Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moving from Macbook to Linux

monadical.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 518 posts

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#171

Post by brundolf »

ben7799 wrote: post #143

This 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…

One thing I've found is that it helps a lot if your company has an IT department. You outsource the headaches to someone whose job it is to deal with them instead of pulling yourself away from your work, they can maintain a standard image that works on the company's standard workstation machines, etc.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#172

Post by okl »

ben7799 wrote: post #143

This 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…

Let's be honest: most of the tweaks in this blog are personal preference. It also says nothing about Wifi.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#173

Post by hansvm »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #134
fsflover wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your problems seem to come from the unsupported hardware. Consider a laptop with preinstalled Linux.

Or a ThinkPad.

I had to swap out my network adapter to get wifi working on linux on my thinkpad, and libinput still occasionally locks up...everything... processing phantom drift from the mouse nipple (which would be less annoying if the touchpad mouse buttons weren't part of the same device as the mouse nipple).

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#174

Post by nix23 »

thotsBgone wrote: post #164
ben7799 wrote: post #143

This 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…

How to use Windows on my laptop: - 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.

Man you really should buy better laptops, i had at least 6 laptops with linux and never had a problem with "internet" and "debugging" and "touchscreen". Maybe Linux just hates you ;)

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#175

Post by nickbauman »

I have only two reasons to keep using a mac: Devonthink (for my paperless office workflow and it's awesome document classifier and NLS search) and XCode to write iOS apps. Otherwise, I'd dump it in heartbeat. Anyone have anything on the Linux side that compares to Devonthink?

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#176

Post by tempest_ »

_iyig wrote: post #163
billylindeman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does Lenovo still sell laptops with malware in the firmware? 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...

These issues were only ever with the consumer lenovo laptops. Thinkpads never had an issue and generally work with Linux without issues (I heard this was because Redhat used Thinkpads and so there were lots of contributions to make things work but that could just be scuttlebutt)

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#177

Post by gonehome »

radlad wrote: post #128
gonehome wrote: post #102

Earlier 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…

These are good points (thanks) - and it's always good to hear that things are better than I thought.

Consistent UI is nice and recent M1 chip + good battery life I think is also a bonus of vertical integration. It sounds like linux is becoming more of an option though for people that don't care about those things.

From your description it sounds like baseline functionality mostly works (particularly on a desktop).

The other Apple hardware advantage is the trackpad which even windows machines can't compete with. I suspect this is because Apple factored a lot of their iOS multitouch research into their trackpad support. It'd be hard for me to use a non-apple laptop, but linux on a desktop would probably be fine.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#179

Post by fakedang »

sz4kerto wrote: post #166
vlod wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Ubuntu support fractional scaling? That doesn't work for you?

It's really slow. 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 - t…

Interesting.... I felt that the MacOS was a bit blurry for my liking too. I thought it was my eyes or something, but looks like I'm not alone.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#180

Post by glogla »

gorgoiler wrote: post #99

This 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…

The benefit of laptop is that it's ... everything. It's a replacement for desktop, for TV in living room, for TV in bedroom, for something to look up stuff in kitchen or workshop, and you can take it when you travel, use it in a hotel room or in a train or plane ...

It's not perfect and perhaps not good replacement for many of those things, but it is so practical. Especially if you live in a small apartment where desktop and TVs would take a lot of space.

Post reply on HN