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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

#181

Post by cdiddy2 »

dilatedmind wrote: post #84
bhhaskin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming the XPS is the developer edition. I am also running Ubuntu on my XPS, but it came with windows orginaly. I also don't have any hardware issues to speak of.

How is your battery life? I also installed ubuntu on my xps, and I'm only getting about 2 hours max, although I always keep it plugged in, so it's not a real issue for me. As for hardware issues, I had to download wireless drivers, which was a slight pain since there is no ethernet port. I was able to get my video card working with optimus, but that wasn't non trivial. I wound up disabling my track pad and using a mo…

Its a bit hard to read the times, but its more than 8 hours with 17% left as I plug in for the charge.

https://imgur.com/a/C7rCKeK

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

#182

Post by monocasa »

pjmlp wrote: post #178
monocasa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So wait, the AAA developers not supporting don't count against your argument? Even in the case of Blizzard who has famously been one of the biggest Mac supporters? Isn't "all AAA support Mac... except all the ones that don't support Mac" a tautology?

Also, just noticed that you lumped in Unity with AAA, lolz. What's next libgdx?

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

#183

Post by nineteen999 »

scns wrote: post #162
wtetzner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

Is it not possible to link glibc staticalliy? IIRC musl has readability and code size in mind while glibc optimizes for performance at the cost of readability and codesize.

The problem that I know of is that glibc supports loading DSO modules, eg. for NSS, so it's not going to support pluggable NSS sources like LDAP etc when statically linked. There are workarounds, however:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3430400/linux-static-lin...

Can't imagine many Linux gamers are going to need NSS support in their game binaries. It's a bit of a stretch to say glibc doesn't support static linking, perhaps "officially" it doesn't, its just not all the extended features are going to work.

Static linking is generally going to be frowned upon these days however since you're effectively linking security issues into the binary forever.

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

#184

Post by pjmlp »

monocasa wrote: post #182
pjmlp wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So wait, the AAA developers not supporting don't count against your argument? Even in the case of Blizzard who has famously been one of the biggest Mac supporters? Isn't "all AAA support Mac... except all the ones that don't support Mac" a tautology? Also, just noticed that you lumped in Unity with AAA, lolz. What's next libgdx?

Because their focus is clearly PlayStation, Xbox and PC, not even Nintendo hardware.

There are plenty of other AAA studios using Unreal, Unity, CryEngine.

Maybe you should check again the names of some studios using Unity, ever heard of Nintendo and Microsoft?

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

#185

Post by wes-t »

chopin wrote: post #131
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article author was on a Linux podcast about a week ago and clarified that he couldn't reproduce the Mint issue, as it seemed to properly detect it when he retried later. But he had set strict guidelines for the article--basically, that he had to do this from a lifelong Windows user's perspective. So if the distro didn't work the first time, he moved on to the next one.

Yeah, I got that and I am absolutely fine with it. A bit strange though that this happened. Maybe he scrambled something during trying the live image... As I migrated not only me, but also (non-technical) other users I would have wanted to stick to Mint even at the cost of jumping through hoops as the migration is said to be easier for Windows users (as compared to eg. Ubuntu). We never looked back.

Another anecode here, but I've had the exact same thing happen to me - Mint failed due to a similar issue during install, while Ubuntu installed without issue. I ended up using ubuntu for a while

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

#186

Post by Keyframe »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #83
Keyframe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about AppImage?

What about it? It doesn't solve the problem, it just allows you to conveniently package everything you can't rely on the distro having, which is basically everything.

Which was the complaint.

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

#187

Post by microcolonel »

cix_pkez wrote: post #82
kurtisc wrote: post #7

The author praises the package manager as a positive, not a negative as I usually see from people used to downloading *.exe installers. He's used other distros, plus a Mac, in the past, but I wonder if phone app stores (plus Windows' own software store) have made this become a more natural method of installing software for the average user?

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).

On the topic of differences between package managers, I must say that Arch's Pacman blew the major competition (Yum + RPM, APT + DEB) out of the water when I switched in 2012 (because I liked systemd and didn't want to run a desktop environment) in terms of performance and useful features (like showing the optional dependencies, and their value propositions, while installing). I used to lament using yum because of how much time it would spend getting the metadata shuffled, APT has that kludgey update vs. upgrade distinction and still isn't as fast as Pacman/ALPM.

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

#188

Post by mahgnous »

I had an absolutely horrible experience with the XPS 13 and Ubuntu 18.04. Wireless drivers didn't work worth a crap in it and I was having problems controlling temperatures and it was constantly performance throttling on me. I ended up returning it. (This was not the dev edition)

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

#189

Post by mscasts »

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…

AFAIK, Slackware doesn't even have a package manager, does it?

The only experience I had with Slackware was just that, I installed it, found out there is no package manager and installed Ubuntu.

I have a hard time understanding why someone would use Slackware when there is distros that is literally better at every aspect.

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

#190

Post by qu4z-2 »

strmpnk wrote: post #111
jammygit wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.p…

I prefer using UTC for both because I live in a timezone with Daylight Savings and multiple OSes always step on each other's feet and each adjust the time on their own and then you're three hours ahead.
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