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Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

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Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#91

Post by rbanffy »

Theodores wrote: post #87

Ubuntu works great for me and has done on every machine I have installed it on over the last decade or so. I find that the support for drivers is much better than with Windows except for when it comes to wi-fi. This means I have a drawer full of external wi-fi dongles and miscellaneous folders full of drivers that don't quite work. Despite this I find Ubuntu to be a much more productive OS than the alternatives avail…

When was the last time `apt dist-upgrade` did delete all your files? Oh... Never ;-)

It's hard to read all these opinions when my own experience with Windows is that I won't touch it with a pole. And God help me if the wireless fails (my wife's corporate issued Windows laptop could connect with the Starbucks across the road, but not with the stock D-Link at home) because there are at least 3 vendor specific control panels in addition to the Windows one, all showing conflicting information (and nothing on what actually failed).

Windows users are so shenanigan-tolerant when it comes to Windows it's a bit surprising they don't like rock-solid distros like Ubuntu or Fedora.

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#92

Post by sysrpl »

dazzawazza wrote: post #45
Zhyl wrote: post #18

There was an interesting thread on Reddit [1] the other day which did a breakdown of the state of gaming in terms of native games and games that can be run easily via Steam Play (aka 'Proton', Valve's in-built WINE+DXVK layer). The results were quite interesting and, as one of the replies pointed out in another breakdown, Linux now competes with (and in some ways beats) gaming on macOS in terms of size of catalogue.…

As someone who has just released[1] a first access game across Windows, macOS and Linux: 10 years ago developing on linux as a game developer was way worse than windows and MacOS, now there is no real difference at all. I speak as a long time UNIX user, Linux was terrible for C++ devleopment, debugging and asset creation/viewing (compared to the others) making gamedev tougher than it needed to be. 10 years ago linux'…

If you want an automated tool to generate a deb file for distribution, you might want to try this program I created for that purpose:

https://www.getlazarus.org/apps/makedeb/

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#93

Post by rbanffy »

emptyfile wrote: post #16
rospaya wrote: post #9

I'm writing this from my XPS 13 using the latest Ubuntu and once I've spent a few hours configuring everything, it works almost perfectly. There's still a few bugs, like Ubuntu not remembering the audio settings.

What? So XPS 13 which you can buy with Ubuntu preinstalled still has parts of the hardware not working after "a few hours configuring everything"? I can't understand how that's acceptable to anyone. Literally every laptop I've installed Linux on had a litany of driver problems.

> I can't understand how that's acceptable to anyone.

The other day Microsoft had to pull an OS update because it deleted all user files. Without warning.

Even on Windows, hardware support is kind of hit and miss, with manufacturer, supplier and Microsoft bugs piled on top of each other. Everything is "supported" but sometimes things break or stop working, you reboot the computer and continue using Windows.

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#94

Post by wtetzner »

dazzawazza wrote: post #45
Zhyl wrote: post #18

There was an interesting thread on Reddit [1] the other day which did a breakdown of the state of gaming in terms of native games and games that can be run easily via Steam Play (aka 'Proton', Valve's in-built WINE+DXVK layer). The results were quite interesting and, as one of the replies pointed out in another breakdown, Linux now competes with (and in some ways beats) gaming on macOS in terms of size of catalogue.…

As someone who has just released[1] a first access game across Windows, macOS and Linux: 10 years ago developing on linux as a game developer was way worse than windows and MacOS, now there is no real difference at all. I speak as a long time UNIX user, Linux was terrible for C++ devleopment, debugging and asset creation/viewing (compared to the others) making gamedev tougher than it needed to be. 10 years ago linux'…

> It's still a PITA to deploy a compiled app on Linux with unclear glibc versions and amazingly it's worse than MS DLL hell of MSVC redistributable shambles.

One option is to statically link against musl libc [1].

The kernel ABI is about the only stable thing you can rely on (which is something you _can't_ rely on for macOS or Windows).

