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Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

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Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#151

Post by AncientPC »

rsl7 wrote: post #143
AncientPC wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add another data point, Arch Linux on X220: 1. 4-6 hrs with 6 cell battery. 2. Yes, Intel everything (HD4000, wireless, etc). 3. Yes, 1 resume crash total this year. 4. Yes, attached to external monitor via DisplayPort -> DVI right now. 5. Never tested. 6. Small, crappy. I'm one of those guys who disables the touch pad in favor of TrackPoint though. 7. Much better IMO, not a fan of chiclet style and Apple's "…

The problem is that these are exactly the kinds of replies given by Linux advocates throughout the years. I've used unix varieties for more than 20 years and never experiences like this for anything, ever. Nothing is totally supported, or works right away. Ever. At least not in the way a Mac user would employ those descriptions.

I'm sorry you've had poor experience with Linux, I've had plenty of them myself.

I'm tired of dealing with ACPI / driver issues as well. That's why now I just buy ThinkPad and Intel-only chipsets. If you're going to use Linux, you have to research your hardware ahead of time (e.g. poor Atom support) or buy Linux laptops (Dell Ubuntu series, unofficially ThinkPad series).

I'm not trying to say everything's happy in Linux land. Printers are still a sore point, as are AMD / nvidia cards (Open or binary drivers? Multi-monitor support?).

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#153

Post by keithpeter »

dschep wrote: post #126
keithpeter wrote: post #114

"I got a special version of Ubuntu, with some kernel patches, and some patched packages for sleep and hibernation." What version of Ubuntu is this hardware specific patched one? Are Canonical or Dell guranteeing updates? If so, for how long... Best of luck with it.

All the custom stuff is in a PPA[1]. Some of the patches are already merged into Quantal. [1] https://launchpad.net/~canonical-hwe-team/+archive/sputnik-k...

Good work, especially the practice of merging the patches into main kernel.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#154

Post by rbanffy »

rsl7 wrote: post #143
AncientPC wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add another data point, Arch Linux on X220: 1. 4-6 hrs with 6 cell battery. 2. Yes, Intel everything (HD4000, wireless, etc). 3. Yes, 1 resume crash total this year. 4. Yes, attached to external monitor via DisplayPort -> DVI right now. 5. Never tested. 6. Small, crappy. I'm one of those guys who disables the touch pad in favor of TrackPoint though. 7. Much better IMO, not a fan of chiclet style and Apple's "…

The problem is that these are exactly the kinds of replies given by Linux advocates throughout the years. I've used unix varieties for more than 20 years and never experiences like this for anything, ever. Nothing is totally supported, or works right away. Ever. At least not in the way a Mac user would employ those descriptions.

> these are exactly the kinds of replies given by Linux advocates throughout the years

Sometimes a happy Linux user is just that - someone who's happy using Linux. I've had some hardware compatibility problems, but they were all minor and none for the past couple years. Of course, I know what I'm doing and I avoid hardware I know has poor Linux support (much like you should avoid a SPARCStation to run Windows NT in the 90's). Comments like yours are very much in line with other comments from people who have been called "Microsoft apologists" since ever. I will, however, avoid calling you one.

> I've used unix varieties for more than 20 years and never experiences like this for anything, ever

While it seems you have been trying a lot (20 years is a long time) you may have to consider the possibility you are just very unlucky. Of course, 10, 15 years ago, the supported hardware list was much smaller. Solaris and SCO Unix were never intended to be general purpose desktop OSs anyway and it makes little sense to support general purpose desktop hardware back then. I'm now on my fifth Linux-only laptop and I'm yet to have a single problem. In fact, this one is the first that came with Linux preinstalled. I had to remove the "Designed for Microsoft Windows" stickers from all the others, but I've left this one's "n series" as a proud reminder of its origins.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#155

Post by mironathetin »

bproctor wrote: post #152

Photoshop. For a web developer, it's pretty much pointless to even talk about using Linux until this is taken care of.

Even for someone who only has to prepare presentations from time to time and cares about the quality of the graphics, Photoshop is more or less not replaceable.

I tried gimp for a while but it did not nearly qualify. Do you have any idea, if there is linux-software that comes somewhat close to photoshop?

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#156

Post by endlessvoid94 »

gbog wrote: post #92
ars wrote: post #11

Why are people voting up this article? There is nothing interesting in it. I'm genuinely curious about what people are finding interesting here.

I, for one, find it refreshing to see a community of hackers (HN) going back to its roots and upvoting the struggles of a major anti-hacker corporation (Apple). Because, sorry, but Apple's spirit is in direct opposition with the natural grain of hackers, even in a broad and "entrepreneurial" sense of the word.

I'm pretty blown away by your opinion that Apple's spirit is in opposition to hackers. It's the only beautiful unix environment that's easy to use; I can worry about things when I want to, but when I don't want to, I don't have to, and it continues to work.

For some reason, people have begun confusing "hacker" with "tinkerer".

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#157

Post by endlessvoid94 »

For the life of me, I can't figure out what's going on here. There's certainly nothing wrong with moving to another platform, but the emotion flying around here is pretty strange.

It feels like people just really, really want to find a good reason to hate Apple.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#158

Post by kobolt »

rlt3 wrote: post #147
gbog wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, find it refreshing to see a community of hackers (HN) going back to its roots and upvoting the struggles of a major anti-hacker corporation (Apple). Because, sorry, but Apple's spirit is in direct opposition with the natural grain of hackers, even in a broad and "entrepreneurial" sense of the word.

Why do you think Apple is anti-hacker?

Walled gardens?

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#159

Post by rst »

rsl7 wrote: post #143
AncientPC wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add another data point, Arch Linux on X220: 1. 4-6 hrs with 6 cell battery. 2. Yes, Intel everything (HD4000, wireless, etc). 3. Yes, 1 resume crash total this year. 4. Yes, attached to external monitor via DisplayPort -> DVI right now. 5. Never tested. 6. Small, crappy. I'm one of those guys who disables the touch pad in favor of TrackPoint though. 7. Much better IMO, not a fan of chiclet style and Apple's "…

The problem is that these are exactly the kinds of replies given by Linux advocates throughout the years. I've used unix varieties for more than 20 years and never experiences like this for anything, ever. Nothing is totally supported, or works right away. Ever. At least not in the way a Mac user would employ those descriptions.

It may depend on whether you buy with Linux support in mind (having waited for someone else to do the spadework, and posted the results to Ubuntu Forums or wherever). There are machines where everything really does Just Work, with at most a few proprietary drivers that are in most distribution repos. (And I've had models from several manufacturers needing at most minor tweaks going back ten years or so --- FWIW, one machine that needed custom scripts to get the display-dimming function keys to work right.)

But if you buy on raw hardware specs, and then try to get Linux working after that, odds are that you'll run into something (sleep/wakeup issues, flaky Broadcom wireless drivers, or lately, problems with fussy trackpads) which will be real trouble.

So, you can get a pretty trouble-free Linux experience, if you do research --- but it might not be the exact machine you want, and it probably won't be anything bleeding-edge.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#160

Post by thebigshane »

jlgreco wrote: post #42
macco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything Lenovo based in Intel preferable with internal graphics.

I have heard that Intel Atoms with internal graphics should be avoided since the graphics on those is not actually Intel's doing, though my eeepc with an Atom/internal graphics works fine.. maybe I got lucky. I wouldn't recommend getting a Lenovo with an Atom anyway though, if they even sell anything with Atoms (mostly just from a "If you are going to spend money, spend some money" standpoint.

Another happy linux user on Intel Atom Asus eeepc 1215N. It has done well with Arch and Ubuntu.
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