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This is not identical to my experience, but I definitely have the same problem with hobby computing. My lack of time and energy as I get older is frustrating, but also just the fact that I don't want all the hassle. I want a computer to do work in applications, not because I want to meticulously maintain and configure the operating system for a couple hours every week.
Unfortunately, having a tiling WM when most apps don't expect it mean you run into all sorts of corner cases that the app developer didn't think of. No hope of resolution either.
I suspect my next laptop will be a Framework, and although I wish they came with touchscreens, that is a blessing in disguise because it means I don't have to worry about touch support in a DE and can play with more BSDs or esoteric Linuxes. I have been tempted by the MacBooks, especially when on sale, but the closed nature and lack of repairability keeps me in check each time.
Framework + FreeBSD user here. It works great, although I had to replace the network card I originally bought with it for an older one.
Someone wrote a blog post about it too. Maybe I should also edit the Framework entry in the FreeBSD Wiki.
> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either). Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.
macbook like touchpads is what amazed me most, Apple showed their great touchpads around 2006 with the Macbooks (not pro), and to this date no one seems to be able to clone them and deliver the same quality and smoothness.
Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great.
For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks that wiped their market segment. First it was Microsoft with their price change for Windows XP, followed by tablets, hybrid laptops.
And now those same OEMs, would rather sell ChromeOS and Android devices, than a full blown GNU/Linux, **BSD experience.
With ARM revolution going on PC devices, something that many might not be yet aware, is that Pluton is also part of the story, adding to UEFI, TPM, and pleotora of other integration issues.
So I just run Linux on a VM, first it was Virtual Box, VMware, nowadays it is either WSL or Virtualization framework.
Missing them, not really, for me it was always more as a cheap way to have UNIX, my favourite one was Solaris, followed by UNIXes with a soul, like Irix, NeXTSTEP, ...
Oh I am so unhappy because I can't have everything on my Mac. Get a general purpose computer, general brand like Lenovo or Dell, with an Intel or AMD chip. Boom done.
(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…
Windows machines infected by corporate also have crippling I/O speeds. I have a fun example at a customer where even running a Linux VM on the same machine will give 10x compile speed, and something like 100x git operation speeds than the same operations on the host...
If you need it in a corporate setting, Lenovo ships both Fedora and Ubuntu on their thinkpads, with certified hardware support. Someone running Gentoo or Arch Linux are sure to burn many hours on the machine itself which they may or may not enjoy, but you don't have to go that route.
It's not too hard to be on well-supported hardware either - people pick from a handful of laptops to run macOS, so it doesn't seem to unreasonable to also pick the machine for Linux. Think of it as being somewhere in between macOS "runs here only" and Windows "well it came with it" when it comes to having to select your machine.
(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…
My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal laptop running Linux:
- various USB and Thunderbolt hubs not working correctly
- multiple monitors, and macOS forgetting which screen is which
- screen flicker of a older LCD (it’s the screen that’s shit, but still, it doesn’t flicker in Linux)
- literal kernel panics coming out of sleep. Turns out it didn’t like a USB DAC
I don’t think I’ve had a missing driver problem with Linux in something like 20 years.
Your mileage might vary but this old meme that “Linux is buggy and has missing drivers” hasn’t been true in two decades.
So why do people seem to spend more time hacking at Linux?
The answer is probably just selection bias: those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker. But that doesn’t mean that you need to be a tinkerer to use Linux.
(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…
Take this Fujitsu laptop, provided by my employer.. it's just Intel inside for everything, and a Linux distro was installed without a hitch and has been working problem-free for years. And it's always like that unless the hw is unusual. After all I've been trying this since 1992, back then there was a bit of manual tinkering involved.
Or this NEC-branded super-light laptop I bought in Japan.. same story. Install and forget. Zero issues. Heck, every developer at work doing their job stuff and development on various Linux computers, except for a couple of guys using Linux under Windows.