[1] https://www.musl-libc.org/

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#95

Post by spacenick88 »

barrkel wrote: post #62
dazzawazza wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has just released[1] a first access game across Windows, macOS and Linux: 10 years ago developing on linux as a game developer was way worse than windows and MacOS, now there is no real difference at all. I speak as a long time UNIX user, Linux was terrible for C++ devleopment, debugging and asset creation/viewing (compared to the others) making gamedev tougher than it needed to be. 10 years ago linux'…

Containers could be a way out for deployment, if the mixing of licenses can be constructed in a tractable way.

or snaps

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#96

Post by PascLeRasc »

jjoonathan wrote: post #78
Wehrdo wrote: post #70

Glad that Ubuntu works well for the author, but I've used Ubuntu on and off for a good 5+ years, and could fill a book with small things that just don't work quite right, and cumulatively makes it feel like I'm fighting the computer instead of working with it. As a brief taste: * No trackpad swipe gestures (plus many more subtle trackpad issues) * Pre-Wayland the only way to attach a second screen at a different DPI…

On my Dell Precision 6800: * "Supported" ubuntu was so old that neither Chrome nor Firefox would update * Latest ubuntu constantly toggled the backlight at 30fps (yes, really). * They didn't provide a driver package, instead they provided a utility to bake drivers into install media. Naturally, it didn't work, the documentation described a significantly different version. * All these problems were well-represented in…

Where did you get info on what the "supported" Ubuntu version is? I've installed 18.04 on C2D machines and it looks like your machine has a Haswell CPU. The latest version of any Linux distro you want will work.

Also, did you ever try these utilities to set the backlight PWM? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/backlight#Backlight_PWM...

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#97

Post by rbanffy »

funkythings wrote: post #11

The only thing that is stopping me to jump to a linux laptop is battery life. MacOs is just optimised to a crazy extent. Nothing really comes close to the same battery performance if you don't want to get your hands dirty with tlp.

I have the same feeling with my MacBooks. They are so perfectly tuned to the software they come with they are nearly unbeatable.

But nothing other than Linux will ever be installed on my other laptops. I moved away from Windows as my main OS in the early 2000's to never look back.

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#98

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

rbanffy wrote: post #91
Theodores wrote: post #87

Ubuntu works great for me and has done on every machine I have installed it on over the last decade or so. I find that the support for drivers is much better than with Windows except for when it comes to wi-fi. This means I have a drawer full of external wi-fi dongles and miscellaneous folders full of drivers that don't quite work. Despite this I find Ubuntu to be a much more productive OS than the alternatives avail…

When was the last time `apt dist-upgrade` did delete all your files? Oh... Never ;-) It's hard to read all these opinions when my own experience with Windows is that I won't touch it with a pole. And God help me if the wireless fails (my wife's corporate issued Windows laptop could connect with the Starbucks across the road, but not with the stock D-Link at home) because there are at least 3 vendor specific control p…

> When was the last time `apt dist-upgrade` did delete all your files? Oh... Never ;-)

On the other hand, I have had it brick the package manager to the point that only reinstalling the OS from scratch would fix it, or break perfectly functional existing applications by replacing their libraries with incompatible versions.

I think if you look around you'll find that Linux Desktop users are also remarkably tolerant of shenanigans. Editing poorly documented text-based config files by hand, having to compile some applications from source to get an updated version because it isn't in the repo, having to containerize applications because of the interdependency mess, setting kernel boot parameters because of strange driver behavior, etc.

Modern OSs just kinda all suck and it's more or less subjective which ones suck more than the others.

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#99

Post by cix_pkez »

rbanffy wrote: post #90
cix_pkez wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from Windows to Linux before I had a smartphone and appreciate the package manager. I got a Macbook for work and lamented the lack of package manager (homebrew is a weak substitute in several ways).

Macs have the App Store, which works well for GUI programs. On the CLI side I have played with Brew (and Fink a long time ago), but I prefer MacPorts because it feels more solid (at the expense of not having all of the bleeding edge stuff.

Ah, yes, but my package manager covers every piece of software I use. No specialized update services. It seems like a small thing, but it's more pleasant.

Re: Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13

#100

Post by majewsky »

chupasaurus wrote: post #43
majewsky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two systems with AMD GPUs: a desktop with a 2015 R9 Nano and a 2018 Thinkpad with a Ryzen APU. The amdgpu driver works perfectly on both of them. The Ryzen APU has one issue where you need to set `iommu=soft` in the kernel parameters to get it to boot, but that seems to be more related to the CPU than the GPU.

I don't have that parameter set, everything works fine. Ryzen 2400G.

Maybe it's got to do with the chipset? Not sure, I don't have any other Ryzens to compare against. But `iommu=soft` is strictly required on my system, otherwise the screen just stays black after the boot manager.
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