Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

victorleungtw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 176 posts

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#91

Post by Sangeppato »

insideBig3 wrote: post #44
Sangeppato wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't get it either. Without macOS, a MacBook doesn't make any sense IMHO

This is why I can't understand the appeal of a MacBook. You have the Apple burden, the Apple costs, what benefits? The touchpad? The showoff luxury of a lighted logo?

If I like macOS more than Windows why shouldn't I pick a MacBook? Why shouldn't I pay 300/400 extra euros on a 2000 euros machine that I'll use everyday for 4/5 years if the software makes me happier/faster?

For me, the MacBooks still have the best build quality, trackpad, speakers, display resolution (instead of the FHD vs overkill 4K choice) and, more importantly, I just prefer macOS and its approach on laptops. Furthermore, you can still sell a used macbook after years for quite high prices compared to the Windows alternatives. Granted, I'd never buy some of Apple's products/configurations (like an iMac, the Mac Pro or the 16 MBP with 64 GB of RAM), but a base MBP with 16GB of RAM is more than adequate for me nowadays and it's not much more expensive than the alternatives.

If you don't care about the OS (or prefer Windows/linux), then obviously a macbook doesn't make any sense these days

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#92

Post by mmcnl »

ekianjo wrote: post #61
heelix wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The screen and the track pad are the best out there. From a coding perspective, the Mac is one of the few 16:10 ratio screens still out there, which means you get a bit more vertical height than 99% of the other 16:9 ratio resolutions. While 16:9 makes for better movie watching, coding/surfing/etc is far better on the taller screen. As a bonus, it is a really quality screen too. I'm less enamored with the rest. My da…

> The screen and the track pad are the best out there. Aren't most Mac laptops screens glossy though? I don't really care how good the screen is if it acts like a huge mirror all the time. As for the trackpad, if you are proficient with the keyboard (or use a tiling wm) it does not really matter anymore.

There's glossy and there's glossy. MacBook screens are laminated and they're the least reflective kind of glossy screens available.

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#93

Post by Sangeppato »

quantummkv wrote: post #22
Narann wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Having Linux on a Mac a decade ago had sense has Mac hardwares were special enough to provide value, but now you have XPS-like hardware, why would people buy a Mac to install a Linux on it? Dual boot? What does Mac hardware have that others don't?

For me, it's mostly the screen and trackpad. Non-apple screens come in two varieties - 1. Shitty 1080p TN or barely IPS panels with laughable color accuracy, horribly bad color reproduction, viewing angles that just plain suck, 300 or 250 nits brightness and no 100% coverage of even sRGB. 2. Completely overkill and expensive 4K panels with HDR, touch, OLED, all the bell and whistles that somehow forgot that they are…

The latest XPS/Thinkpads X1 offer glorious matte FHD displays with 100% sRGB coverage and 500+ nits of brightness.

I still think than MacBooks's resolution is the best compromise though

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#94

Post by wpietri »

reaperducer wrote: post #68
Dunedan wrote: post #6

I used MacBooks with Linux starting in 2006 till the end of last year. That's when I finally gave up. I really love the hardware Apple produces, but we're at a point where I believe it's not feasible anymore to use Linux on MacBooks. For the MacBook Pros 2016 and up I put significant effort into trying to get mainline Linux running as smoothly as possible by documenting and coordinating the efforts to have drivers fo…

I envy your knowledge and ambition. What you've done is beyond my capabilities. But I think the crux of the problem is that people are trying to run commodity software on custom hardware. That just won't work long-term. Linux is commodity software, that runs great on white box commodity hardware. macOS is custom software that runs great on custom hardware. Each has its place and purpose. It's like driving a car on tr…

All hardware begins as custom hardware. Commoditization happens when a standard is published and other people start making it. But there's nothing intrinsically more special about Apple hardware than anybody else's. The problem here isn't a mismatch between the specialness of hardware and the openness of the OS. It's that Apple is hostile to people writing an OS for their hardware, so they don't share the kind of information that's available for both commodity hardware and custom but well-documented hardware.

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#95

Post by wpietri »

trimbo wrote: post #89
Narann wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Having Linux on a Mac a decade ago had sense has Mac hardwares were special enough to provide value, but now you have XPS-like hardware, why would people buy a Mac to install a Linux on it? Dual boot? What does Mac hardware have that others don't?

I've been trying since the Pentium III to use Linux on a laptop and have finally given up completely. I've tried on a variety of hardware, even with official support. Driver problems and battery life have always been an issue. But... are we talking about the same XPS laptop? My wife's 13" XPS purchased ~2016 has had horrible reliability. The charging port died a long time ago, fortunately, it charges over USB-C. But…

For what it's worth, I've been running Linux on Lenovo laptops for years and years, and lately it has been fine. No weird tweaks, no special kernel builds. It just works.

