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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

#281

Post by nichohel »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #166
kache_ wrote: post #103

Get a laptop that is sold with Linux. Don't expect Linux to work with literally everything. Drivers. If you get a modern xps or thinkpad it'll work just fine. But your mom's acer laptop she got from Costco. Maybe not :P

> But your mom's acer laptop she got from Costco. Hah Acer's actually work pretty great. No funky hardware, BIOS, etc...

Very much so: the Acer Predator gaming laptops have been great for me. They suspend/resume like a champ and have the horsepower for Linux Steam gaming. Their price point is excellent for what you get. Of course they look ridiculous, are heavy, and the battery life is not great but they'll do a couple hours watching a movie in the hot tub, which is all I really care about as far as battery life.

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

#282

Post by semireg »

Linux on the laptop instantly triggers nostalgia.

I was 15 in 1998 and had just worked our families root beer and popcorn concession stands for 12 days at the Minnesota State Fair. Every penny I earned was used to purchase a brand new iMac in bondi blue.

A year later I sold the iMac via the newspaper classifieds. I used that money to buy my first used laptop and proceeded to install Linux.

I got my Linux distro, Redhat, from a CD-rom inside a book purchased at Barnes & Noble. I must have reinstalled Linux 100x on that machine. I remember using it to take notes in my PSEO (college in high school) classes at the local tech school. Fond memories.

I’m sure Linux has come a long way. I still use it every day on the server, but switched back to mac on the desktop when apple went to Intel and could just run Linux/Windows in a VM when necessary.

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

#283

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

mariusor wrote: post #266
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.

> Stop defending the state of Linux in personal computing. You seem to be placing the blame with the OS itself instead on the poor stance that hardware vendors have towards releasing proper drivers. It's true that the ecosystem has its own problems, but hardware not being compatible out of the box is not one of them. That's something the can be blamed fully on the vendors in my opinion.

As a Linux user it's important to understand that people don't care whose fault it is- they want to use their computer. I can respect that.

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

#285

Post by pessimizer »

trelane wrote: post #92
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…

Yes, running Linux on Windows hardware is often a recipe for misery, or at least dealing with obscure kernel parameters. Which is why I've said and will say again: slapping Linux on Windows hardware is a mug's game. Buy it preinstalled, from a company that supports it. We actually have that option these days, and it's amazing . Some days, I swear the smartest thing Apple ever did was prevent users from slapping OSX o…

Or just look up your "windows hardware" before you buy and check compatibility. Companies that sell laptops with preinstalled Linux are far more often than not just selling rebranded "windows hardware." The benefit is that you get a support number, and that they have paid attention to the Linux compatibility of the models in their range.

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

#286

Post by afroisalreadyin »

I so wish this were true (and seeing it at the top of HN would make you believe it were true), but my experiences in the last 6 years or so with 4 different laptops speaks otherwise. 2 of those were sold with Linux on them (Dell and Tuxedo), 2 were Thinkpads, and they all had all kinds of issues. The best is the Tuxedo, but even that thing has issues with hybernating. Unfortunately, none of them comparable to the smooth functioning of a Macbook.

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

#287

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

uluyol wrote: post #149
vladvasiliu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to me as a more generic problem with newer hardware, not specific to Linux. Likely devices rushed out the door to meet some idiotic deadline, badly specced and with incompletely implemented drivers. At the end of 2021 I got an EliteBook 845 g8 (Zen 3) that worked completely fine out of the box on Linux (Arch with up-to-date kernel). Every last bit of kit worked perfectly. Bluetooth, IR webcam, fingerprint…

Arch is a rolling release distro. So it gets hardware support faster than other distros that stick to older kernels and userspace. Most users are not on rolling releases. I personally like the rolling approach, but that doesn't reflect everyone's experience.

Ubuntu with the HWE kernel is basically rolling release for drivers, which seems like the best of both worlds.

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

#288

Post by koofdoof »

stormbrew wrote: post #159
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…

It's not about new vs old but who makes the main parts and chipsets. Intel everything is always a really good bet, even when they're brand new, but there are other safe choices. It used to be quite hard to find new laptops with hardware combos that worked well with Linux but it's become a lot easier in recent years. Also my experience with windows has actually gotten quite a bit worse, actually, unless you use the st…

Snappy Driver Installer has an offline driver package made just for that situation that I've found quite useful.

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

#289

Post by mbreese »

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…

To be fair, this is also an issue with servers. I bought a server from a Linux server vendor and the chip was too new that it wasn’t supported on their custom Linux OS (same company, but the hardware and software sides didn’t communicate). Thankfully, it was supported on CentOS at the time, so I was able to switch pretty easily.

I just mention this to say, this can be an issue with any recent hardware. With Linux (the the most part) drivers are built-in and vendors do often ship drivers, so we have to wait sometimes for compatibility.

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

#290

Post by bee_rider »

odysseus wrote: post #172
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…

I had a Thinkpad with Ubuntu and still had many of the problems you mention and more: - Barely ever waking from sleep, especially with external monitor connected - Screen brightness keyboard controls didn't work (needed to use a CLI tool to control gamma as a hacky workaround) - Had to power cycle repeatedly to get to a desktop when booting - Not working reliably in clamshell mode - Randomly forgetting external monit…

Sleep has become less of an issue recently, at least in my experience. Modern laptop CPUs idle in such a low power state. I just set up my built-in display to disable when the lid is closed. Seems sufficient.
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