The most important thing I think when it comes to getting a Linux desktop that just works, is to buy a laptop that has little-to-no issues with Linux in the first place. As someone who struggled with linux on his existing Windows laptop, I made sure that my next laptop had very few issues on the Arch Wiki, and I installed Arch onto it. Works perfectly.
Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
571–580 of 640 posts
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Wayland is "new.". Why not use X if it doesn't yet fit your needs?
Do you honestly expect users to swap out the window system to solve a simple problem like a lack of scroll speed adjustment? Most users won't even know the difference between Wayland and X.org and X11 unless they are already the kind of tinkerers who used Linux on the desktop despite its drawbacks. Normal people have no idea what any of it means, and they should not need to know.
I'm talking specifically about OPs complaint - they've identified it's a Wayland specific issue, so yes? If using Gnome, it's a single click from GDM, and your preference will be remembered.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#573It's not boring. I use Arch Linux sway on my Framework laptop. I have 23 virtual screens (one for each digit, one for each function key and an additional one), and they have different scaling. This means on some screens I don't need my reading glasses. For that I wrote a script which is invoked by sway's event handler triggered by virtual screen switches. I find this exciting. It's not perfect. I still miss the smoot…
Are you on the 11th or 12th gen Intel? What's your take on Arch -- do you find most things work? I've got a Framework on order coming sometime October and I'm thinking of using Arch for install. Things that I care about are display/graphics, webcam/mic/audio/video, a working suspend even if I have to resort to hibernate, media keys on the keyboard, and a usable trackpad. Things I don't really care about is probably t…
11th I think. I got mine February.
Most things work. I didn't setup mic and audio, because being Deaf I couldn't be bothered. Suspend is very nice. There's hibernate, too and hybrid suspend/hibernate (first suspend and if battery is too low, hibernate). With sway you setup media keys yourself. I didn't bother. I only configured screen brightness and screenshots. Trackpad is okay. Don't expect Apple's smoothness. First it was very jerky till I found out that Firefox fell back to X11.
The good: very configurable and mostly working
The bad: it takes a lot of time to configure everything
The ugly: kinetic scrolling is per application so all applications do this differently
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a comment that may solve it from a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32896463 Though it has nothing to do with Wayland before the flamewar starts, it’s just libinput and gtk maintainers not agreeing upon whose responsibility is it to handle scroll events (it is gtk’s though, libinput doesn’t have enough context to implement kinetic scrolling, so it really should be the framework that adds se…
>it has nothing to do with Wayland before the flamewar starts, it’s just libinput and gtk maintainers not agreeing upon whose responsibility is it to handle scroll events Sure, but for me as an end user, it's irrelevant who's fault of this bazaar engineering endeavor it is that very basic quality of life features from Windows/MacOS do not work on Linux. As a dev I understand the struggle why this and many other stuff…
Sure, I target it more specifically to the anti-Wayland group. I don’t really care whether they continue to use X indefinitely, or use another OS or whatever, but don’t attack an open-source project, and at least not on false claims.
Also, unfortunately the bazaar style of development sort of begets this kind end-user experience. Some people like it, others don’t. I change between OSX and Linux quite often nowadays, what I prefer in the latter is that I actually have a chance of fixing problems, not just wait around and pray to the Apple/Microsoft gods that they may have fixed the issue in the next multi-GB update. Also, piece-by-piece, free software often beats out proprietary offerings’ alternatives, it is usually the experience together with the whole stack that is lacking. E.g. pipewire may well be a better sound stack than that of the other two OS’s.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it has nothing to do with Wayland before the flamewar starts, it’s just libinput and gtk maintainers not agreeing upon whose responsibility is it to handle scroll events Sure, but for me as an end user, it's irrelevant who's fault of this bazaar engineering endeavor it is that very basic quality of life features from Windows/MacOS do not work on Linux. As a dev I understand the struggle why this and many other stuff…
Sure, I target it more specifically to the anti-Wayland group. I don’t really care whether they continue to use X indefinitely, or use another OS or whatever, but don’t attack an open-source project, and at least not on false claims. Also, unfortunately the bazaar style of development sort of begets this kind end-user experience. Some people like it, others don’t. I change between OSX and Linux quite often nowadays,…
>but don’t attack an open-source project, and at least not on false claims
What did I attack and which false claims did I make?
