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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

#481

Post by udp »

Legogris wrote: post #467
_skel wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Wayland, Gnome and KDE have no way to adjust the scroll speed on a laptop trackpad. Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. In 2022. That is the kind of basic thing that does not work. In addition to that, if you have a high-DPI laptop display and you want to plug it into a low-DPI desktop monitor (or vice-versa), good luck getting the scaling to work in a usable way.

You certainly know what you're talking about because from a lot of experimentation, my take on the state of 2022: If you want the "works so well it's boring", go with X11. The one exception, as you note, is multi-DPI, which has native support in Wayland. For Wayland, there are (depending on DE/compositor) some specific issues or inconsistencies, like the scroll speed you are mentioning. Personally, I also have qt5 ap…

I can’t imagine not being in the “multi DPI” scenario though? It’s not some edge feature that affects a minority of power users, it’s just plugging an external display into a laptop. The DPIs almost never line up - not since high DPI displays became mainstream about 10 years ago.

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

#482

Post by derbOac »

Klonoar wrote: post #232
rhyn00 wrote: post #223

I would add that the linux-ready boutique vendors like system76, tuxedo computers, framework are also options if you don't want to fuss with drivers and what not, but still want to run linux. I definitely agree that linux doesn't run super smooth on all hardware, but it's not hard to find hardware these days where it does run smooth. I came across tuxedo computers randomly one day, and gave it a shot. Very impressed,…

Another vendor to mention is Star Labs, who make the StarBook. Unlike most vendors they fabricate their own designs - not rebranded clevo shells.

Also worth mentioning the HP Dev One, which is a collaboration with System76, and I think there's a similar collaboration with Razer.

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

#483

Post by leidenfrost »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #179
mrweasel wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had it not died I would still have used my 2013 MacBook Pro. For many use cases computers stopped being slow a decade ago. There are certainly things I can do on my new laptop that was a major hassle on the old one, but web browsing, Python development and day to day sys admin stuff was perfectly fine on the old machine. For me it's all about the screen, an 11 year old ThinkPad most certainly have a terrible screen (…

I’ve been buying MacBook Airs of the 2011-2013 vintage for 10 years. Love them. I have to disable third party JavaScript, and I have to be careful what software I install, but I love this machine. I will probably upgrade to an M1/M2 for my next machine, but it’s because of software not hardware. The software, after 10 years, is finally starting to be bloated enough that I feel like I might need more soon.

I bought an M1 Pro a month ago. While I kinda miss linux, I do not miss x86 at all.

Seriously, going back from a performant arm64 to x86 feels like going back to the POWER architecture all over again. Big bloated chips where every little computation generates a lot of heat and you need big fans to dissipate all of it.

I wish I could do the same, although in the lower end, with my Raspberry Pi 4. Sadly, those laptop cases for the RPi are too expensive, if you include shipping, to justify them.

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

#484

Post by leidenfrost »

bxparks wrote: post #343
erikpukinskis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been buying MacBook Airs of the 2011-2013 vintage for 10 years. Love them. I have to disable third party JavaScript, and I have to be careful what software I install, but I love this machine. I will probably upgrade to an M1/M2 for my next machine, but it’s because of software not hardware. The software, after 10 years, is finally starting to be bloated enough that I feel like I might need more soon.

Installed latest Mint MATE (based on Ubuntu 22.04) on a MacBook Air 11 2015. Linux has a lot of rough edges on the MacBook Air, definitely not boring, it but works well enough for my needs: * No fan control out of the box, so CPU overheats after a new minutes. Fixed by installing a 3rd party fan control package. * Broken sleep. Always wakes up 2-3 seconds after putting to sleep. Fixed by a series of hacks to disable…

Weird, I installed Asahi on my M1 Pro and while the two finger scroll isn't butty smooth as MacOS, it works well enough and already better than in any Thinkpad touchpad.

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

#485

Post by autoexec »

a-dub wrote: post #396
autoexec wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old IBM Thinkpads were pretty solid, but now they're made by Lenovo who has a long history of shipping devices pre-infested with malware and backdoors, usually in exchange for money. They've even been caught stuffing malware into UEFI so that users reinstalling their OS would be infected over and over again. However nice their laptops are, I could never trust them. They have already proved that they are perfectly wil…

every once in a while there's a lenovo default windows image/hardware security controversy, but never one that has affected me directly. i don't care what they put on the default windows partition (i replace it on arrival) and the uefi issue was a production mistake where they imaged with a nonproduction image. they're still used widely by serious people in academia, open source and security sensitive industry. i sus…

> i suspect a lot of the bad press they get comes from the fact that there's a lot of very sharp eyes making use of their gear and that similar issues happen in other lines but just go unnoticed.

No, it's really just them. They worked hard to earn that bad press. It's not even that they keep pre-installing malware, but how they've handled it when they're caught speaks volumes.

When the truth about superfish came out first they fiercely denied there was any security risk to anyone ("we have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns”), then eventually they admitted it was a problem and said they'd stop shipping devices infected by it, but continued to anyway more than a month later (https://arstechnica.netblogpro.com/information-technology/20...) and the instructions they gave users for removing the offending software still left systems vulnerable while giving people a false sense of security. When they were caught doing that they issued new instructions and those still left users vulnerable!! (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/20/lenovo-ap...)

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

#486

Post by fuzzfactor »

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…

Old laptops & desktops too have been left in the dust for some time now.

Decades ago one of the most important benchmarks of Linux distributions was they were all higher performance using less resources than the original Windows that came with the PC.

If you have a PC with only 1GB of memory which still works fine with XP or W7, most distros are now unusable.

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

#489

Post by vba616 »

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…

> sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions

How do people typically learn to debug kernel issues on their hardware? It seems like actively promoting widespread knowledge of the practical methods would benefit the community.

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

#490

Post by midislack »

Damn threads like this always bring out hordes of certain types of posters. For me though it's OpenBSD, I don't trust Linux any more. PRC's a little too heavily involved in the project. I can only imagine the back and forth between their operatives and the NSA's, sometimes it flares up on the LKML to the point where it glows brighter the sun.
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