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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

#271

Post by chx »

My experience sharply differs and that was also on a T420 (later a T420s, same difference). In my experience there is a very narrow usage where ChromeOS does not suffice but Linux desktop does. If you fall into this -- and no doubt a lot of people do -- then things are peachy. But step aside and you are toast.

I worked for a company running a certain F5 VPN and their 2FA didn't have a Linux client. I managed to make it work by running an ancient Firefox which still could run old style extensions -- and ran it as root. Very secure.

MFC devices break all the time.

And so forth.

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

#273

Post by bee_rider »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #256
londons_explore wrote: post #69

I 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 deskto…

I've got a Zenbook flip, I'm really impressed with the Linux performance. It even doesn't suck too badly as a tablet, which exceeds my expectations.

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

#274

Post by pessimizer »

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…

Why would anybody expect that new hardware that has to be reverse engineered and for which no Linux drivers are provided to work out of the box as soon is it is available? It's an impossible expectation, and also one that no other OS would have a chance of fulfilling unless hardware vendors specifically catered to them.

It's like asking for a book review of a book that hasn't been published. Yes, other people have published reviews, but they got advance copies and a supplementary synopsis from the publisher six months ago.

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

#275

Post by dgan »

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.

the "my mum/grandma/grandpa asked me to reinstall their Windows" should be meme by now

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

#276

Post by sunshinerag »

jeroenhd wrote: post #247
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.

My experience with Windows on my laptop is that color profiles work out of the box, energy management is better on Linux, Bluetooth on Windows barely works and the webcam doesn't even need settings. Nvidia crap works better on Windows (except for CUDA) and more settings have a GUI. Windows's fan profile can be switched between "VTOL takeoff" and "entirely silent but slow as hell". This includes all the firmware updat…

>> Windows's fan profile can be switched between "VTOL takeoff" and "entirely silent but slow as hell".

ROFL

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

#277

Post by ollien »

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…

I have an E15 from work and have a myriad of just _strange_ issues. When I first got Fedora installed, the integrated mouse/keyboard didn't work without some kernel parameter tweaks. This was eventually fixed. Right now I'm dealing with some random crashes(?; there's no stacktraces, it's kind of annoying) of XFCE that I'm blaming on the 12th gen intel GPU firmware, but I have no evidence to back that up yet.

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

#278

Post by mattlondon »

So damn well if you don't care about: sleep working reliably, waking from sleep working at all, Bluetooth, high-dpi without flickering, visual artefacts from igpus, vanishing mouse pointer, audio failing mid video call, webcams failing mid video call, no CPU scaling, crashing hard when the battery hits literally zero (without warning) causing BIOS corruption etc etc etc.

I dumped my recent dell Linux laptop for a M1 Mac. Not my preference but at least the Mac works.

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

#279

Post by pxeboot »

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…

I tend to agree. If you pick a random new laptop, you will probably have a bad time running Linux.

When I decided to switch to Linux as my main OS, I researched well supported models and settled on the X1 Carbon. I bought it a large discount right after a new generation was released and the Linux support has been near perfect. Really only one or two minor issues in the past ~3 years, which is similar to what I have experienced with most Windows and macOS devices.

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

#280

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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.

Despite the issues it's the only OS that I'm willing to put up with because it respects the user. I'm not nagged to use every day. I'm not nagged to login to some cloud junk. I don't have to look at a feed or "recommendations" (ads). The operating system doesn't have an advertising ID or spy on me.
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