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

clivethompson.medium.com

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

#521

Post by bee_rider »

twblalock wrote: post #516
bee_rider wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. First of all, adjusting scrolling speed is not an "uninteresting polishing related task," it is a basic standard of usability. Secondly, if you don't think Linux on laptops should be broadly usable by the general population, you are in the wrong thread…

Adjustable scrolling speed is useful (I mean, I haven't used it, but I can see why one might want it). Creating a GUI to adjust it is an uninteresting polishing task.

Swaywm has the ability to set this (you have to edit the config file). It seems weird that gnome or whatever you use lacks this option. Although, gnome has a lot of t's to cross and i's to dot, maybe they just haven't gotten around to it.

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

#522

Post by shepherdjerred »

avl999 wrote: post #316
pharmakom wrote: post #180

How nice for OP. Just a handful of my issues: - only one speaker works so volume is low - finger print scanner doesn’t work - battery life is poor compared to Windows on same machine - suspend and hibernate doesn’t work - random freezes - charging indicator unreliable - trackpad wrist filtering is very poor - boot failures after OS updates I have now switched to a Mac with Apple Silicon. I really tried with Linux for…

> - only one speaker works so volume is low Never had this issue. > - finger print scanner doesn’t work Can't speak for this as I don't have a device with an FP reader > - battery life is poor compared to Windows on same machine I get ~6hrs on my laptop running Ubuntu + XFCE. I haven't ran windows on it but Amazon reviews claim ~5-5.5 hrs battery life for the same machine so seems to be inline for me. > - suspend and…

You're mostly mentioning matters of personal preference.

A "poorly designed" MacBook is probably better than a laptop running Linux with a myriad of misbehaving functionality.

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

#523

Post by maxbaines »

jll29 wrote: post #313
ratherbefuddled wrote: post #256

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.

I have been using this on Intel SL3 works great https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Also works on AMD but did get crashes sometime and sometimes need to boot into Windows to reset audio….

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

#524

Post by shepherdjerred »

avl999 wrote: post #406
pharmakom wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your point here? How does you great Linux experience help those it didn’t work for?

My point is that Linux is a great desktop environment and people shouldn't write it off based on isolated complaints from people for whom it didn't work for as there are a lot of people who never encounter these issues that keep getting brought up in these threads.

> isolated complaints

Can you produce a HN thread about desktop linux computing without a fair number of complaints about how desktop linux is broken?

I'd love for Linux to be my primary day-to-day OS. I try out several distros every year -- nix, arch, elementary, ubuntu, popos. None of them have been smooth for my use case of:

* Casual gaming

* Web browsing

* Voice/video calling

* Text editing

In my most recent install, some video games would work with Steam's proton, until it suddenly stopped working. I'd have to open my command line and look up `bluetoothctl` docs to connect my headphones. Windows would stop rendering when any window manipulation was occurring. Sometimes my display server's login screen would not appear (my screen would be black), so I'd have to guess when to put in my password when booting up.

It has certainly gotten better in the last few years, but I would not recommend it to anyone unless they are wanting to delve into technical topics.

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

#526

Post by nikau »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #470
bee_rider wrote: post #450

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…

Because you can diff the configs after changes?

You can check into git so you have a history of changes?

So you can copy the config to another machine?

There are lots of reasons why text files are the preferred format to store configuration in.

Other than perhaps a slight performance boost, why do we want settings in a non-human readable database?

Hell, even Microsoft are starting to use json config files for stuff like Windows terminal because they know people like to be able to quickly copy and edit settings.

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

#527

Post by hutzlibu »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #256
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…

> 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…

"I've had it work first time, perfectly on"

In my world, running perfectly means, runs at least as good as windows.

Same battery life and performance. No glitches with suspend, hibernation, etc.

And I doubt that.

Not because windows is so awesome, but because hardware manufacture write and optimize their drivers for windows. And linux is a way smaller market and one with intentional no stable driver ABI (to force the vendors to open source their drivers).

That is the situation. And it sucks, because I do not like to use windows, but I need my mobile devices to be reliable.

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

#528

Post by nikau »

twblalock wrote: post #516
bee_rider wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. First of all, adjusting scrolling speed is not an "uninteresting polishing related task," it is a basic standard of usability. Secondly, if you don't think Linux on laptops should be broadly usable by the general population, you are in the wrong thread…

This isn't either/or - you can have a nice preferences GUI and a sensible yaml or toml config file backend.

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

#529

Post by ungamedplayer »

Gigachad wrote: post #457
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…

I don't expect it. Which is why I switched from buying Windows laptops to install Linux and now buy MacBooks where I can expect that absolutely everything will work on day one.

I hate that kinda rhetoric. Everything.. c'mon..

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

#530

Post by tluyben2 »

ghostly_s wrote: post #480
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…

My daily driver is a Thinkpad x230 running Linux and I also vehemently disagree with his author's claim. Yes, things are certainly better than they were 10 years ago, yet I still have a lengthy to-do list of things that are broken, but low-impact enough to work around that I don't want to waste the hours of dicking around with poor documentation, noxious forum threads and command line fiddling to sort them out. Circu…

Like what? Must be things I do not use I guess, which definitely can be the case as I never plug in external monitors etc, but everything I use works very well for dev work.
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