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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

#111

Post by strmpnk »

jammygit wrote: post #46
emptyfile wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have an xps 13 dual booted with ubuntu and windows without any driver issues. Everything works great besides the lousy keyboard and trackpad, and that's all Dell. Actually, there are a few problems: windows can't render fonts clearly a lot of the time for some reason, and it keeps losing the current time, and it keeps erasing GRUB after windows updates. Ubuntu itself runs great

It is probably "losing" time because it assumes the system clock is set to local time while Linux assumes it is UTC. If either use a network time service to reset the clock, the other will look wrong between reboots.

The easiest solution is to use localtime on Linux. Windows can run with the system clock set to UTC but I hear it is rare so it my not be well supported. See more here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_time#Time_standa...

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

#112

Post by linsomniac »

If you don't have specific Windows apps, I'd be tempted to try a Chromebook these days.

Around 2 years ago I got a cheap Chromebook and it was terrible. I think it was $250. Fit and finish and keyboard kind of sucked. I found one of those HP Chromebook 13 g1 boxes, which Woot had refurb for half off at just under $500, and it is much closer to the hardware experience I'm used to with Thinkpads, for 1/6th the price.

Now, I almost always reach for the Chromebook instead of the Thinkpad EXCEPT when I need to connect to both of my work VPNs, the Chromebook will only connect to one at a time. I can ssh into my personal and work machines, run my password manager, program via remove vi sessions (though I could stand to use VSCode, I don't have that set up on my Thinkpad either).

The Chromebook has been a great experience for me.

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

#113

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cix_pkez wrote: post #108
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a big problem though that when pain points are brought up the response is often to just point at one of the other OSs's pain points and dismiss the criticism. Unfortunately we can do very little to make Windows or MacOS better other than complain to the deaf ears of the companies that own them, but theoretically Linux Desktop could be better if complaints weren't simply dismissed in this fashion.

Yeah, I agree. I've really taken the time to look at the pros and cons of each, but even a bundled list like that would likely not be useful to anyone else. But at least I can fix the flaws I see on Linux (often).

Sure, maybe, if you have the time and expertise to fix those flaws. But if the community doesn't adopt your fixes then you're stuck maintaining them yourself forever.

Over the years I've seen several solutions to my personal gripes with Linux Desktop, and they are routinely ignored or rejected because the culture as a whole just doesn't seem to actually care about those problems, or doesn't even believe they are problems.

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

#114

Post by cix_pkez »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #109
cix_pkez wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if it doesn't cover software you use, then it sucks to be you. Or if you want to install an application to a different disk. Or if you want to have two different versions of an application installed. Or if you want to use an application that relies on dependencies your package manager has decided are incompatible. The package management paradigm has its own set of limitations and flaws.

I've really not had any issues finding what I need for Arch Linux.

If you want to install to a different disk, you could still install the raw binary, or mount a directory in your applications directory.

Those are just hard situations in general. I'm a big advocate of statically linking anything possible, because I have disk space galore and dependencies can be a pain as for your last point.

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

#115

Post by Shinchy »

majewsky wrote: post #8
GiuseppaAcciaio wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I installed Debian on my old Toshiba laptop in 2004 (all 16x CDs of it, which a friend had to download for me coz I had no broadband), I couldn't update it because the ethernet network adapter (no wifi) on my laptop was not supported... nice to see that this curse still occasionally persists! If I remember correctly I fixed it by installing a different distro (Ubuntu or Kubuntu, which surprisingly des…

> nice to see that this curse still occasionally persists /s FTFY Seriously, though, that's a huge outlier. I haven't touched a machine in the last 10 years where Ethernet and Wifi were not supported out-of-the-box. (Including my new Thinkpad, which I was weary about since it came with an Atheros Wifi module, but it too worked out-of-the-box without any tinkering). These days, the biggest issues are with Nvidia GPUs…

TP-Link still have these issues and they're one of the largest manufacturers of wireless tech. In some sense a similar case to the Nvidia Issues.

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

#116

Post by Spivak »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #69
plq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still a PITA to deploy a compiled app on Linux with unclear glibc versions If you don't want to worry about the glibc version on your users' machines, you can just ship your dynamic linker and use it to run your executable in your wrapper script (you do have one, right?). Why's that so hard?

It's not hard, it's just stupid that the platform has such a remarkable lack of consistency that you can't rely on anything but the kernel ABI.

