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Best Ultrabook for Linux?

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Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#51

Post by richbradshaw »

ansgri wrote: post #31
jurre wrote: post #13

Not sure if this is helpful but I was looking for the same thing about six months ago and ended up buying a macbook air, decided to give OSX a chance and stuck with it. As far as I'm aware most of the things are compatible but trackpad support isn't quite there yet.

How do you deal with absence of PgUp/PgDn and Home/End? I've honestly tried for 2 weeks to get comfortable with MacBook, but feel that the keyboard is simply bad.

All the usual emacs keybindings work in all applications, so it's arguably nicer than the ones with extra buttons.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#52

Post by asdfpoiu »

balac wrote: post #34
spindritf wrote: post #12

I'm not aware of any fully supported ultrabook. Something always seems to be unsupported or not fully supported but usually inessential, like a fingerprint scanner, or an accelerometer. A friend of mine is using a Zenbook but it takes some serious efforts to get it to run properly https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook It's also a matter of what you consider an ultrabook. I have a Dell V131. It's a laptop IMHO…

I'm using a zenbook and with the 3.2 kernal (included in ubuntu 12.04beta) almost everything is working great. There is a small change that is needed to enable suspend, but otherwise everything works out of the box with no extra drivers needed (including wifi, two finger right click, camera, 3d graphics, etc.).

Can you tell us how the battery life is?

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#53

Post by jurre »

ansgri wrote: post #31
jurre wrote: post #13

Not sure if this is helpful but I was looking for the same thing about six months ago and ended up buying a macbook air, decided to give OSX a chance and stuck with it. As far as I'm aware most of the things are compatible but trackpad support isn't quite there yet.

How do you deal with absence of PgUp/PgDn and Home/End? I've honestly tried for 2 weeks to get comfortable with MacBook, but feel that the keyboard is simply bad.

Well I mostly use cmd or fn + left, right, up, down now and find it a lot more useful, also find myself using cmd+shift and the arrows a lot for selecting to the beginning/end. The thing that took me the longest to get used to is the delete button, I still miss it but I survive by using the aforementioned combinations. I find the overal experience so much more pleasant that I'm willing to put up with it.

Thanks to zimbatm I just found out you can use fn+backspace for delete!

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#54

Post by jurre »

zimbatm wrote: post #38
ansgri wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with absence of PgUp/PgDn and Home/End? I've honestly tried for 2 weeks to get comfortable with MacBook, but feel that the keyboard is simply bad.

Me too until I found that Fn+Up/Down,Left/Right do what you want. Also Fn+Backspace to delete.

Fn+backspace to delete is a new trick for me! Thanks a million!

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#55

Post by btipling »

The various warnings about drivers, touchpad and wifi in these answers is almost amusing if not a little depressing. Remember the promise of the Linux Desktop? I remember giving ubuntu a good try in 2006, but after nightmares with xorg configs, flash, audio drivers and a clipboard that couldn't copy and paste across different applications I eventually switched to mac. It doesn't look like things have changed much in the last five years.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#56

Post by ciupicri »

batista wrote: post #16

This, guy, Linus Torwalds, uses a MacBook Air for Linux. He even says on his Google+ page that he couldn't find anything better, and that even Lenovo stuff is crap. Just sayin'.

The MacBook Air was for his kids: "if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses)...".

P.S. Out of curiosity, could someone explain me why I'm being downvoted?

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#57

Post by JAlexoid »

In general, ThinkPads are the way. Business line Dells also are quite well supported. (This has to do with the user community for those machines. And that community keeps their software running well)

I am as well looking for a Ultrabook, but I decided to wait for the ThinkPad T430s.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#58

Post by tribaal »

mbq wrote: post #37
tribaal wrote: post #22

I use a Toshiba z830, and it works brilliantly under Ubuntu, I can assume it does as well with other Linux distributions.

I have r830 with Arch, so a less-ultra but quite similar stuff -- everything works, after some tuning it can eat only 7.5-8W during normal activity (with Compiz).

Nice, what kind of tuning did you do? I hover around 9W, which is already really good... A link to share for your tweaks, sir?

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#59

Post by alFReD-NSH »

I have a dell Inspiron N4010(intel cor i3, 4GB ram), with Ubuntu 11.10. Was using Ubuntu on it since 10.10. Works like a charm, just sometimes the wireless(broadcom b43xx) doesn't work, which will work again by just turning off and on. It was shipped with windows at first. But it even works smoother under Ubuntu. Though I don't suggest you to buy Dell. I can see a fan problem with most Dell laptops that I've see and also cheap hardware.

Re: Best Ultrabook for Linux?

#60

Post by JAlexoid »

pmjordan wrote: post #26
recoiledsnake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the "Ultrabook" brand specifically means an Intel CPU with built-in GPU Reference? There are Ultrabooks with discrete GPUs. http://blogs.nvidia.com/2012/03/real-ultrabooks-have-gpus/ http://hothardware.com/News/Upcoming-Acer-Ultrabook-To-Featu...

"Ultrabook" currently specifically refers to a system with a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge based ULV CPU, all of which have integrated on-die GPUs. Re the announced system: interesting - does Optimus work on Linux these days then? Last time I checked, the GPU on Optimus systems was dormant on Linux.

Ever since Acer Aspire ultra book came out with nVidia GPU, it's no longer the case.

Optimus is not used on Linux.

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