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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

#301

Post by autoexec »

coryrc wrote: post #295
pessimizer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

Windows users don't have to reverse engineer anything before their hardware works.

that's because new hardware is made to work for windows. Few companies care about linux drivers

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

#302

Post by lbayes »

Yeah, even a broken clock is right twice a day. OP got lucky with some crusty laptop and drew a wildly expansive and inaccurate conclusion.

Maybe true for old machines, but definitely not true for newish models.

Not even for machines being sold with Linux preinstalled.

My Linux Dell XPS from ~5 years ago required me to buy and install a different radio because the Broadcom one didn't actually work with latest Ubuntu (at that time).

The next XPS I got mostly worked, but had lots of audio issues.

The Inspiron was horrible. Touchscreen fails, audio fails, radio fails, sleep fails.

My custom Ryzen 3900X workstation has ongoing issues with sound and sleep (yes, latest kernel, latest drivers, latest LTS OS).

My most recent laptop purchase from earlier this year either had no wifi in Ubuntu or no Bluetooth in Fedora. I was able to force Fedora to work after a week of messing with it. Still have intermittent sleep and audio issues.

FWIW, I've been running Linux in various roles since the late 90's, so not a noob and definitely not complaining.

It's free, it's open source, package management is awesome. The command line is irreplaceable.

I use Linux on the daily and deeply appreciate all the incredibly hard and thankless work that so many people put into it.

That said, Linux still does not have anything close to the level of polish that MacOS delivers and it definitely doesn't get out of the way to the extent that it can be called boring.

YMMV

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

#303

Post by rtpg »

pxeboot wrote: post #279
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 e…

yeah seconding the X1 thing. The battery life is a bit wanting but I have more issues on my desktop than on my laptop at this point

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

#304

Post by Teknoman117 »

wooque wrote: post #93
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…

Yep, my 2 year old Ryzen laptop still doesn't have properly functioning sleep without tweaking kernel parameter, and that workaround got broken on 5.19 kernel release and I had to find out new parameter to tweak. Linux worked perfectly on my old laptop from 2015 though.

Out of curiosity, what laptop? My samples in the last 6 years are:

- Thinkpad Carbon X1 14" (i7-5600u). Everything worked out of the box with Arch Linux at the time. Best experience I've ever had.

- HP Envy 13z (R5 2500u) everything works today but the out of the box experience was very poor. Windows update installed an APU microcode update that broke the Linux AMDGPU driver and had to run an -rc kernel for awhile. Took a year to get a touchscreen driver and years to get the driver for the tablet sensors (rotation, etc.). Total wait of 3 years for all features, but I never had the desire to use it as a tablet so I was okay with it. Sleep works but this laptop had awful battery drain issues in sleep (30% per day).

- Dell XPS 15 7590 (i9-9980hk) - Sleep is broke in both Linux and Windows. Everything else works well, including, notably, NVIDIA Optimus / DRI PRIME.

- Asus ZenBook 14 (R7 5800U) - second best out of box experience. Touchpad is connected via i2c and my Gentoo install didn't have it enabled. I'd never bumped into i2c hid devices other than touchscreens.

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

#305

Post by stoplying1 »

btdmaster wrote: post #30
stoplying1 wrote: post #11

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…

Have you checked ArchWiki? For example, it provides the kernel command line for enabling all speakers on the y530: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_IdeaPad_y530

Unfortunately, that didn't help. Fwiw, I have a Ryzen not an Intel, not sure if that module name is a misnomer though.

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

#306

Post by mariusor »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #283
mariusor wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If one feels like they have an opinion to give on the matter I would imagine they invest at least a modicum of reflection on the subject.

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

#309

Post by nsilvestri »

cdata wrote: post #207

Just an anecdote: got my Framework laptop the other week. Installed Pop!_OS. That was the only step. Everything works. Suspend/resume. WiFi. Audio. Webcam. Funky dongle ports. This is something I had already experienced with my older System76 laptop. This is the first time for me experiencing it with another brand.

How does your suspend battery life work out for you? I'm running Ubuntu with Framework and even though I've done tweaked some settings I still end up with a dead battery after I reopen my laptop a day later.

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

#310

Post by matthewrobertso »

pessimizer wrote: post #274
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 pu…

>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?

The title of this post is "Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring".

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