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

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

#221

Post by alias_neo »

noirbot wrote: post #80
blowski wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I try, it works 90% great, but little things are problematic enough that I switch back. The power management doesn’t quite work, so fans stay on and it doesn’t sleep when you close the lid. The screen doesn’t quite have the same quality graphics. The trackpad isn’t as smooth.

Yea, hibernate/suspend issues are by far the biggest problem I have with Linux on laptops. Years of being in the mac ecosystem where you can just close the lid and it'll barely have lost battery over weeks of being idle spoiled me. I essentially have to treat my linux laptop like a small desktop computer and just shut it down fully when I'm not using it and can't leave it plugged in to power or else it loses 5-10% ba…

I use XPSs for home and work, and my understanding is that they don't implement one of the sleep state capabilities properly in hardware so full "deep sleep" , next to zero battery mode isn't possible.

That said, my XPS 13 will suspend for a couple of weeks on battery once it's configured, even given this caveat. I haven't shut it down when I finish using it since I bought it in 2019. I run Ubuntu LTSs.

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

#223

Post by rhyn00 »

I would add that the linux-ready boutique vendors like system76, tuxedo computers, framework are also options if you don't want to fuss with drivers and what not, but still want to run linux. I definitely agree that linux doesn't run super smooth on all hardware, but it's not hard to find hardware these days where it does run smooth.

I came across tuxedo computers randomly one day, and gave it a shot. Very impressed, and am extremely happy with my tuxedo pulse 15 gen2 - running their supported version of Ubuntu+KDE, that just works out of the box. Only thing I can complain about is that: speakers are not great (but I use headphones 90% time anyways), and KDE doesn't support independent resolution scaling (I need 125% for laptop display but 100% for external monitor), so it's a bit hacky to get scaling the way I want. However, everything else runs perfectly and smoothly.

It's best laptop I've ever owned for linux. It is quite, portable, moderate power laptop, for fair price. I gave my wife my Macbook air M1 over this one. While the M1 CPU/GPU is a little more powerful than Ryzen 5700U (8 core), I get more ram (32gb 3200mhz), bigger and faster disk (1TB 980 pro pci 4), more battery life (18hr idle, 10+ working) for similar price. It's also repairable, w/ removable standard components (not cpu tho). Linux running SMOOTH.

Basically with these type of vendors, you don't need to struggle or sacrifice (much) to run linux anymore. Tuxedo computers [1] has many more models worth checking out, like with high end GPUs or smaller/more portable (even one that support external liquid cooling and an rtx 3080ti lol).

[1] Tuxedo Computer (notebooks) https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note... [2] Pulse 15 gen2 : https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...

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

#224

Post by lukaszkups »

Also related: Linux Subsystem for Windows works in similar manner (at least for me!) - I've switched couple years ago from Linux -> OSX -> Linux -> WSL (when WSL was in 1.x version at the time and lacking from couple features) and gosh, I've never looked back since then

(disclaimer: I'm a front-end developer (and making games in my spare time using various tools) and for my needs I've never found a serious complain about how WSL works)

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

#225

Post by batmanturkey »

khnov wrote: post #209

Used ubuntu on thinkpad for work for the first time. Just got back to windows as I am x10 more productive there. Besides the fan's noise, I struggled to find a calendar app that just shows alert for my meetings, and that is not buggy as fuck. I windows, Ms Mail just works. then I got the frustration when rust ins installed but not work (should install gcc ...) Linux is great free software, but I am not using ut just…

Funny, same reasons why I don’t windows and just Linux.

I can’t even windows, it just doesn’t anymore

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

#226

Post by phendrenad2 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #101
admax88qqq wrote: post #66

Linux still can't handle out of memory issues gracefully. Sometimes I create memory leaks or use too many electron apps and when you hit a low memory situation Linux starts trashing and your system becomes unusable for minutes to hours unless you reboot your machine. Mac and windows both manage to handle this gracefully by force suspending background processes it seems. This makes Linux on the laptop hit or miss, mul…

> Linux starts trashing You mean intensive use of swap memory? You could turn off swap and get OOM errors instead if you like a snappy system, but I don't know if it's fair to criticize an OS for running out of memory. It's the user fault for using software that demands more resources than the equipment has, or for not expanding the RAM when it's clearly needed.

I've experienced this too. Swapping seems very slow and inefficient on Linux. No matter how large your swap is, once you hit the point where you're using twice your physical RAM, the system become unresponsive. My guess is Linux doesn't prioritize processes properly for desktop use, and background threads, despite being from minimized windows (minimized by the user in a desperate and futile attempt to open a terminal so I can kill some processes), are free to demand memory with the same priority as everything else.

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

#227

Post by _nalply »

It's not boring.

I use Arch Linux sway on my Framework laptop. I have 23 virtual screens (one for each digit, one for each function key and an additional one), and they have different scaling. This means on some screens I don't need my reading glasses. For that I wrote a script which is invoked by sway's event handler triggered by virtual screen switches. I find this exciting.

It's not perfect. I still miss the smoothness of Apple's trackpad.

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

#228

Post by isodev »

That’s a great story, and I’m happy that this is possible today. There is nothing technically limiting Linux desktops from offering a fantastic experience apart from walled gardens trying to keep eyeballs in their corner. Speaking of, unfortunately, Microsoft will be retiring Teams for Linux later this year

https://www.omglinux.com/the-official-microsoft-teams-app-fo...

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

#229

Post by lostmsu »

mid-kid wrote: post #70

Yeah, no. Maybe with old laptops, but newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewr…

IMHO, the fact that you need a kernel patch for a key LED is what holds Linux back.

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

#230

Post by Rebelgecko »

smoldesu wrote: post #84
whatever1 wrote: post #63

No it does not. Give it to me for 5’ and I will find at least 10 things that are broken. Energy management, monitor color profiles, external monitors, discrete gpu / integrated switching, Bluetooth, webcam settings all these are broken. Stop defending the state of Linux in personal computing. The best we can do is to put it in a VM and run it in a OS that has actual hardware support.

Can you name a kernel with more robust hardware support?

For my specific hardware (Framework laptop), the hardware is better supported on Windows. Lower battery consumption especially while the device is asleep, better handling of fractional display scaling, brightness keys on the keyboard are functional without needing to disable brightness sensor, etc. Most egregiously for a laptop, Fedora doesn't give any way to adjust the trackpad scroll speed (not sure if that's a kernel limitation tho)
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