Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pre-2016 will start dying though. For new hardware, we're pretty much left with macbook which is definitely broken, or literally anything else, which may be broken, but often isn't. If you're going for brands, most Dell, Thinkpad, HP, etc. (not lowest price) laptops will work just fine with linux. Some even come as certified compatible.
> Pre-2016 will start dying though. I guess, but my 2007 and 2010 laptops still work OK.
Running Linux on My MacBook
161–170 of 179 posts
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#162I thought that the point of buying an overpriced macbook was because macOS came with it...
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. Never had an issue with Thinkpads nor Dells of all stripes. Now the Surface Pro on the other hand, was a disastrous time sink.
How does sleep/suspend work? That was always the biggest hangup for me. Although, it's been almost a decade since I last tried. However, a colleague's Dell running Ubuntu was a nightmare. Not sure if it was the model or how he had it set up though.
I have a Dell XPS 13 and have run various flavors of Arch without any problems. I didn't try Ubuntu, however.
Sleep and suspend just work. Battery life is good - typically 5-7 hours. Before this I had no problems with a Thinkpad and even on a MacBook Air (2012).
Maybe I'm just so used to Linux now that I don't notice problems since I've been on it since 1998-ish except for a short stint on OS X.
Dell support is terrible so I can't recommend the XPS. When I had a problem with the battery they wouldn't replace it under warranty since I was not in the country where I bought it, which is total BS.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#164Tried to migrate from Mac to Linux half a year ago (before the 16" with the new keyboard was announced, because I hated the butterfly keyboard). Tried a bunch of dell and Thinkpad devices. Configured a t480s with ubuntu. First meeting where I had to share my screen and I recognized that Chrome is not able to share a dedicated screen of my three monitor setup. You need a script for that, which creates a "fake" webcam,…
Single-Screen sharing (on ubuntu) does work with some apps, but definitely not all. I find that any app that allows sharing of a single application window (google meet and zoom for sure) works fine. Slack wants to share my whole three-screen desktop - which is completely useless.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#165I'm surprised about the comment on sway, because afaik the issue mentioned about a blurry chrome was fixed a while ago[0]. Maybe it's caused by something else... [0] https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/1481#issuecomment-6404...
It depends a ton on what distro you are using. Some distros that now ship with wayland native desktops have tons of downstream patching to smooth out the experience. If you run Arch for instance, the default Chromium package is not ozone, and will run with XWayland (although chromium-ozone is available in the AUR). It's possible your distro is doing something differently.
I run arch, and the google-chrome-stable package appears to have sorted out it's hdpi scaling issues.
I could be wrong though, a while back I did a lot of tweaks to beat the concept of hdpi and variable screen resolutions into my computer, so I don't exactly have a "clean" setup, and it could be something else, but the fonts look crisp on both the low res and high res screens.
I can't say whether this is anything to do with whether it's a build with/without ozone, but it appears to work now (sorry don't know much more than that!)
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". It's true that Macbooks are an extreme case, but as far as I can tell, there is not a laptop which runs Linux out of the box where tinkering won't be necessary. Let's take another extreme…
It’s weird, people report all these issues, but in the past I bought Thinkpads for years & they always "just worked". Took a risk & picked up a Dell XPS 13 a couple of years ago, and that "just worked" too. It’s like I live in parallel universe of Linux hardware support to some of you.
I've had a Thinkpad too, and had issues.
A lot of these issues are minor, and easily fixed, so I suspect the "parallel universe" effect is indicative of a willingness to overlook small issues. The font issue I found is hardly critical, for example, and I suspect a lot of developers would just live with it.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#167i3 seems like it would be perfect for me but I guess I'm just far too used to gnome to really change now. I no longer even install extensions and mostly stick to the defaults. In fact, Linux has been "just working" for me for years now.
Anyhow, great article.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". It's true that Macbooks are an extreme case, but as far as I can tell, there is not a laptop which runs Linux out of the box where tinkering won't be necessary. Let's take another extreme…
It’s weird, people report all these issues, but in the past I bought Thinkpads for years & they always "just worked". Took a risk & picked up a Dell XPS 13 a couple of years ago, and that "just worked" too. It’s like I live in parallel universe of Linux hardware support to some of you.
Once you say something generally works, it's a magnet for "doesn't work for me" responses. "Yeah, just fine for me too" is not really a response worth writing / it's discouraged. Forums are terrible for finding consensus / getting real stats.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#169These days I feel as if machines are deliberately phased out even when they are in perfectly working condition. I have two macbooks (white plastic) one with Tiger installed and another with Leopard an iPad 1 ( They all are in working condition) Its a shame to not be able to use the machines just because it is not supported. I would assume that they are good enough for a kid to surf websites and help do his/her homewo…
> I have two macbooks (white plastic) one with Tiger installed and another with Leopard an iPad 1 ( They all are in working condition) Its a shame to not be able to use the machines just because it is not supported. That hardware isn't as valuable as you might think it is. The last plastic Macbook was made in 2010. It's value as a productivity tool is very limited today. That said, e-Waste is a major problem, which i…
Very intresting take on the situation. Thanks for taking time to comment.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#170Tried to migrate from Mac to Linux half a year ago (before the 16" with the new keyboard was announced, because I hated the butterfly keyboard). Tried a bunch of dell and Thinkpad devices. Configured a t480s with ubuntu. First meeting where I had to share my screen and I recognized that Chrome is not able to share a dedicated screen of my three monitor setup. You need a script for that, which creates a "fake" webcam,…
Single-Screen sharing (on ubuntu) does work with some apps, but definitely not all. I find that any app that allows sharing of a single application window (google meet and zoom for sure) works fine. Slack wants to share my whole three-screen desktop - which is completely useless.
Google meet / hangouts did not work for me.
Zoom did.
My client back then did not use zoom, unfortunately.