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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

#383
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 only buy laptops with official OEM Linux support these days.

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

#384
post #365
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What laptops brands do you buy? Why?

Framework laptop is a good option as well.

I had a Framework and really liked it. Unfortunately the components just degraded really quickly for me, and now can't work but 20 minutes at a time until it freezes completely. Swapped out for a Thinkpad last week.

Even swapped out the Framework mainboard after a long back and forth with support. Just some poor battery unloading or similar causing shorts. I was very close to committing my company to using them until this started happening to my tester unit and my lead engineer's tester unit.

I hope the best for Framework -- I really love their repairability promise -- but before I can commit my company to them I need them to not be lemons.

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

#385

I want this to be true very badly. I’ve been a Linux user for nearly 20 years and I’ve never had an install that “just works” to the level of macOS or even Windows. Although there was a while there in like 2006 where I had a pretty solid install of Ubuntu on some HP laptop I had at the time. That’s the closest I got. This is of course extremely anecdotal. Everyone’s on different hardware and therefore has pretty diff…

I see a lot of Windows laptops, and am also a Linux enthusiast, and honestly, Windows does have the issues you are talking about occasionally, same as popular Linux distros. They, for example, sometimes have maddening issues like on default settings delivering driver updates to (Intel) display drivers which are very fiddly to roll back and pin in order to fix. Even the walled garden of Apple has problems depending on whether or not their new M1 line will be compatible with what you want to do. Modern computers and the operating systems that straddle them are complex systems, and sometimes have complex problems. The best we can do is find our own balance of stability given requirements, and be thankful for the technological advancements meaningful to us.

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

#386
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

After 20 years of luck with Linux on many laptops, I couldn't get any Linux to Microsoft Surface 3 Laptop.

Aren't those just surfaces with a keyboard -- like, same bespoke hardware and similar?

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

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland just generally is missing config files... Like just give me a big text file with hundreds of tweakables and tunables like X had... They hide behind 'you just need to get your client to make the right API calls'... but that just means most wayland compositors don't support most of the available options...

If we are talking about desktop Linux, a lack of config files is not a problem. If you expect people to edit files to get their desktops to work properly, you have already lost. The same config pane where I adjust my pointer speed should let me adjust my scroll speed.

To add in the fancy slider you want so much, there needs to be a corresponding tunable in Wayland. MacOS does this with plists, it's not some radical or hated design pattern.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP Elitebooks and Thinkpads are designed and built with Linux in mind. I never came across an HP Elitebook or Thinkpad which failed to run Linux out of the box. Dell XPS is the latest addition to this group. Consumer laptops come with a lot of trickery analogous to WinModems of the era, which require Windows specifically. Hence these cost saving measurements create a lot of problems.

Disagree, used to use Dell Inspiron and some cheap HPs, found nothing extraordinary.

Cheap HPs are not elitebooks for one, and two an inspiron is not an XPS. I've used both elitebook and XPS with zero issues.

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

#389

I installed PopOS (I know there’s some absurd punctuation involved in the name but I don’t remember what it is) on my 5 year old MacBook Pro and it feels like a brand new machine. The UX feels better to me than MacOS which is starting to feel more and more like Windows imo.

I specifically searched for "Pop" in this thread, because I wanted to give them a thumbs up. In recent years I've been moving on from macOS to Linux, and I'm so pleased with my new Thinkpad running PopOS (and Nordic theme). It just works - quiet technology.

Nordic is lovely. One of the few stylesheets that really solves default usability issues while looking gorgeous at the same time. Props to the maintainers, whoever they are!

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are talking about desktop Linux, a lack of config files is not a problem. If you expect people to edit files to get their desktops to work properly, you have already lost. The same config pane where I adjust my pointer speed should let me adjust my scroll speed.

To add in the fancy slider you want so much, there needs to be a corresponding tunable in Wayland. MacOS does this with plists, it's not some radical or hated design pattern.

If you think that is a "fancy slider" you lack perspective. It is a basic, expected feature that is supported by Windows and macOS for laptop users. And I'm pretty sure it used to work on Linux too, before Wayland.
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