151–160 of 813 posts
Lenovo T14s here (AMD version). Stuff works out of the box on Debian, except for the LTE modem which works after a bit of a struggle. Battery life is better under Windows but I haven't bothered working out why, probably need to set up some power management stuff. Associated dock drives three 1920x1200 screens at the same time as the built-in one.
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> Dell XPSes are good too Be very careful. They are very good laptops, and Dell's customer support for businesses is stellar, but the XPS machines play VERY bad with Linux. There are some XPS machines that are shipped with linux, so they should be fine. But most of them have wifi/bluetooth chips that have no support at all, or very bad support.
Having used 2 XPS13 (9343 and 9370) as my daily driver for years, this is simply not true in my experience. On my 9343 bluetooth did not work initially, and on the 9370 the fingerprint reader is not available (no driver available), but apart from that linux is just working - and I'm not particular fond of spending time on setting things up. Much more of an issue is that the xps, as every non apple computer does not s…
That's good to hear for you, but I'm not just making this up. I have the XPS 13 9310 which mostly comes with the AX500 chip for wifi and bluetooth.
- For about half a year it had NO support in Ubuntu (non-existent drivers)
- Then it finally got drivers, but it was extremely unstable. After an automatic update from ubuntu, the wifi no longer worked and it took several weeks for it to be fixed.
- The bluetooth VERY often won't turn on after a reboot, requiring me to reboot about 5 times before it finally works.
- Same for wifi, even on the latest drivers it often can't find any networks.
- Some networks can't be found by the linux drivers. No problems at all under windows, with the same laptop.
- Crashes or freezes of the whole OS as a result of these drivers.
There's probably a ton more issues that I'm forgetting...
---- MORE: Librems looked pretty cool. I might get one next.
But I've been running my T480s since 2018 and it is still going strong, I don't imagine I'll replace it unless I drop it on hard ground... wait I've done that. or spill coffee on it... wait I did that too. Did I mention they were durable as heck?
For software: I run PopOS for ubuntu-easy software and compatbility with a Regolith PPA because i3 window managers are amazing. Since its a thinkpad, you can swap out and replace most parts easily including the battery when it eventually wears out (literally takes <10 minutes).
The professional (T series) line of the Thinkpads are my go to. I've been running ubuntu 20.04 for the past few years. You can have hot swap batteries and an inbuilt SIM slot if you choose. Not sure if the fingerprint is working (I didn't select that option) but everything else works flawlessly. Side note: I have been maintaining an Ansible playbook for years now that sets up my developer workstation. I do know Ansib…
I recently wimped out of buying a thinkpad due to uncertainty regarding getting Ubuntu running correctly and the time it would take me to do it. Do you have a guide you’ve used or instructions you have stashed somewhere?
There are two reasons for this - Fedora ships a far more recent kernel than most distros (the only competitor being Arch), and Redhat does a lot of work on Thinkpad support. On my T430 at home literally everything worked out of the box with zero config, all the way down to fingerprint reader and keyboard backlight.
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I like being able to replace individual parts of my laptop with newer, better hardware without having to throw out the whole device. I like that this new hardware just works, instead of the OS vendor only supporting a handful of approved internal Wi-Fi modules. It’s awesome that I can build custom PAM modules and disk encryption unlocking solutions to enforce that both a password and a YubiKey need to be present to u…
> I like being able to replace individual parts of my laptop with newer, better hardware without having to throw out the whole device. Do you actually do that, or do you just like the idea of being able to do it ? Even on a desktop PC, where upgrading is much easier and more common, I've never seen the point. Either you upgrade fairly often, in which case you pay a relatively large amount for marginal improvements, o…
e.g., if just the RAM is an issue, I don’t have to buy an entirely new device and pay extra for everything else.
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Motivation is important for your work. I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like. Linux is absolutely good enough to get most development work done without issue. Even if Macs might be a slightly smoother experience in some areas. I used to spend a lot of time to fiddle with Linux and my desktop in the past. You can do that if you w…
As a professional software engineer I choose to use the best tools for the job. In my case that tool happens to be a a Mac.
serious question: what is the practical difference between MacOS and Linux? Do you have a habit of modifying your wifi drivers and recompiling the source? I am big on open source but have never felt my life was improved chasing dependencies vs just brew install ... I have never had a satisfactory battery + sleep/standby experience on a linux machine, vs a Mac I can leave unplugged for weeks and it wakes back up where…
Basically, I want Linux because I am familiar with how Linux and Linux tooling works, and that makes me very efficient on Linux. Using MacOS is acceptable but it feels somewhat like having one hand tied behind my back. A seasoned MacOS user probably has the same feeling but in reverse.
(As an aside: In 2022, I don't recognize the comments about modifying WiFi drivers, compiling from source or having sleep/resume issues. That definitely used to be the case in the distant past, but over the last five years or so Ubuntu have really got their stuff together. I don't think I would have ever recognized the comments on brew, which I always found infuriating and messy compared to apt. Perhaps it all comes down to taste, and that's okay?)
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I use a Framework and it's been fantastic. Even the fingerprint works "out of the box" (in quotes because in Arch Linux nothing is really out of the box... I just had to install the right package). The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended. This is something I might be able to tinker away, of course. And for what it's worth, non-functional suspend is basically par…
> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended That's a killer - it's 2022 and Apple are still the only company who can get that right. I'd switch over to a Framework in an instant (for dual-boot Linux/Windows) if they could fix that.
Next is discrete graphics. If you just need multiple monitors, an Intel G CPU will usually do it. If you need discrete GPU, again you're going to sacrifice on battery.
For longevity, you might want to consider a Xeon laptop. Lenovo has these, so they're one option.
One measure of how much sustained performance a laptop can take is the charger wattage, usually buried in the spec sheet. In my experience chargers are rated only slightly higher than the wattage necessary to keep the machine going at top performance. A laptop with a low wattage charger is unlikely to sustain top performance for long. But it depends on your definition of "sustain". 10 minutes? Half an hour? Constant load of 60, 70, 80%? The charger heuristic just weeds out low power though. There's less of a guarantee that a higher wattage charger == higher sustained performance.