Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

techradar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 319 posts

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#11

Post by reacweb »

maccard wrote: post #9
luka-birsa wrote: post #6

As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…

I’ve a dual boot set up on one of my machines with Ubuntu 17.04. I’m consistently having Ethernet issues related to having two network cards, and the multi monitor support is lacking. I can’t use my triple monitor setup, and if I forget to disconnect my third monitor I have to reboot with only one monitor attached to get it work. Meanwhile, on the same machine, windows handles it in its stride. There’s still some imp…

ethernet ? It is the most stable part of Linux since 25 years. Do you have a link to the bug report ?

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#12

Post by kupiakos »

deadprogram wrote: post #5

I had the first version, currently on am on my second version of the Dell XPS 13 developer edition, and about to order a brand new one to replace it. It is a really great package. Not to mention having HW from a major company like Dell with all the drivers already in the Linux kernel means you can pretty much run any distro you want and it "just works".

I'm currently waiting on the 8th gen CPU version (9370) of the Developer Edition to come out.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#13

Post by pmontra »

NiklasMort wrote: post #4

meanwhile in Thinkpad land... honestly I never understand why people go for Macbooks or XPS. X/T model user since 7 generations. I did look at the XPS but there are so many disadvantages with those modern one-body-all-closed-no-mods laptops. Before you down vote me, I still applaud Dells decision to get Ubuntu Laptops out there. But I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled w…

Probably it means that everything works well since day 0. I bought a HP ZBook in 2014. I wiped out Windows and installed Ubuntu. It worked but there were some problems with the backlight control keys. There were workarounds and everything got fixed after a few months with some new version of the kernel. I expect zero problems if the pc came with Linux.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#14

Post by xab9 »

maccard wrote: post #9
luka-birsa wrote: post #6

As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…

I’ve a dual boot set up on one of my machines with Ubuntu 17.04. I’m consistently having Ethernet issues related to having two network cards, and the multi monitor support is lacking. I can’t use my triple monitor setup, and if I forget to disconnect my third monitor I have to reboot with only one monitor attached to get it work. Meanwhile, on the same machine, windows handles it in its stride. There’s still some imp…

Sometimes linux works fine, sometimes it doesn't and there will always be room for improvements. Fortunately I have three laptops, one for Win10, one for Arch and another for OSX, all have their quirks (but I must admit, arch linux is my preferred one:)).

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#15

Post by unhammer »

NiklasMort wrote: post #4

meanwhile in Thinkpad land... honestly I never understand why people go for Macbooks or XPS. X/T model user since 7 generations. I did look at the XPS but there are so many disadvantages with those modern one-body-all-closed-no-mods laptops. Before you down vote me, I still applaud Dells decision to get Ubuntu Laptops out there. But I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled w…

> I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled with Ubuntu or if I do it myself.

It means a certain level of support. They're actively trying to make this thing run Linux well, instead of leaving it up to "the community". And you don't have to go reading forums or blog posts before buying just to figure out if it will have some stupid UEFI bug or whatever that makes installing Linux on it a real hassle.

Although I prefer Thinkpads, I very much understand why people want Macbook-like computers – they look quite nice! You shouldn't have to fit into some black-and-blue mold just to run Linux.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#16

Post by pjmlp »

luka-birsa wrote: post #6

As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…

> If you're a developer there's no UX reason to go Windows anymore.

I am a developer serving Windows customers, that rely on native UI/UX for their workflows.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#17

Post by chx »

luka-birsa wrote: post #6

As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…

As another 20+ (24 actually, 0.99pl15) Linux user let me counter: with the Linux subsystem for Windows there's no reason to wrestle with Linux any more. While Linux certainly works on laptops it doesn't work well. Wifi and battery life are absymal and for me seemingly every other update either breaks the printer half or the scanner half of the MFC device (and if not, then it's time for another bluetooth breakage, you can search Arch forums on how many times BT broke on me). Let's not even mention that I simply can't log into one of clients VPN network as F5 doesn't seem to have a Linux client capable of web login (previously it was a Firefox extension but of course that capability needed to be obsoleted). So now I need to use my Android phone to VPN in and tether it... madness.

For many years (roughly since systemd) I hoped there's a kind of "modern Linux handbook" especially when people come up with solutions to problems seemingly totally out of nowhere but turns out, there's nothing. Some people have knowledge of narrow areas but the entire modern Linux is a frighteningly complex monster. And when you realize your fractions of knowledge makes you one of the experts, that's even worse: when I ask about DisplayLink in Linux, I am redirected to the relevant Arch Wiki page where the meat of the page was written by me years ago...

I set up Windows 10 to my taste https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi... and it's a better world now. Drivers and GUI programs are running in Windows, daemons and CLI tools are running in Linux, switching to a brief game session is trivial.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#19

Post by NiklasMort »

unhammer wrote: post #15
NiklasMort wrote: post #4

meanwhile in Thinkpad land... honestly I never understand why people go for Macbooks or XPS. X/T model user since 7 generations. I did look at the XPS but there are so many disadvantages with those modern one-body-all-closed-no-mods laptops. Before you down vote me, I still applaud Dells decision to get Ubuntu Laptops out there. But I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled w…

> I don't really see what the big game changer is whether a laptop comes preinstalled with Ubuntu or if I do it myself. It means a certain level of support. They're actively trying to make this thing run Linux well, instead of leaving it up to "the community". And you don't have to go reading forums or blog posts before buying just to figure out if it will have some stupid UEFI bug or whatever that makes installing L…

Lenovo did the same in the early days at least, they were very aware of having to produce high compatibility laptops. Not so much for the point of open source but for business usage which sometimes required non-windows OS's. But sure I applaud Dell. The world should rid of Windows.

Re: Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off

#20

Post by babuskov »

chx wrote: post #17
luka-birsa wrote: post #6

As a 20 year Linux user I really appreciate Dells support in proving the market exists. This improved support across all manufacturers. I've recently acquired a HP Envy 13 2017 laptop with Windows preinstalled. I've really wanted to try Windows out, but after installing Google Chrome and Docker (1hr after starting it up) it stopped working - windows boot up into a blank black screen. In a hurry I've downloaded Ubuntu…

As another 20+ (24 actually, 0.99pl15) Linux user let me counter: with the Linux subsystem for Windows there's no reason to wrestle with Linux any more. While Linux certainly works on laptops it doesn't work well. Wifi and battery life are absymal and for me seemingly every other update either breaks the printer half or the scanner half of the MFC device (and if not, then it's time for another bluetooth breakage, you…

> you can search Arch

Isn't Arch specifically for users who don't mind things breaking and going deep into internals to fix it?

Post reply on HN