I recently streamed some OuterWilds (great Myst style mystery / puzzle game) on Linux with Wayland and OBS. The game is only officially available for Windows, but Steam's work on emulation has done a lot for Linux. Wayland asked for explicit permission to allow OBS to record the game window, something that X would not do. While playing full-screen if I pressed the "super" key on my keyboard the game window would instantly shrink and tile with the rest while still rendering the game in real time. I was quite amazed it all worked so well. But I was playing on a System76 desktop, so it was built from the beginning to work well with Linux.
Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
251–260 of 640 posts
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#252I agree largely with this (as another T420 owner). My only problem is finding new, high-quality battery packs.
Absolutely this!
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#253I 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…
The rallying cry of the Linux desktop enthusiast: “well, it works for me!”
Same for Mac users when people are struggling to use MacOS on a hackintosh or windows people trying to install windows on an android tablet.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#254Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#255I will never buy a Apple laptop again because Apple stops supporting it after a while and you can't install new version of the OS on it and new software. This is a deal breaker for me, completely a waste of perfectly fine hardware. Installing Ununtu on it solved all problems fortunately. Same thing with Apple AirPort TimeCapsule, such a waste to buy it when Apple stops supporting it after a couple of years. You might as well buy products from Apple and get the delivered directly to the garbage dump
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#256I have the reverse... Unless you have a thinkpad or some other popular hardware, you'll find Linux barely works at all out of the box, and even with hours of fiddling around, you'll still have to live without some features. For example, power saving features, sleep and hibernate, screen brightness controls, fingerprint readers, keyboard hotkeys and backlights, etc. rarely work. Prepare for broken external hdmi ports…
> Unless you have a thinkpad or some other popular hardware, you'll find Linux barely works at all out of the box, and even with hours of fiddling around, you'll still have to live without some features.
I've had it work first time, perfectly on:
- Tongfangs, 3 different models
- Lenovo, many different models
- Clevos, 2 different models
- Asus Zenbooks, 2 different models
- Too many Dells to count
- Asus Zen2 desktop
The only shortcoming I've noticed is it the fingerprint readers were hit and miss, but this is mostly because the device manufacturers didn't bother with drivers.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#257Linux 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.
On the other hand I absolutely can blame an OS for not letting me set a minimum amount of memory for the disk cache.
Even if I disable swap, when Linux gets very low on memory you get the exact same symptoms when it starts discarding increasingly-active program code.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
For new laptops, if you have the option, go for something that has some official support out of the door. Something like System76 or your local equivalent. Otherwise yes, it can still be a bit of a lottery. Everything could be smooth, or you might become your own Linux support guy. Some people enjoy that.
Pop has gone from something that was expected to "just work" to deciding it's more of a developer or enthusiast product. Linux still needs an 'it just works' version. I really thought pop would be it, but the last year of development has been very disappointing with system breaking updates being pushed (I'm on system 76 hardware).
Debian? Ubuntu? Mint? Linux is mostly it just works versions unless you're only looking for the trendy new thing.
I run debian stable on my headless desktops/television and testing on my laptops. It's so easy it's boring.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#259Medium :-( Does anyone have a link to the full text of this article?
Does the link not give you the full text, or is there a different problem? I don't know what your frown means.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#260I 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…
The rallying cry of the Linux desktop enthusiast: “well, it works for me!”
The same is very much true for macOS and even Windows. Obvious flaws and mistakes are ignored by statements like "I just bought this $5 app" and "I use this freeware program from yetanotherstartmenureplacement.xyz".
People just like what they like and fix their problems in their own way and that's fine. Some people aren't annoyed enough to fix their problems and that's fine too. Just because someone else's fix doesn't fix your problems doesn't mean the fix is bad.