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I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…
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> I intend to make it quieter by repasting and undervolting >Also, if it breaks down during the first 3 years, I get on-site support, Aren't these two statements mutually exclusive?
Good question. They don't have to be, but I suppose it's worth checking. I found a forum post where someone asked Lenovo support[0] which apparently said: "When it comes to changing the thermal paste - if you know what you're doing, you're totally fine, but if you break something during the procedure, the repair will not be covered by warranty." That sounds entirely reasonable. But I guess it's worth checking how wel…
Both can be correct.
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The problem with Surface devices is that they're irrepairable once something goes wrong. I had issues with my Surface Pro and Microsoft support basically said "too bad, buy a new one". That's why I went for a T-series Thinkpad and am still using it. It's not as lightweight or slim but in exchange more powerful than equally priced ultrabooks/convertibles and easy to repair and upgrade. That's a trade-off I'm happy to…
Counterpoint: my two year old Surface Pro 4 developed a battery-swelling issue, and Microsoft replaced the whole laptop right away (well, as soon as I worked out how to contact the right level of tech-support).
I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…
> the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils. The camera is no longer placed at the bottom of the screen in the newest model (9380), they moved it up top
Related to this, any thoughts on the surface laptop as an alternative to MBP? Are the trackpad and keyboard good?
I switched from a 2012 MBP to Thinkpad P52S with Pop_OS! I had a year with Ubuntu and Lubuntu in the middle. Pop_OS! however is so similar in usability to macOS, that I can't imagine going back to macOS even if the hardware got better. The P52S has two batteries, all major hardware ports (including ethernet) and a SIM card slot. It had a (lower end) Nvidia card. Conveniently Pop_OS! comes bundled with Nvidia drivers.…
I would recommend Thinkpad T-series even for the keyboard and touchpad only. It's much heavier though, but at that much more repairable and sturdier.
Unfortunately even the T-series has gone 100% on the integrated battery now, which IME is the thing most likely to need to be fixed. Aside from that, agreed.
The hardware is fantastic. Build quality is great, the keyboard is great, the screen is great, the selection of ports is great. It's not cheap though, price is very close to an MBP.
The software part is not so great. I tried Windows for a short while, but it's just a disaster. It's slow and inconsistent. I tried WSL, but it feels so alpha for now.
So quickly I decided to move Ubuntu. Overall Ubuntu feels so much better than Windows, but the caveat is hardware support. Thinkpads supposedly have very good Linux support, however, the microphone and the fingerprint reader didn't work. After googling a lot I found a way of making the mic work by manually compiling a kernel. No solution for the fingerprint reader yet. And the volume controls don't work properly, there are a few workarounds, but none fixes the issue 100%.
Another issue on Linux is that none of the stable web browsers (Firefox, Chrome) have hardware video decoding enabled, so watching YouTube drains your battery. I'm now using a Chromium Beta build which seems to be the only alternative for now.
Using Linux requires you to google and apply a ton of small fixes to make some things better. Things like installing TLP to have decent battery life, hacking grub fonts so that they don't appear tiny on the 4k screen and stuff like that.
The hardware issues are quite frustrating, but I know those will be resolved at some point. My Thinkpad model is fairly new. The lesson here is: if you want Linux to work out of the box on your hardware, don't get the latest model.
On the positive side, I'm really loving Ubuntu and Gnome. I don't have plans to move back to Mac, even if they fix their crappy new keyboards. The fact that you can make Linux work the way you want is very rewarding even if it takes some time to google and hack around. But I understand that not everyone likes to do that.