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From OS X to Ubuntu

nicolas.perriault.net

341–350 of 403 posts

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#341
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%…

>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.

You aren't doing a fair comparasion. You are comparing macOS on a Macbook with Linux on a generic laptop. I have a wonderful, hassle-free experience with Fedora 25 on a ThinkPad X240.

For anyone else, if you want Linux on a laptop without having to do additional work to enable hardware support, use Ubuntu or Fedora on a ThinkPad from X, T or W series.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The XPS 13 has a different wireless chipset than the developer edition. The only way to get the same chipset in Australia is in the Precision line.

The xps 13 this year seems to have the same wireless chip on both windows and developer editions. They both seem to have the same killer wireless chip. Developer edition xps13: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?3x_n...

It is good to note though that not all "same laptop but different OS" are actually the same laptop. Be wary and check hardware before buying the windows version to put linux on... it wont always work. (In this case obviously, the wireless is at least a non issue)

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#343
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%…

Could anyone suggest some resources for building a Linux desktop computer from scratch? I've been a Mac user forever and I'm interested in building my own desktop computer, but I honestly have no idea how to select components, much less how to tell if they're compatible with Linux or Fedora. Any help would be appreciated.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#344
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so frustrating. Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "ju…

>Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box". Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience. You'll also usually find pretty straightforward instructions how to get things going quickly if they do not work out of the box, or the simple fact that the machine is not wel…

My dad and I have the same Samsung laptop from 2012-ish. It came with Windows 7, and after upgrading to windows 8, a lot of stuff stopped working. Samsung didnt have "special" drivers for windows 8, so a lot of stuff (like the backlight buttons) didnt work properly. Eventually they fixed the problem, but they were weird out of date drivers. Windows 10 had no drivers at all.

I moved my laptop to Linux full time around the Windows 8.1 transition (which had also re-broken the drivers somehow). Everything worked great in Linux for me until kernel 4.2 or something when backlight brightness stopped working. Then after a few weeks or searching, I found a parameter that made it work again.

After applying the fixes to my dad's laptop, and setting up a few of his "must have" programs under wine for him, he claims that Ubuntu runs better for him than Windows ever did.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#345
post #237

For all your OS X coming to Linux, a word of personal advice. Use a distro with KDE, Kubuntu is great for beginners and install ubuntu-make ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-make ), a command line utility that installs your dev environment. If you feel a bit more adventurous and want the all of the newest Software try Manjaro-KDE. Why KDE? KDE has a traditional Desktop experience, that can be tweaked in every way. It…

The choice of desktop environment is quite a personal matter. I would recommend Gnome 3, which is especially polished on Fedora.

The early transition years from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 were rough, and I switched to KDE for this time. KDE was fine, but Gnome 3 has been polished a lot in the last view years. So I switched back to Gnome 3 and never looked back :).

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. I strongly disagree. When the dinosaurs roamed the Earth and I tried to dual boot, Debian ran everything on my desktop from the get go. For Windows, I had to hunt for drivers for all the hardware, or use the provided disks (which was annoying since I hadn't originally bought an optical drive)

Nowadays, that's not an issue with Windows. On all my machines, the drivers either came with Windows or Windows downloaded them from Windows Update.

I disagree. Installing Windows 7 and 10 on newer hardware usually leaves me hunting for network drivers _before_ windows can then go about automagically installing the rest of them.

Even after installing the network driver, there's usually some ACPI or platform device it can't automatically install and then I'm stuck hunting device IDs and chipset drivers.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything is most up to date, in ubuntu you get versions that can be years old. And no, that doesn't really mean it breaks things. I have antergos for a couple of months now. I have about 1500 packages installed, never got anything broken like I had the `sudo apt -f install` every few weeks in ubuntu. And ubuntu comes a bit bloated out of the box. At least for a "normal" power user that knows how to install t…

I don't want to sound rude, but Arch and Antergos aren't exactly the same. I think if you intall Arch you'll set yourself up with a much better understanding of your system for when something goes wrong.

They are essentially the same, it is the same repos. In fact once you have installed antergos you can remove the antergos repo and you essentially have an arch system.

Many arch users often say "you must go through our annoying installation process to understand linux better!" - but that's only true if the person migrating to arch is a linux newbie.

Frankly I've been using linux for 20 years and now that I am older and a parent I have much better uses of my very limited time than going through an obnoxious chroot install and configuring some files in /etc. Antergos is great.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone point me towards the new Dell XPS 15 Developer Edition (does it exist)? I'm able to find the Windows version [0], as well as the XPS 13 Developer Edition [1], but no XPS 15 Developer edition. I just want my 15 inches. I did 13 for years and the pain still haunts me. [0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9560-laptop/pd [1] http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...

I use the XPS 15 (2015) and I run Linux with zero problems. While not marketed as a Linux machine I've had zero issues getting 16.04 server (no unity) working.

I'm using the 2015 XPS 15 too, likewise with no significant problems.

The default Ubuntu distro with Unity, because I think it's nice.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone point me towards the new Dell XPS 15 Developer Edition (does it exist)? I'm able to find the Windows version [0], as well as the XPS 13 Developer Edition [1], but no XPS 15 Developer edition. I just want my 15 inches. I did 13 for years and the pain still haunts me. [0] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9560-laptop/pd [1] http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...

It's the Dell Precision 5510. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...

I've looked at it, and they include a pretty useless NVIDIA Quadro instead of a video cart you could use for occasional gaming.

Granted, the last 3D game I've ran on my XPS 15 was Half-Life 2, and it's pretty fast even on the integrated Intel video card.

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