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#96

Post by _bxg1 »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #80
veidr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely virtualization works so much better. In fact you can boot Mac and run VMWare Fusion, or boot into Windows 10 and use either Windows Subsystem for Linux or VMWare Workstation, and you will have a pretty great experience with Linux. OTOH if you try to install Linux on any recent MacBook Pro, you are in for hours and hours of googling weird shit with like only 2 comments on forums you have never heard of…

I run multiple OSes as part of my job. The small investment in VMWare Fusion was worth it but I still need some dedicated machines. I just have a few issues: Problem #1: Disk space requirements. I have a late 2013 MBP and windows gobbles up a min 60GB for the image, which is 1/4th my SDD. This is why I ended up buying cheap beige boxes for every other OS (or AWS). Problem #2: Clipboard on VMWare is a trainwreck. Same…

You know you can use regular mice on macs, right?

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#97

Post by microtonal »

banachtarski wrote: post #84
reaperducer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envy your knowledge and ambition. What you've done is beyond my capabilities. But I think the crux of the problem is that people are trying to run commodity software on custom hardware. That just won't work long-term. Linux is commodity software, that runs great on white box commodity hardware. macOS is custom software that runs great on custom hardware. Each has its place and purpose. It's like driving a car on tr…

macOS runs horribly on custom hardware, it just runs better than other commodity software. Any application that pushes frames/performance would do better on Linux/Windows on the equivalent amount of silicon. What's missing because the hardware and drivers is so closed is the feedback loop between application/game devs and the vendors. If I have an issue with what I'm building, I can hop into a chat and immediately ta…

Apple lacks this feedback loop, and their drivers are garbage.

There may be exceptions, but I never had anything like the graphics glitching that the Nouveau drivers had or known problems that would lock up Intel GPUs every one 1-2 days or consistently in some workloads [1], or broken Intel WiFi drivers. The recent Intel driver problems literally took months 4-5 months to fix, while they show-stopping errors were in an LTS kernel release that was rolled out in various distributions.

If I have an issue with what I'm building, I can hop into a chat and immediately talk to Nvidia/AMD/Intel folks/etc. In some cases, they share code, in some cases they release a driver update.

You mean like asking NVIDIA for Wayland support following the same standards as everyone else? That worked well.

Everyone's drivers are bad, but I don't believe for a second that Apple's are measurably worse than Linux or Windows drivers.

[1] https://linuxreviews.org/Linux_Kernel_5.5_Will_Not_Fix_The_F...

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#98

Post by trimbo »

wpietri wrote: post #95
trimbo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying since the Pentium III to use Linux on a laptop and have finally given up completely. I've tried on a variety of hardware, even with official support. Driver problems and battery life have always been an issue. But... are we talking about the same XPS laptop? My wife's 13" XPS purchased ~2016 has had horrible reliability. The charging port died a long time ago, fortunately, it charges over USB-C. But…

For what it's worth, I've been running Linux on Lenovo laptops for years and years, and lately it has been fine. No weird tweaks, no special kernel builds. It just works.

Is the battery life any good? That has always been the Achilles heel for me. The battery life is like half or 3/4 of what windows gets on the same hardware.

Last I tried this was on a 2016 X1 Carbon.

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#99

Post by wpietri »

trimbo wrote: post #98
wpietri wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I've been running Linux on Lenovo laptops for years and years, and lately it has been fine. No weird tweaks, no special kernel builds. It just works.

Is the battery life any good? That has always been the Achilles heel for me. The battery life is like half or 3/4 of what windows gets on the same hardware. Last I tried this was on a 2016 X1 Carbon.

I don't run Windows, so I have no idea. On the T-Series machines I get the larger battery and it lasts long enough for my purposes.

Re: Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on MacBookPro14,1

#100

Post by codemac »

reaperducer wrote: post #68
Dunedan wrote: post #6

I used MacBooks with Linux starting in 2006 till the end of last year. That's when I finally gave up. I really love the hardware Apple produces, but we're at a point where I believe it's not feasible anymore to use Linux on MacBooks. For the MacBook Pros 2016 and up I put significant effort into trying to get mainline Linux running as smoothly as possible by documenting and coordinating the efforts to have drivers fo…

I envy your knowledge and ambition. What you've done is beyond my capabilities. But I think the crux of the problem is that people are trying to run commodity software on custom hardware. That just won't work long-term. Linux is commodity software, that runs great on white box commodity hardware. macOS is custom software that runs great on custom hardware. Each has its place and purpose. It's like driving a car on tr…

GNU started with a printer that couldn't be modified.

Mac's are not as custom as you think, and it wouldn't be that hard for them to give out enough information to get Linux running on MBPs. In fact I hope we have a large community of folks making sure we can reverse engineer everything.

LLVM and the likes are great compilers, but Apple is leading exactly where Stallman warned about - a computer you can't write software for.

Post reply on HN