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Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

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Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#541

Post by redshirtrob »

robsonhn wrote: post #513
throwaway316943 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't tried a laptop that comes with preinstalled linux TBH Seriously? Why do you think Linux should work perfectly on some random machine that you installed it on? MacOS sure as hell won’t. If you don’t like the experience of doing the work to find the right hardware, distro, and customizing the setup with your favourite software then just buy a prebuilt system with everything installed. Like others have pointed…

Ok, sure, many users prefer to fully customize their setup. But what about those who don't? Why isn't there a ready-to-go option like a Windows lapotop?

I got a System76 Darter Pro for work, preinstalled with Ubuntu. It worked perfectly. It booted directly into a graphical display manager. All drivers worked out of the box. Not sure what else there is to say here. That sounds like what you're after.

For reasons, I ended up installing Arch on the same laptop. It was your typical Arch experience, but I was able to get everything working, including fiddly stuffy like keyboard backlights, and monitor backlighting. Keyboard hardware controls all function. And this was with existing Arch packages. I didn't have to go hacking anywhere.

If I had to levy criticism, I'd say the preinstalled Linux options are at the same price point as Apple, and no where near Microsoft. Yeah, it's going to be harder to find an off-the-shelf $300 laptop with Linux preinstalled. I can say the same about a Mac too.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#543

Post by salamandersauce »

83457 wrote: post #487
monsieurbanana wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by that?

Sounds obvious now but pinch to zoom was a big new feature on iPhone that traditional phones, even those with touch capability, did not have muti-touch. Part of this was capacitive touch screen technology that few other devices had at the time, instead having cheaper resistive which pretty much required a stylus to do anything but press in a particular spot on screen. I don't believe android devices had muti-touch or…

Yeah. The T-Mobile G1 lacked multitouch gestures. You could hack them in though as the hardware supported it. I think it was a patent issue or someething which was why it was left out.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#544

Post by pjmlp »

joana035 wrote: post #538
pjmlp wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None taken, and it is easier just to re-install Windows with the proprietary drivers than hacking a modern kernel to run fxglr. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

I don't think judging the Linux experience based on an EeePC is fair. That hardware always felt like a throw away when it came out during the netbook boom from a decade ago.

I judge my Linux experience starting in Summer 1995, the year I got my first Linux distribution, Slackware 2.0, that makes a couple of years in experience.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#545

Post by pjmlp »

joana035 wrote: post #540
pjmlp wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gratis work is done for things that really matter to fellow humans, like charity, poor people on the street and not so lucky people that need an helping hand to get back into society, refugees that almost faced death running away from oppressive regimes. That is where I can gladly give my skills and money. Fixing code on Internet for free ain't it.

Look buddy, your experience (having a bad time) with Linux seems to be quite frustrating, I couldn't find one positive comment about Linux from you in this post. Maybe I'm very lucky with Linux, but I don't agree that it is as bad as you are saying. I'm sorry for you, maybe you should stay with windows indeed. :/

My dear, maybe you should stop assuming you know anything about the experience of others.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#546

Post by salamandersauce »

robsonhn wrote: post #513
throwaway316943 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't tried a laptop that comes with preinstalled linux TBH Seriously? Why do you think Linux should work perfectly on some random machine that you installed it on? MacOS sure as hell won’t. If you don’t like the experience of doing the work to find the right hardware, distro, and customizing the setup with your favourite software then just buy a prebuilt system with everything installed. Like others have pointed…

Ok, sure, many users prefer to fully customize their setup. But what about those who don't? Why isn't there a ready-to-go option like a Windows lapotop?

There are ready to go options! System76 sells Linux computers, there's a few other companies that do too. Dell has stuff like their XPS Developer Editions that are designed for and come with Ubuntu out of the box. You just can't hop over to Best Buy and get a random system.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#547

Post by vehemenz »

karateka wrote: post #180
jeswin wrote: post #142

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). Just like it wouldn't be fair to complain about macOS on a Hackintosh - sound didn't work well and had to patch the DSDT. > but there are rough edges for the power user. > I am an extreme power user, ... > In the end, I was able to replicate most of my macOS power tools setup via input hooks and sh…

> Finder is unbelievably bad compared to Nautilus Whats so bad about finder?

The only thing I can think of is that Finder doesn't support SFTP out of the box.

It's a bit embarrassing that Apple doesn't support an entry-level feature like that, but otherwise Finder has been steadily improving for the past few years.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#548

Post by drewzero1 »

hotcrossbunny wrote: post #165
drewzero1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also Linux-only for several years, then I started getting into Macs and they felt more or less good enough. I definitely appreciated not spending as much time just to make my computer work , and I liked the familiarity of the terminal. I started drifting back toward Linux as my Macs started to give out. The macOS installer kept failing and I had to jump through hoops to download the installer for the macOS vers…

Same here with regards to preferring the old Thinkpads for daily use. The trouble as I it is that the great ones are getting really old now, and the newer ones don't seem to be of the same ilk.

I picked up a W500 recently to replace my R61i, and while it’s an incremental improvement it easily handles 80 percent of what I need a computer to do. I’m planning to add a Bluetooth adapter to get that up to 90%, the rest being limitations of the Core2 Duo and graphics card.

I’d maybe consider going a little newer and going to a T series but it sounds like they really started going downhill (build-wise) when they changed the keyboard. Even the W500 has a lot more keyboard flex than the R61i, in an attempt to add lightness to a chunky laptop.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#549

Post by joana035 »

pjmlp wrote: post #545
joana035 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look buddy, your experience (having a bad time) with Linux seems to be quite frustrating, I couldn't find one positive comment about Linux from you in this post. Maybe I'm very lucky with Linux, but I don't agree that it is as bad as you are saying. I'm sorry for you, maybe you should stay with windows indeed. :/

My dear, maybe you should stop assuming you know anything about the experience of others.

Experience as in "things you are facing" not as "knowledge" or "know how" ;)

What I mean is more like "I would have a bad experience if I put my hand in the fire".

I edit my post to be more clear

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#550

Post by lhl »

hk1337 wrote: post #521
minimaul wrote: post #368

From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!): - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First…

> My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience. This is my biggest roadblock to Linux as well. I don’t sync to 1Password.com though and that’s all that is available, so it’s more than just a poor experience for me. I thought about trying to share a Keepass database but that’s had some issues. I tried sharing via Keybase and had a weird issue that when I edited something in Keepass,…

I ran 1Password 4.x on WINE successfully for a long while but the browser extensions started breaking so I eventually bit the bullet and switched to Bitwarden (running my own instance with bitwarden_rs). The import wasn't perfect (it doesn't handle attachments or tags), and the browser extension can sometimes be laggy, but so far it's at least worked everywhere I need it, which is more than can be said for 1PW or anything else.
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