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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

#211

Post by Leace »

contingencies wrote: post #209
Leace wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ZFS instead of btrfs (asking out of curiosity as I'm pondering the issue myself)?

More familiar personally. I think its been stable longer and has more features, but btrfs may have caught up these days.

Thanks for your explanation. If only ZFS was GPL licensed btrfs would probably never exist. I was very much interested in ZFS and invested a lot to learn the internals but the out-of-tree status of it and the fact that btrfs gets better and better with every kernel release probably means that btrfs will get ahead of ZFS some time in the future. (that's just my observation)

FWIW it seems anecdotal evidence [0] shows that btrfs is stable for daily use (just don't use RAID 5/6 [1]).

[0]: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux...

[1]: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Status#Overview

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

#212

Post by emptyfile »

rbanffy wrote: post #93
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 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.

>Everything is "supported" but sometimes things break or stop working, you reboot the computer and continue using Windows.

That's right, I reboot and continue working.

On Ubuntu it just doesn't work. Period.

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

#213

Post by tomohawk »

ricktdotorg wrote: post #148
tomohawk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My chromebook sits on the shelf, unused. None of the apps really work properly. It's been a big disappointment. I recently dusted it off and had the apps update. They worked worse than last time. YMMV.

i am curious as to what apps don’t work properly. considering ChromeOS is just an OS that mostly “wraps” web pages, what doesn’t work for you?

The most critical one is lastpass.

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

#214

Post by simion314 »

jandrese wrote: post #195
simion314 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Noobs don't reinstall windows. They bring it to BestBuy to have the nerd do it for them for $100.

Noobs don't reinstall Linux either, you bring it to your tech friend or any repair shop.

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

#215

Post by rbanffy »

emptyfile wrote: post #212
rbanffy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>Everything is "supported" but sometimes things break or stop working, you reboot the computer and continue using Windows. That's right, I reboot and continue working. On Ubuntu it just doesn't work . Period.

> On Ubuntu it just doesn't work. Period.

You are, clearly, doing something very wrong.

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

#216

Post by monocasa »

pjmlp wrote: post #203
monocasa wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because their focus is clearly PlayStation, Xbox and PC, not even Nintendo hardware. > There are plenty of other AAA studios using Unreal, Unity, CryEngine. Blizzard's focus had been on Mac in addition to Windows. With the switch to Metal, they're probably abandoning it. FrostBite means that EA AAA games probably won't either. Ubisoft didn't release Assassin's Creed Odessey on Mac. And even looking at Unreal Engine…

Yet OpenGL doesn't make them support Linux any better. So support or not for Metal is not the real reason why they don't want to focus on the Mac. As for games, Nascar Heat 3, for example.

> Yet OpenGL doesn't make them support Linux any better.

> So support or not for Metal is not the real reason why they don't want to focus on the Mac.

"But they don't care enough to finish out the QA, or put in any work to make the game actually shippable on that platform.". Mac was a fixed platform, and you used to be able to justify the engineering because the work ultimately helped make your Windows port better ("the end user will have a way out if there's a bunch in their DirectX drivers"), and let your artists do all the work on the tools they were used to. Then if you're running your tooling on Mac, you've been supporting it the whole time and there's very little QA overhead for release since it's a relatively fixed platform. That last part doesn't apply to Linux. This whole time I've been saying it's not just OpenGL->Metal, it's a Nexus of several things all coming together to break the camel's back.

> As for games, Nascar Heat 3, for example.

You know that a game that's less than $50 at release isn't a AAA game, right?

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

#217

Post by rurban »

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.

Not really. musl optimizes for performance and codesize, whilst glibc optimizes for the random user who needs to read error message in farsi and logs on via an external LDAP service, and needs LD and MALLOC hooks to debug weird edge cases.

glibc unicode tables are huge, musl are tiny.

glibc uses assembler optimizations for everything, whilst musl uses compiler auto-vectorization, which mostly beats handwritten assembly, esp. with constant arguments.

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

#218

Post by linsomniac »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #196
neverminder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coincidentally, recently project Crostini has reached Chrome OS stable. To those who don't know what it is - Crostini enables running Linux apps on Chrome OS ( https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c... ). This makes Chrome OS a lot more appealing than it used to be, especially in combination with top end hardware like Pixelbook or Pixel Slate.

What's the point of even buying a Chromebook if you're just going to run Linux anyway? What is the advantage of buying a chromebook?

For me, at home, I'm doing very little. 90% of what I'm doing on my personal laptop these days is in a browser. ChromeOS is a dead simple, secure, browser appliance.

Being able to install an Android SSH client and VPN takes that up to more like 99% and lets me do some work things as well.

Being able to install a Linux app or two would probably take me more to like 100%. The only thing I really want to do that I'm not at the moment is have a more self-contained development environment like VSCode to dabble on some python rather than sshing over to a box and editing in vi.

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

#219

Post by pjmlp »

monocasa wrote: post #216
pjmlp wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet OpenGL doesn't make them support Linux any better. So support or not for Metal is not the real reason why they don't want to focus on the Mac. As for games, Nascar Heat 3, for example.

> Yet OpenGL doesn't make them support Linux any better. > So support or not for Metal is not the real reason why they don't want to focus on the Mac. "But they don't care enough to finish out the QA, or put in any work to make the game actually shippable on that platform.". Mac was a fixed platform, and you used to be able to justify the engineering because the work ultimately helped make your Windows port better ("…

I guess none of the games on computer stores at shopping malls on my city aren't AAA then, zero.

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

#220

Post by monocasa »

pjmlp wrote: post #219
monocasa wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet OpenGL doesn't make them support Linux any better. > So support or not for Metal is not the real reason why they don't want to focus on the Mac. "But they don't care enough to finish out the QA, or put in any work to make the game actually shippable on that platform.". Mac was a fixed platform, and you used to be able to justify the engineering because the work ultimately helped make your Windows port better ("…

I guess none of the games on computer stores at shopping malls on my city aren't AAA then, zero.

The ones that release on consoles too for less than $50? Yeah, none of those are AAA.
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