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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

#171

Post by jandrese »

chadlavi wrote: post #140
jammygit wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find its all WiFi. On an xps 13 with ubuntu, I get 10-12 hours on low brightness without wifi, but often 4-6 otherwise with wifi. Its really nice for roadtrips.

Turning off wifi is probably just turning off your ability to do a lot of heavy processing as you interact with the internet, right?

This is my thought. Turn off wifi and you're no longer running the cpu and memory monster that is a web browser.

But this is something Apple does right. My wife noticed that she can get around 50% more battery life out of her Macbook using Safari instead of Firefox. (7-8 hours instead of 4-5).

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

#172

Post by ryandrake »

pjmlp wrote: post #157
monocasa wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no. There's talks of Blizzard for instance dropping support for Mac. Dice has a blog post that's messaging concern. It looks like a bunch of engines are going to limp on MoltenVK which kind or imposes a weird impedance mismatch and gives weird perf issues soemtimes that you probs wouldn't see with a native Metal backend. And that's before getting into the release of Metal 2. There's a non zero amount of work to…

> All the middleware that matters.... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, ... I wasn't talking about in-house solutions, rather engines that many AAA studios buy in order to actually focus on the game itself. As for the rest of your remark, it comes up in places like HN, but not at all when attending local game developer meetups, developer articles on Making Games, Gamasutra, Connection, IGDA, or many other professional public…

(not in the game industry, but a graphics programmer)

Are there really no games out there that program their own graphics anymore and don’t rely on “middleware” engines? This seems shocking to me. Then again I was shocked the first time I learned that most games don’t hand-code assembly anymore. Things move so fast.

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

#173

Post by ryandrake »

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.

For a long time you did not need a package manager or installers or anything like that on Macs. Just drag the application to your Applications folder and it was installed. I was always skeptical of Mac software that came with an ‘installer’. Like, what on earth is so complicated that the developer thought he needed a separate executable merely to copy the application over??

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

#174

Post by contingencies »

My laptop (~99% work only) setup is ZFS root + Gentoo on XPS15: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560 ... but switched from Mac (vs. Windows) after yet another stupid hardware error and Apple quoting more than the price of the thing to fix it. Haven't used Windows personally in over a decade. Manage to game a bit, but in general don't have time anymore. However, just specced a couple of Ryzen workstations at work, and they will run Windows. More expensive than I expected. I don't built machines that often anymore. Since when did you need 700W of power and a dedicated graphics card because CPU doesn't support built-in graphics chip? This is truly a new world. :)

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

#175

Post by Synaesthesia »

contingencies wrote: post #174

My laptop (~99% work only) setup is ZFS root + Gentoo on XPS15: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560 ... but switched from Mac (vs. Windows) after yet another stupid hardware error and Apple quoting more than the price of the thing to fix it. Haven't used Windows personally in over a decade. Manage to game a bit, but in general don't have time anymore. However, just specced a couple of Ryzen workstations at…

Try hackintosh. And people tend to recommend way overspecced power supplies.

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

#176

Post by Synaesthesia »

kayoone wrote: post #142
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.…

tbh i always thought that it's ahead of MacOS for a long time, since Gaming on OSX was always rather terrible.

Still has more games than Linux, eg Blizzard games, call of Duty, Company of Heroes and a bunch of other AAA titles.

You can get a bunch of games working on either with Wine.

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

#177

Post by pjmlp »

ryandrake wrote: post #172
pjmlp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the middleware that matters.... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, ... I wasn't talking about in-house solutions, rather engines that many AAA studios buy in order to actually focus on the game itself. As for the rest of your remark, it comes up in places like HN, but not at all when attending local game developer meetups, developer articles on Making Games, Gamasutra, Connection, IGDA, or many other professional public…

(not in the game industry, but a graphics programmer) Are there really no games out there that program their own graphics anymore and don’t rely on “middleware” engines? This seems shocking to me. Then again I was shocked the first time I learned that most games don’t hand-code assembly anymore. Things move so fast.

AAA studios always use middleware, if it isn't bought, it is done in-house.

The actual set of 3D API is a tiny portion of everything that a game engine requires, among scene management, materials handling, graphical editor, plugins, sound, physics,....

So one always ends up with a pluggable rendering layer, where adding a new API is relatively simple.

Now what has been happening is that with production costs skyrocketing, most studios are increasable adopting external middleware that they just adapt to their purposes than writing everything from scratch.

For example, you can get Unreal and get support for NVidia's raytracing features out of the box, or invest the money to develop the same features from scratch in-house.

The culture in the games industry is that what matters is the story, gameplay, taking advantage of hardware features and getting the game out there, tech comes and goes.

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

#178

Post by pjmlp »

monocasa wrote: post #163
pjmlp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the middleware that matters.... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, ... I wasn't talking about in-house solutions, rather engines that many AAA studios buy in order to actually focus on the game itself. As for the rest of your remark, it comes up in places like HN, but not at all when attending local game developer meetups, developer articles on Making Games, Gamasutra, Connection, IGDA, or many other professional public…

I mean, my day job is supporting an application across Win/Mac/Linux. Even ignoring the graphics, Apple is easily the hardest to support. I don't really care if you haven't read a magazine article on it. And to pretend like FrostBite doesn't matter is ridiculous.

It doesn't matter for developers that want to support OS X, as it is mostly focused on game consoles and Windows.

Whereas the ones I listed do support those systems, Apple platforms, Android and GNU/Linux.

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

#179

Post by simion314 »

jandrese wrote: post #168
simion314 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because noobs can install Windows in 5 minutes? First you need the drivers, how will you get them if you don't have a CD ROM and ethernet is not working? Sometimes drivers suck, sometimes Realtek sound drivers mess up the Realtk network cards, will your noobs know what happened? Then you have to install apps like VLC, good luck ending up on the official site and not some random download site Other issue I personally…

The difference is that you bought the laptop with Windows already installed, so the manufacturer went through all of those headaches for you.

It is true not all laptops work with Linux.

But a noob can't reinstall windows and resetup his apps in 15 minutes either. A fair comparison is to give a setup Linux and a setup Windows and have them install the apps they need like browser, video player, printer etc.

If you are a developer(in general not Windows apps only) you have a much better experience installing compilers,servers on Linux.

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

#180

Post by contingencies »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #175
contingencies wrote: post #174

My laptop (~99% work only) setup is ZFS root + Gentoo on XPS15: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560 ... but switched from Mac (vs. Windows) after yet another stupid hardware error and Apple quoting more than the price of the thing to fix it. Haven't used Windows personally in over a decade. Manage to game a bit, but in general don't have time anymore. However, just specced a couple of Ryzen workstations at…

Try hackintosh. And people tend to recommend way overspecced power supplies.

No time for hackintosh. It's not that people recommend, 450W wouldn't get an image. Had to chuck it out and upgrade. That's hardware today!
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