But the Linux kernel is really the only common thing you can expect across a wide array of distributions.

* If you're a GUI app you can also speak X11 with GLX and its up to the user to have something that understands your messages.

* If you want desktop integration you use one of the many dbus protocols and it's up to the user's DE to understand your requests.

* If you distribute through Steam you may also depend on the Steam runtime, but you have to be careful to only depend on what's provided.

* If you distribute through Flatpak or Snap you can also depend on any of the provided runtimes or build your own for maybe easier maintainability. It's essentially 'bundle everything' as a service.

tl;dr depend on protocols and runtimes, not libraries.

Also, nothing is stopping you from building against Ubuntu:latest. It's more cumbersome but Linux users will typically find a way to make your stuff work on other distros.

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

#117

Post by cix_pkez »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #113
cix_pkez wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree. I've really taken the time to look at the pros and cons of each, but even a bundled list like that would likely not be useful to anyone else. But at least I can fix the flaws I see on Linux (often).

Sure, maybe, if you have the time and expertise to fix those flaws. But if the community doesn't adopt your fixes then you're stuck maintaining them yourself forever. Over the years I've seen several solutions to my personal gripes with Linux Desktop, and they are routinely ignored or rejected because the culture as a whole just doesn't seem to actually care about those problems, or doesn't even believe they are prob…

I haven't had the same experience. Which distros have you tried? Perhaps another would be a better fit technically or community-wise. I'd recommend Manjaro for a rolling release (no major reinstall every year), a focus on user-friendliness, a friendly community, as well as being based on Arch, which means the platinum-standard Arch Wiki is available as documentation for you.

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

#118

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cix_pkez wrote: post #114
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it doesn't cover software you use, then it sucks to be you. Or if you want to install an application to a different disk. Or if you want to have two different versions of an application installed. Or if you want to use an application that relies on dependencies your package manager has decided are incompatible. The package management paradigm has its own set of limitations and flaws.

I've really not had any issues finding what I need for Arch Linux. If you want to install to a different disk, you could still install the raw binary, or mount a directory in your applications directory. Those are just hard situations in general. I'm a big advocate of statically linking anything possible, because I have disk space galore and dependencies can be a pain as for your last point.

They aren't hard problems at all. Even DOS handled them with ease. The problem is that the culture of application development around systems with package managers doesn't consider these use cases at all, forcing you to jump through a bunch of hacky hoops to do deal with them. Case in point: symlinking or mount-based tricks because developers hardcode paths.

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

#119

Post by fak3r »

bitwize wrote: post #88

I freakin' love Linux as a personal workstation OS. I got into it in 1995, back in the days when Linux was punk rawk and you had to dig around on tsx-11 and sunsite to find things to run on it. I still dual-booted Windows there for a few years. Then I noticed something: Windows would, suddenly and without warning, stop working. As in, blue screen on first boot. All the way up through Windows 2000 -- 9x, NT, didn't ma…

Like you, I know I'm not the typical Linux user, but I took started out with Linux (Red Hat) in 1996, then got into learning Linux with Slackware. Today I have servers at home and 'in the cloud' all running Linux (mostly Debian), and home systems (old iMac 27", Macbook Air 13") running Linux only (ElementaryOS and Budgie Ubuntu) and couldn't be happier. I use i3 on the desktop and just work so much better/faster than in any other OSs. You get closer to the real power of the hardware too, amazing how much faster everything is w/o the bit OSs of macOS and Windows. At work is a diff story, depending where I am (I'm an IT contractor), but when I have a Windows laptop, I do 95% of my 'real' work on a Linux server I ssh to. I've also gotten into FreeBSD and OpenBSD on servers and they're fantastic there too, but being in a Linux desktop is where I'm happiest.

TL;DR me too ;)

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

#120

Post by StavrosK »

linsomniac wrote: post #112

If you don't have specific Windows apps, I'd be tempted to try a Chromebook these days. Around 2 years ago I got a cheap Chromebook and it was terrible. I think it was $250. Fit and finish and keyboard kind of sucked. I found one of those HP Chromebook 13 g1 boxes, which Woot had refurb for half off at just under $500, and it is much closer to the hardware experience I'm used to with Thinkpads, for 1/6th the price. N…

Chromebooks sound amazing except I don't want to be locked into Google or give them more of my data...
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