Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using Linux for many years, and it's definitely better, but definitely not what I'd want to use seriously. My gaming desktop has a 20.04 drive which I occasionally use, and yet I still find myself dropping to a TTY occasionally to reboot the machine or restart gdm because it waking from sleep, or just plain crashes. Also, I have 4k, 28" monitors which is just the size where 1x is comically small, and 2x is…
Part of the beauty of Linux is that if you're having issues with gdm's stability, you can replace it with another DM. This isn't possible with Windows or Linux. As for your DPI issues, I've heard many have had better luck with Wayland than Xorg.
Moving from Macbook to Linux
161–170 of 518 posts
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#162This stuff is always a joke. Who knows what his actual job is but any time you see these articles they immediately start with long sections of all the hacks & work needed to make the basics work. Battery Life Issues Getting a mouse to work Getting displays to work Wifi Issues Fixing keyboard mapping issues You're not supposed to have to waste your time on this stuff. It's been about 3 years since I tried to make a la…
If Ubuntu doesn't feel like working out of the box on your laptop your in for a world of pain. Now I need a Mac to compile for IOS devices anyway so I ordered an M1 Pro.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux on a desktop is okay, linux on a laptop is bad. I think Linux is cool and grew up playing with different distributions (starting around Fedora Core 4). I spent most of my time on Ubuntu because it worked the best, but also used Yellow Dog Linux (my first laptop was a 12in Apple power pc powerbook g4), Arch, and some others. Things that often gave me issues: - Suspend rarely worked without hacks, even with hacks…
I bought a lenovo to have a linux laptop earlier this year, and I must say I think it is the best laptop experience I've had. It has fantastic battery life, everything works with very minimal configuration, and with my i3 desktop setup exactly how I like it I'm more productive than I was on my macbook.
Not a "gotcha" question, I am seriously asking. Considering a Thinkpad for my next laptop, but memories of Superfish give me pause.
https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#164This stuff is always a joke. Who knows what his actual job is but any time you see these articles they immediately start with long sections of all the hacks & work needed to make the basics work. Battery Life Issues Getting a mouse to work Getting displays to work Wifi Issues Fixing keyboard mapping issues You're not supposed to have to waste your time on this stuff. It's been about 3 years since I tried to make a la…
- Just use it.
How to use Linux on my laptop:
- Spend several weeks debugging everything you could imagine. Find a file posted by one of the laptop engineers to a random forum, which you need for internet to work on the laptop at all. Give up on things like getting the touch screen working properly. Give up on using the laptop and spend most of your time on your desktop.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#165This is going to sound dumb or elitist but I am so much happier working since I ditched portable computing. I have a desk at home in an office. I have the same setup at work. I don’t carry my dev environment with me. When I need to work I go to the ’do work stuff’ place. Nice keyboard. Nice mouse. And a nice OS that, yes, took a whole day to configure but over which I have total control. (Full-screen focus-mode no-or…
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using Linux for many years, and it's definitely better, but definitely not what I'd want to use seriously. My gaming desktop has a 20.04 drive which I occasionally use, and yet I still find myself dropping to a TTY occasionally to reboot the machine or restart gdm because it waking from sleep, or just plain crashes. Also, I have 4k, 28" monitors which is just the size where 1x is comically small, and 2x is…
Doesn't Ubuntu support fractional scaling? That doesn't work for you?
Really interestingly I've been using a Windows, a Linux and a MacOS machine for many months, swapping them often. Well, Windows/Linux are on the same Ryzen 2700X with a Geforce 1080Ti, the Mac is a 2018 Mini with 32G RAM and 6 core i5. 4k 32" display in each case.
What surprised me: - Windows UI is WAY the fastest. Linux is the slowest, and with fractional scaling turned off its hardly tolerable
- the font rendering on Windows is perfect, while MacOS is a bit blurry. This is very surprising to me since all the hype around the good scaling of MacOS. Windows hidpi fonts are just perfectly sharp.