>what I prefer in the latter is that I actually have a chance of fixing problems
What I and most consumers want is a product that does not require fixing or learning how to fix things. I and most other people don't want to play sys-admin at home despite having cut my teeth in it and making it a career. I work in cybersecurity so all our workforce is fluent in linux which we daily drive at work and yet at home everyone of us only uses Windows and/or MacOS on our personal machines with only one guy using Linux religiously at home.
When even experienced linux users don't want it in their personal lives that says something. Even though we know how to fix things but our free time is much more valuable. Nobody likes a desktop that stutters and ruins your immersion and productivity, especially if you're running a system that costs several grand.[1]
Maybe when the hardware manufacturers can work with the bazaar engineers and finally agree on something and work together with the desktop environment devs on how to make Wayland a fully feature complete drop in replacement for X11 with no rough edges, quirks or issues and have feature parity, smoothness and polish to Windows/MacOS, we can finally have the "year of the (polished) Linux desktop". Until then, I and most consumers will continue to use whichever OS provides the best experience with least amount of friction.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#576Yeah, 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…
Well, the reality is that Linux consists of less than 5% of the market (desktops and laptops), where Windows OSes make up around 75% and macOS around 15%. So, that is going to dictate the priorities of companies supplying drivers.
These numbers are always so skewed. I wish just one time we could get market share numbers for new sales WITHOUT corporate purchases, but Microsoft has made this a "thing" for 30 years now. On the one hand manufacturers would still want to target numbers, even if that includes corporate "fleets." On the other, they'd see that Linux makes up a larger portion of the market where people are spending their own money.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
There are often things that do not work under Linux on different laptops and it depends on what you need and expect. However, consistently over many laptops (I am a computer hoarder and have 100s of laptops), after running my post install script, battery life always easily beats windows. For old and new laptops. Recent example; someone gave me a cf19 which had a dodgy battery; it had the official Panasonic windows in…
You are free to have a look at my devices, but I did manual optimizing, tld, thermalD, optimized grub settings, allmost bricked devices with it and still even stock windows is better.
But a proper installed windows, without bloatware and updated drivers, always won by a large margin.
And the bigger showstopper are standby/hibernation. Touchscreen glitches etc.
So I have 2 devices, one lightweight chromebook. A bigger windows laptop and manjaro on the desktop.
I very much prefered to have manjaro only.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I target it more specifically to the anti-Wayland group. I don’t really care whether they continue to use X indefinitely, or use another OS or whatever, but don’t attack an open-source project, and at least not on false claims. Also, unfortunately the bazaar style of development sort of begets this kind end-user experience. Some people like it, others don’t. I change between OSX and Linux quite often nowadays,…
>but don’t attack an open-source project, and at least not on false claims What did I attack and which false claims did I make? >what I prefer in the latter is that I actually have a chance of fixing problems What I and most consumers want is a product that does not require fixing or learning how to fix things. I and most other people don't want to play sys-admin at home despite having cut my teeth in it and making i…
As I said, I didn’t mean you by neither of my comments, nor do I see where we disagree.
I gave a potential explanation to why some people may still prefer Linux, understanding well why others don’t.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are often things that do not work under Linux on different laptops and it depends on what you need and expect. However, consistently over many laptops (I am a computer hoarder and have 100s of laptops), after running my post install script, battery life always easily beats windows. For old and new laptops. Recent example; someone gave me a cf19 which had a dodgy battery; it had the official Panasonic windows in…
You are free to have a look at my devices, but I did manual optimizing, tld, thermalD, optimized grub settings, allmost bricked devices with it and still even stock windows is better. But a proper installed windows, without bloatware and updated drivers, always won by a large margin. And the bigger showstopper are standby/hibernation. Touchscreen glitches etc. So I have 2 devices, one lightweight chromebook. A bigger…
Yeah, the things like standby and hibernation and touchscreen are major issues especially in new laptops. But I never use these features myself. Guess I got used to it. Which devices (specifically) do you have? I might have one or both or know someone who has.
Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not this time, she lives alone, there's no one else who could have done it and she's not tech savvy, not at all, I bought and configured that laptop my self for her.
"... she's not tech savvy..." - well, I guess we found the culprit. You did let her use it with full admin rights, didn't you? I recommend go to local policy and enable full audit for everything. When this happens in the future you'll have a clear picture of who/when/what.
She barely knows how to open outlook, let alone go to ms store and install a sw.
Please don't try to defend MS, not this time. I found plenty of casual games installed in my work win10 PC. It's MS.