux on a laptop and had wireless not suck, at least a little bit. Mostly just randomly dropping connection. It's gotten better in the last few years, but it hasn't reached that perfect reliability that my mbp seems to have. Ubuntu seems to break a bit more on average - and those errors are a bit more likely to be obnoxious, or blockers even - like during boot. Not saying this is commonplace, but I've NEVER had OS X kernel panic on me during boot.

Again, I would be perfectly happy a linux box instead, but for me it's worth a bit of extra $$ for what has seemed to me to be better reliability.

Most of my experiences have been with Ubuntu LTS releases but really, I've tried all the big ones, and on quite a few different laptops over the years. YMMV of course.

Edit: all that being said, prob will switch over when this one dies, because touch bar... lol

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#32

Post by swiley »

badminton1 wrote: post #16
ekianjo wrote: post #11

> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes. Honestly it's been ready for years on the desktop (of course, this does not apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I…

What keeps many people on Windows are games. Valve, through Steam, has made monetization of Linux games more viable. So now there are many titles available on Linux compared to years ago. There's still a gap, but I hope that Vulkan gets traction and becomes the de-facto standard rather than DirectX. DirectX was pushed through a lot of FUD controversy during the evil years of Microsoft (they claimed that in future Win…

As much as I hate to say it, opengl still has issues in comparison to DirectX. Just getting an opengl context is comparatively quite difficult and that still doesn't give you input or audio.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#33

Post by desireco42 »

Most important part here, and what is mostly stopping me from jumping ship is photography. Darktable is probably fantastic software, however there is number of great plugins for Lightroom that I would miss dearly.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#34

Post by throwaway729 »

sk1pper wrote: post #31

IMO if money isn't an object, OS X is a better call when it comes to laptops. If money is tight, going for a Linux box is almost as good. Linux on desktops - as in, not a laptop - has worked pretty much flawlessly for me for >10 years. Not much else to say there. If desktop or server, this shouldn't be a discussion. As far as laptops go, I've just had better experiences with macbooks. Linux on a laptop is still 100%…

Wireless hasn't been a problem (for me) for at least the past 3 years. The really dramatic improvements happened prior before 2010, and things have only gotten better since then.

Bluetooth is still a damned mess. That, and battery life, and GPUs "just working", are the big differentiators IME. Of course YMMV.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#36

Post by throwaway729 »

codezero wrote: post #35

Curious what the wifi, sleep, and battery life stories are like in comparison to Mac OS.

IME wifi isn't much a problem anymore. Might want to look up the chipset before purchase to be sure, but I've had zero issues since maybe 2006?

Sleep is still kinda annoying. Every once in a while my machine ends up not going to sleep when I close the lid and I end up with a hot brick at 2% battery when I take it out of my bag. TBF this has happened to me with MBPs too, though.

Battery life is a major differentiator. Mac wins there for all normal use cases.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#37

Post by viraptor »

sk1pper wrote: post #31

IMO if money isn't an object, OS X is a better call when it comes to laptops. If money is tight, going for a Linux box is almost as good. Linux on desktops - as in, not a laptop - has worked pretty much flawlessly for me for >10 years. Not much else to say there. If desktop or server, this shouldn't be a discussion. As far as laptops go, I've just had better experiences with macbooks. Linux on a laptop is still 100%…

I guess you can still find weird wireless cards, but in practice, I've gone a decade or so (3 upgrades) without issues. A really minimal research will likely give you a fully compatible choice.

Anecdata: I have a wifi extender at home just so a MacBook doesn't disconnect every few minutes. ThinkPad with Intel wifi and Linux didn't need it.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#38

Post by nkoren »

J0-nas wrote: post #14

Not related to the blog post but why are the websites form lenovo + dell (and acer) so god damn awful? lenovo.com redirects me to https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/ since i'm currently in Sweden. I then get nice server error as greeting: 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied. If I try to access lenovo.de I get often no response... also for subsequent pages... On dells website it takes an awful lot of time to filter their lapt…

This, this, a thousand times this. One thing that Apple has done very well is put together a website that:

  A.) Tells you what they are selling, and
  B.) Can sell it to you.
Why is it so hard for other vendors to figure out that this is a pretty good way to sell computers?

My girlfriend bought an Asus Zenbook the other day; it's a really nice machine and made me wonder whether there might be a Zenbook for me. So I ended up on http://www.asus.com/zenbook/global/index.html. Is there a product list? No. A comparison feature? No. A way to buy, like, anything at all? Fuck you, says Asus. Here, have a bunch of annoying marketing copy; if you like that enough then maybe you can buy from some online retailer who has screwed up the model-numbers, unless you'd rather go to a shop were some know-nothing highschooler will try to make a commission by upselling you.

Had the same experience with HP. I take your word for it that Leno and Dell and Acer are similar. Really made me appreciate Apple's retail mechanisms (as much as I'm aiming to exit their ecosystem).

Seriously, industry: WTF? Get it together, guys!

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#39

Post by JetSpiegel »

swiley wrote: post #32
badminton1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What keeps many people on Windows are games. Valve, through Steam, has made monetization of Linux games more viable. So now there are many titles available on Linux compared to years ago. There's still a gap, but I hope that Vulkan gets traction and becomes the de-facto standard rather than DirectX. DirectX was pushed through a lot of FUD controversy during the evil years of Microsoft (they claimed that in future Win…

As much as I hate to say it, opengl still has issues in comparison to DirectX. Just getting an opengl context is comparatively quite difficult and that still doesn't give you input or audio.

SDL does, though.
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