- MacOS is absolutely consistent when it comes to rendering and scaling, the others aren't
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux on a desktop is okay, linux on a laptop is bad. I think Linux is cool and grew up playing with different distributions (starting around Fedora Core 4). I spent most of my time on Ubuntu because it worked the best, but also used Yellow Dog Linux (my first laptop was a 12in Apple power pc powerbook g4), Arch, and some others. Things that often gave me issues: - Suspend rarely worked without hacks, even with hacks…
Parent here - I used to say this too, but I am running Arch Linux on a laptop (ThinkPad T470p), and it's actually working great for me. I agree this used to be the case. - Suspend works perfectly fine for me, including hibernating (incl. disk encryption) after a predetermined amount of time, and invoking a screenlock on wait. - Spotify and 1Password X work perfectly fine for me. I have not tried Netflix any time rece…
Obviously you're saying "for me", which I recognise, but from my experience playing around with Linux Mint, Kubuntu and Fedora on a Thinkpad T480S over the past year, while things work technically, getting them perfect (in my opinion) takes a lot longer, and might not even be possible in some cases.
Take for example suspend/resume: yes, this works in terms of the machine waking up again, but things like the keyboard and screen brightness get reset (or are at least inconsistent) each time. Googling the problem, there are a lot of suggestions for hooking up scripts to run xbacklight to store / reset it each time, and I did manage to get it almost working "perfectly", but I'm not really sure why I should have to do this from a user's perspective. It's even more annoying in that at least in Linux Mint and Kubuntu's case, controlling the screen brightness isn't possible until you've logged in, so if you resume the laptop and the screen is dark, it's actually sometimes difficult to verify what's going on at the login screen.
Same goes for things like Dropbox - it doesn't know it's been woken up (maybe it's a Dropbox issue not listening for events), so doesn't resync - there are hacks to make a script to touch a file to trigger the refresh, and basically get it working, but again, why do I need to have to do this?
Even getting decent battery life involves (in my experience) tweaking things and running things like powertop to work out what system services are doing what, etc, etc.
Whilst I do agree it's technically possible to get something I'd term "good" with Linux + Laptop, I'm not convinced the average consumer would be that happy with it compared to a Mac or a PC laptop.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#168This stuff is always a joke. Who knows what his actual job is but any time you see these articles they immediately start with long sections of all the hacks & work needed to make the basics work. Battery Life Issues Getting a mouse to work Getting displays to work Wifi Issues Fixing keyboard mapping issues You're not supposed to have to waste your time on this stuff. It's been about 3 years since I tried to make a la…
There are definitely use cases that Linux hasn't kept up on, but the mature distros cover a lot of use cases now without even needing to touch the command line.
IMO, if you can't work with a mature Linux distro (not Gentoo or some other Flavor-of-the-day) then you're not very good with computers.
I've noticed a lot of people who make the transition to Linux often try to make it a learning experience, which is the wrong approach. If you're willing to go the vanilla route (Fedora or Ubuntu) and do some mild research on recommended laptops for those distros you'll be fine.
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That future looks extremely scary. What can we do, now, as developers ? Stop buying, using, and supporting the Apple ecosystem. Vote with your money. The new chips are faster. So what? The laptop you have today works fine, you don't need the latest and greatest hardware.
i code iOS (native) app for a living. I'm already stuck developing for the app store, using xcode to sign and deploy, using a programming language (that i love) swift that only really works on mac OS. My personal situation isn't going to change anytime soon unfortunately. I was about to dump my iphone next time i had to pick one (and keep my current one for testing), however my laptop is my work computer. I think "st…
How about find another way to make a living which lines up with your ethics?
(P.S. this comment does not compare Apple to nazis)
Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't Ubuntu support fractional scaling? That doesn't work for you?
Yeah, but only since recently (version 20.04), and it's still considered to be experimental as far as I know.