I have a Thinkpad that I have popOS installed on. I have Bootcamp installed on an exteral HDD. I find the user experience on both Linux (desktop) and Windows to be pretty miserable compared to macOS. Having said that, I run three headless 4GB pis with ubuntu installed on them and continue to love the cli experience in linux, as long as I can drive from macOS. :)
Moving from Macbook to Linux
401–410 of 518 posts
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.
Thinkpads all have soldered ram which is a pratice I can't support, is there a model I missed that has ram slots?
With the exception of the X1 ultrabooks, I don't think any Thinkpad has soldered RAM. My X1 Extreme Gen1 with 64GB and a family member's P51 (or p53 dont remember) with 128 GB definitely do not. I bought the cheapest RAM tier and put in my own modules as soon as I got it.
Except for ultrabooks where the sacrifice makes sense, I don't expect Thinkpads with soldered RAM to ever become standard. That's just not their target market - their warranties even allow CPU repasting.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#403I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…
What about mobile workstations like Dell Precision, HP Zbook, Thinkpad P53? Those workstations usually claim to support Linux officially, they are really powerful workhorses, they allow using of server-grade components (Xeons, ECC RAM, Quadro GPUs). Do people avoid them because they are expensive, bulky or do not run long on battery? If I would buy laptop today, I would look into those machines first, they seem to ma…
The Dell Latitude series also have superb Linux hardware support too. You can often get the series cheap like-new/refurbished on the web because business IT departments frequently liquidate them on upgrades. I got this Dell Latitude 7290 for $650 USD refurbished off Amazon a couple years ago[1]. It's been great!
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P8C1PWY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#404I find it funny when people complain Linux is not ready for desktop. Sometimes it's because Windows software doesn't run on it, sometimes because Apple makes a fast chip... Dunno. Been using it on desktops (well, laptops, mostly) since early 2000s, then some 6-year hiatus with OSX, then back to Linux. Works/worked great for me. So, Year of Linux Desktop is really old news for some. For most, it'll never arrive. And t…
It's an incredibly personal choice. I've daily driven macOS for well over a decade, but periodically dip my toe into the Linux world just to get a feel of it's "there" yet or not. Unfortunately for my purposes, it never is, and so I end up returning to macOS. The biggest problem is that none of the DEs really fit my tastes — they all have to be poked and prodded into kinda doing what I want them to do, but they're ne…
i use mac and linux and I really like the mac finder less. But it is a personal choice. I miss the macos8 windowshades...
I feel sometimes linux almost has too many choices. There are a few main stream ones and a bunch of others that have bunch of fans/developers so the end product feels very rough. When the other choices (Windows/mac) are good enough but consistent.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not OP but I do recommend PopOS. It's worked really well for me. The sluggish performance you're getting is honestly probably related to CFS (the default linux process scheduler). Windows does an AMAZING job with scheduling for UI applications. You almost never feel like your computer is struggling because anything UI related gets scheduled first. CFS does not do this. I've found that changing the scheduler to someth…
Never heard of Pop before today. Looks cool. Love the built-in tiling functionality. Do they use a different scheduler by default?
Unfortunately they do not. I did end up just installing Xanmod.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#406The fact that many people reading this post title (including me) look at it with sarcasm is telling on how apple scored big points with its new cpu. Keeping up with mac OS and the trackpad was already quite hard, but CPU could be the killing blow. Which could lead us in a few years to a situation where mac developers will face the same fate as ios developers : forced to buy hardware to sign their app, forced to push…
> What can we do, now, as developers ? Don't buy Apple products. Don't use Apple products. Don't support Apple products. Don't develop for Apple products. Raise awareness among those who would listen.
But my company only gives me the option between mac and windows.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#407This is going to sound dumb or elitist but I am so much happier working since I ditched portable computing. I have a desk at home in an office. I have the same setup at work. I don’t carry my dev environment with me. When I need to work I go to the ’do work stuff’ place. Nice keyboard. Nice mouse. And a nice OS that, yes, took a whole day to configure but over which I have total control. (Full-screen focus-mode no-or…
Who doesn't like having nice peripherals? :) I'm the same between a work and home desktop. It's great to not have to carry anything to or from the office. Maintaining several computers also helps avoid the "single point of failure laptop problem". Between two desktops and a laptop, if any one of the three explodes (or are stolen) it's easy to work from the remaining two until replacement. Or in a more mundane case, fearless upgrades.
People may be most familiar with WireGuard as a light-weight proxy, but as a true virtual private network, it's also been great for making my home desktop accessible to my laptop on the go (desktop digital ocean droplet laptop).
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an incredibly personal choice. I've daily driven macOS for well over a decade, but periodically dip my toe into the Linux world just to get a feel of it's "there" yet or not. Unfortunately for my purposes, it never is, and so I end up returning to macOS. The biggest problem is that none of the DEs really fit my tastes — they all have to be poked and prodded into kinda doing what I want them to do, but they're ne…
Surprised there isn’t something that does an almost perfect OS X emulation
Totally agree. Some would point to elementary OS/Pantheon as being that, but it’s only really “maclike” superficially and brings some unique annoyances that don’t exist in macOS.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?
Yes! After using MacBook Pro for almost a decade, I moved back to Linux for my laptop two years ago. I installed the Manjaro i3 image and I was expecting that it will take almost a week to tweak the settings so that all the hardware works and was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (everything other than fingerprint scanner but that was a known limitation).
I can second this with the addendum I'm on an X1 Yoga and the touchscreen works out of the box, it took me about 2 minutes to get the screen auto-rotating as well using this script. https://gist.github.com/mortie/e725d37a71779b18e8eaaf4f8a02b...
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.
So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?
I have a gen 3, while the screen could be better, it’s not bad. Trackpad of course isn’t anywhere near Mac level but the system is pretty good.