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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

#491

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 have an Acer Aspire and a self-built PC and both of those work just fine with Linux. All the hardware drivers work on both of them no problem. I didn't even build the desktop FOR linux, it just works when I run it.

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

#492
I am disappointed in the number of people hyping up Lenovo/Thinkpads in this thread. Lenovo is not IBM and their quality is not that great. Some models are good, but plenty of others are bad. Dell has been shipping linux for decades now and Lenovo only announced partial support on some models a year or two ago. Don't fall for the hype. Not all Lenovo/Thinkpads are good for linux (or good at all).

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

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Configuration files are a developer-friendly and user-friendly way of supporting customization. It allows more conventional Linux users to do their customization using their favorite text editor, in the familiar interface that they already like. And, if somebody decides they want to write a GUI for configuration (maybe to chase users who are more familiar with consumer OSes), all the GUI has to do is write to a file…

I'm a user and I don't find being made to directly edit config files user-friendly at all. Why on earth would I want to use a text editor to configure my printer? I don't use Powerpoint to edit photos either, even though in theory I probably could, but what a hassle. That sort of paradigm is fine for applications intended for professional use to be deployed to servers etc., but config management systems exist for tho…

It is user-friendly to typical Linux users.

It is a community-developed project, so it only really needs to appeal to developers. What motivation is there to attract non-technical users? Particularly ones who require lots of effort doing uninteresting polishing related tasks to keep them happy. Other platforms do this sort of thing because their entire reason for existing is to satisfy customers.

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

#494
post #149

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.

Arch/Fedora are fine if you are OK with rolling release, but there are options for newer hardware support in stable distributions. E.g., you can install your kernel and firmware from backports (or even unstable) on Debian, so you get a stable distribution with bleeding edge kernel (currently 5.19 in the repos). Or, you can go the other way and run Debian testing/unstable, and pin some packages from stable. And, Redhat backports new drivers into its frozen shipping kernel version, so some popular new (server) hardware will work with their old kernels.

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

#495
IDK, maybe it is boring for a guy who has nothing better to do than to fuck with configuring software he uses. But I kinda tricked myself into thinking GNU/Linux is an actually usable OS, like, to live with it without noticing it too much. Now, after 15 years I'm way too attached to it to sell my soul to Microsoft, but I'm still waiting for that "year of Linux on desktop". I don't want to configure anything anymore, I have my life, man. I'm too old and too busy for this shit. I just want it to work, on its own.

Yet, I'm still occasionally struggling with hardware compatibility and Ubuntu package manager issues. And I won't even complain about that one time I was foolish enough to set-up ZFS on a laptop: after all, it was offered in "Advanced Settings" tab and I should've known better. Suffice to say, that buying basic consumer-grade hardware I still cannot assume that it will work reasonably well with Linux.

Honestly, I'm almost for real offended by someone daring to say not having to spend my life solving Linux problems should be qualified as "boring" — especially when it's not the case, and when I still often find out that stuff that had me struggling with it for hours, days, or even turned out to simply not work on Linux at all — is basically plug-and-play on Windows. I mean, if you think about it, there's no reason to expect it not to be the case, but it is exactly the headlines like that, that trick you into believing this and buying stuff before meticulously googling everything and making sure it can be used with Linux in the first place (which is often not Google-able as well, when it comes to a bit less common items, than, let's say, top-100 products on Amazon).

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

#496

I am disappointed in the number of people hyping up Lenovo/Thinkpads in this thread. Lenovo is not IBM and their quality is not that great. Some models are good, but plenty of others are bad. Dell has been shipping linux for decades now and Lenovo only announced partial support on some models a year or two ago. Don't fall for the hype. Not all Lenovo/Thinkpads are good for linux (or good at all).

> Not all Lenovo/Thinkpads are good for linux (or good at all)

That does not matter. If they have one really good model, that's enough for everyone.

>Dell has been shipping linux for decades now

I'm an Apple hater, like a vegan hates rare steak. Yet, I'm much more likely to buy my next gear from Apple than Dell. Where do I begin? For starters, everything I've bought from Dell starting with a Latitude D850, all the way to the Xps 13 I bought in 2020 and a 32 curved monitor in 2022, they were all faulty. In a large organization that with 30,000 laptops used by their employees, the IT department loves Dell's support: anything breaks, they will fix/replace it in 24 hours or a few hours depending on your guaranty level. But for me? I prefer it to work well to begin with. My Asus N550 worked for me for 7 years and it was top notch until the bed broke and destroyed it. I've never had a dell product that had zero problems. The latitude would flicker for minutes if for whatever reason screen went off and on. The xps's webcam stopped working and would randomly connect in certain angles of the lid. The laptop was advertised to support linux, but there was no fingerprint reader and when they released it, it was Ubuntu only. The monitor starts to flicker randomly and the replacement they sent me has a corner with ~100 pixels showing whatever they like, waiting for a second replacement.

Never Dell again.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Wayland is "new.". Why not use X if it doesn't yet fit your needs?

X is purely worse for this case. Wayland supports live switching window scaling as they drag across monitor boundaries. X does not. The issue is that electron apps do not support Wayland yet so they run in the X compatibility layer which can not live switch. So reverting to X means you go from some of your windows not working to all of them not working. Supposedly upstream electron has fixed this but I'm yet to see a…

> X is purely worse for this case. Wayland supports live switching window scaling as they drag across monitor boundaries. X does not.

Gotta say this issue sounds minor compared to not being able to set the scroll speed.

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

#499
I bought a a dell developer xps preloaded with ubuntu. It had issues from day 1, related to sleep, related to bluetooth, related to closing the lid and expecting it to do what I wanted. I fixed some of them after messing with it for weeks, but was plagued by kernel panics in the qualcomm wireless driver that was unfixable. Finally had enough BS and switched to windows.

Always kind of aggravating to see posts like OP saying how great linux is as a desktop, ignoring how horrible it is in general across a broad range of hardware. And apparently even direct from dell, in my case.

edit: BTW experienced dev using linux VMs, baremetal, and WSL for 15 years. I love linux as a dev, but I will never touch it again as a desktop OS.

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

#500

I bought a a dell developer xps preloaded with ubuntu. It had issues from day 1, related to sleep, related to bluetooth, related to closing the lid and expecting it to do what I wanted. I fixed some of them after messing with it for weeks, but was plagued by kernel panics in the qualcomm wireless driver that was unfixable. Finally had enough BS and switched to windows. Always kind of aggravating to see posts like OP…

Oh, I forgot to add, I tried to load linux on a different older dell xps 13 laptop since it was nearly dead and useless. No wireless driver out of box for dell wireless. Found some random articles about how to get it working. None of them worked. I actually forgave that since I had a USB network adapter and didn't necessarily need wireless. that wasn't it tho I ran into other random issues. seriously linux is still terrible as a desktop OS. I won't even get into UI .
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