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Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

clivethompson.medium.com

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Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#51
The combination of Mint (Ubuntu) and dwm hovers around ~400Mb RAM when idling, and feels so incredibly nice to work with even on decade old machines.

I only switched from Windows a few years ago after some 20 years, and in retrospect I can't believe how many hours I wasted trying to run things on Windows that 'just work' on Linux.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#52
post #48

I can't believe I'm saying this, but after a decade of claiming I didn't have driver issues, I absolutely cannot figure out how to get decent audio on newer Lenovo laptops (usually IdeaPad line). Supposedly there's numerous speakers, some of which aren't active under Linux, and/or a similair issue with woofers. I've tried everything from half a dozen pages of results from Google and I'm running 5.19... From what I ca…

No audio device at all is detected on my Lenovo IdeaPad 5. (running Arch Linux)

Try setting up Pipewire, that’s what’s working for me in Fedora on the same hardware.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#54

Someone show me how to get my xps-15 to run Ubuntu with comparable GPU and battery performance to Windows in less than five hours of work and I will be eternally grateful. I gave up and plugged it in permanently for work and use my Mac for mobile.

Pretty happy with my XPS and Fedora. I switch to X for gaming, and use Wayland for day to day usage / programming.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#55
No it doesn't, even on an Asus 1215B that was actually sold with Linux on it.

GL support isn't at the same level as the DirectX 11 for the APU, still has some issues waking up time to time (only fixed by taking the battery out), and is the only device that has issues connecting to my router.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#56

Uhm, how about suspension/hibernate? That was pretty lame even 2 years ago and I'm not seeing it improve

works flawlessly on my X1 carbon

I so want a X1, got a E13 to travel and I am waiting for an upgrade for my work laptop

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#57
I found the article to be very well written and I overall agree with it. Years ago (2016) I bought a Lenovo Yoga Pro 3, with an Intel M processor. It had Windows 8, which I almost immediately upgraded to Win10. It was dreadfully slow with both O.S. from the beginning but I used it for 2 years, just sucking it up and enjoying how small and portable it was.

At some point I installed Ubuntu, and it gave the laptop a whole new life, HOWEVER... for me it always needed some crazy things to be done in the terminal in order to make things work properly, the wifi, the bluetooth or something else, at some point just broke, and it was a little field day everytime to make it work again.

I still have it and it still works OK!

So does Linux on laptop work well? Yes. It works TOO well? In my opinion, NO, it really depends sometimes.

But I believe it's a great O.S.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#58

Uhm, how about suspension/hibernate? That was pretty lame even 2 years ago and I'm not seeing it improve

works flawlessly on my X1 carbon

On modern Thinkpads, less that 0.5% of the battery per hour is expected, so if you disable automatic suspend to disk (aka "suspend to both") to save a few TBW from your NVME, expect to lose about 10% per day.

Personally, I like that Windows suspend to disks can be setup to only kick-in if a specific power budget has been exhausted: if the laptop has been sleeping for 5 days while disconnected, with 50% of the battery gone, it's neat to suspend to disk so that a week later (or more) it has enough power to resume work.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#59

The laptop: "It’s an 11-year-old Thinkpad T420, a big ol’ thick brick of computation that I bought used a few years ago for $200."

Sure, but it also works perfectly on modern equipment like the Zenbook I bought last year.

Meanwhile, my Framework Laptop that the Fedora OS team is specifically developing for has had busted microphone drivers for months.

It's all a little random on how well different internal components decide to play nice.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#60
post #42

I have a feeling that the overall reality is far more hit-or-miss than the author implies. If you happen to be lucky to have all hardware that Linux supports well, then everything does work nicely (which is infact a nice improvement over the early days). If you get unlucky on your hardware, well buckle up, it's gonna be a ride. You are of course more likely to have good hardware support on very old devices. Windows h…

Anecdote time. I have a gaming laptop from Asus, 2022 model. It keeps hard crashing on Windows (both 10 and 11) while working fine on Linux. Windows doesn't clearly have such an advantage anymore.

I use my desktop at home exclusively for gaming. I had Windows on it, but it would continually crash when trying to use my bluetooth xbox controller with it.

I've switched to linux for gaming and have no issues, even running games like GTAV (excluding the occasional nvidia BS...).

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