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From macOS to Arch Linux

juxt.pro

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Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#171

Post by jjoonathan »

_6zew wrote: post #108
popey wrote: post #49

"There are still many things I need to set up on the new laptop, for example: suspension/hibernation on closing the lid doesn’t always work" For me, this is one of those things that should work out of the box. I appreciate Arch is one of those distros you configure manually, and can thus choose whether to implement this or not. But I'd rather not have my laptop burn out in my bag because the system didn't suspend pro…

I learned this the hard way. When i was around 16, i was gifted a laptop. Mind you, this was my first pc ever. Before that i was going to internet cafes. So being the good "hacker" i was at the time, i installed Ubuntu to be like the cool kids. Few days later the motherboard got fried in my backpack. Apparently, the laptop didn't go to sleep when i closed the lid and overheated. Still hurts.

My Windows work laptop has done this a couple times. Hasn't managed to actually kill itself yet, though. A pity.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#173

Post by JeremyNT »

eitland wrote: post #167
orangepurple wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because of the garbage S0 sleep state enforced by the UEFI/BIOS of the laptop tl;dr: There's a way to disable Windows 10's "Cook your Laptop" facility, Microsoft calls it "Modern Sleep" for some reason I can't understand, via a simple BIOS change which disables S0 and re-enables S3. No more coming back to a laptop that's so hot you can burn your hands on it. To do this, go into the BIOS config and change the s…

Thanks! I'll try this! I'm trying to get #boilinbaglaptop trending but will happily also use the term "Cook your Laptop" :-) Edit: I've been looking through the BIOS three times now and still can't find it :-/

S3 is actually totally gone on Tiger Lake and newer, so with a new laptop you are hosed. This is a really gross move by MS and Intel.

If you want to make s0ix (which is what you'll need to now research if you're in this boat) suck somewhat less, start here [0] then follow the troubleshooting steps [1] (since it surely won't work the first time).

It used to be I'd roll my eyes at the people on HN complaining about Linux suspend, assuming they just had outdated information (from personal experience I'd not had any issues with S3 for many years), but now with the removal of S3 I have to start agreeing with the neighsayers.

[0] https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li...

[1] https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2020/linux-s0ix-troubleshooting

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#174

Post by zibzab »

Comevius wrote: post #89
vurudlxtyt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to parrot this but I've literally never had a breaking change from an upgrade in ~5-6 years of Arch usage. At least, if I did, it didn't take more than a couple minutes to fix, because I honestly don't remember having issues. On the other hand doing a dist-upgrade on Ubuntu has burned me more than once. I fear having to do it on one of my home servers, and should really get off of it. I'd argue that updat…

Same experience here with 15 years of Arch usage, a few major issues before systemd, none since, except having to migrate the boot loader, network manager and so on to systemd and from time to time having to use a workaround from the latest news at archlinux.org. I have also migrated to pipewire a month ago with a single command and no issues. It's quite stress free, because the whole operating system is basically th…

Actually, I tried arch again last month after unfa's video on pipewire support.

Couldn't even revert back to PA when PW failed, the entire system had to be reinstalled.

Can you make it work? Absolutely. Can it fail catastrophically if you make one little mistake? Absolutely.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#175

Post by stnikolauswagne »

pkulak wrote: post #143
stnikolauswagne wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having my phonecalls automatically forwarded to my laptop is a huge benefit. Being able to use my iPad pro as a secondary monitor for when I have to go into the office is very useful as well. Painless copy-paste between devices is also a huge bonus. I‘m sure there are ways to get all of that running on linux but I‘d rather spend the time that it would take setting all that up working and let my company pay a bit more…

Is all that really a "huge" benefit? I never get phone calls that aren't spam, or have the need to copy paste from a phone. And an 11-inch second monitor doesn't sound like a huge benefit. Especially when I could just have my company "pay a bit more" on a real second monitor. But, not gonna discount your perspective. Everyone has different priorities, and it's why different products exist for different folks.

I guess it always depends on the person. I get probably on average 8-10 work related phone calls a day and spend 2-3 hours a day on the phone, and have been on call 24/7 for the last 6 months, any little convenience that I can get I will take. I imagine with better work/life balance these things become much less of a big deal but for now I am really glad to have an environment that causes me relatively little hassle.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#176

Post by simion314 »

jorgemf wrote: post #72
simion314 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's very much a "cover-your-ass" type disclaimer, This is not true for all hardware configurations or true for all packages combination(including weird AUR ones) in the world. For sure if we Google if this really happens in the real world you will see that indeed update break things. Also keeping up with upstream does not mean you only get the new features but also the new bugs, especially if you were using GNOME…

Usually when gnome doesn't start up in arch it is due extensions which are not supported either gnome or arch. But you usually find them in AUR, which fix your issues quite quickly. I haven't had any issues with gnome 3 in arch since they move to it, apart from extensions and a couple of things not well integrated in Wayland+gnome. Said that, it has been much more a nightmare for me to install packages in docker imag…

My point is that in Arch you can't start your work day by updating your system, you might have to fix shit instead of working.

With an LTS distro I know when teh notification for updates appears that is a security thing and it is safe to update.

>Said that, it has been much more a nightmare for me to install packages in docker images of Ubuntu.

I am assuming you are trying to install something outside the official repos, like you want to get the latest node/python or some other latest stuff using a PPA. Those PPA might not be that good quality so you could get issues like conflicts. I am not a sysadmin or dev-ops guy to tell you what is the correct way to install newer version of stuff.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#177

Post by JeremyNT »

gbrown wrote: post #152
apetresc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confusing Arch with Gentoo or something - the Arch package manager is not from-source, it ships binaries just like apt. Perhaps you're thinking of the AUR, which does usually just host the PKGBUILD which you run makepkg on directly to compile, but that's analogous to something like an Ubuntu PPA, not the core package manager. The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new pa…

> I think you're confusing Arch with Gentoo or something - the Arch package manager is not from-source, it ships binaries just like apt. Perhaps you're thinking of the AUR Sorry, what I meant was: when I need to manage the version of something carefully, I just compile it from source and that's OK with me. My understanding is that people use the AUR for this on Arch, and the pains don't seem worth it. > The main thin…

> Sorry, what I meant was: when I need to manage the version of something carefully, I just compile it from source and that's OK with me. My understanding is that people use the AUR for this on Arch, and the pains don't seem worth it.

Nobody's making you use the AUR! If you want to 'make && sudo make install' you can do that all day long.

The AUR value add is that other people have already figured out recipes for how to take the equivalent of 'make && sudo make install' and generate a package you can mange with the package manager.

There exist plenty of tools to automate all AUR interactions, but none of these will ever be included in Arch's main repos, since they are not a core part of Arch itself. This is to maintain a sharp delineation between properly supported Arch packages and the more wild west AUR recipes. That said, once you download a PKGBUILD from the AUR, you can use the same official tools to build and install the package that are used for the distro proper.

When I want to build from source, and something isn't in the AUR, I just spend the 5 minutes to make a proper PKGBUILD for myself. It is very easy and it simplifies management of things.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#178

Post by bengalister »

After almost 2 years running Arch I switched back to Windows last summer on my home laptop (Dell XPS 13 9380).

The pipewire update needed by pulseaudio effects broke the sound output to my bluetooth headset. Also at the same time a Gnome update made my desktop environment unstable. I did not want to spend time on freezing dependencies, reverting some of them etc. Got tired at the time of these occasional maintenance operations, and not optimal hardware support. To be honest most of the update issues were related to Gnome major updates. I think an update only broke once my system, I could not login (pam configuration upgrade issue). I was running the LTS kernel.

I think I had better battery life on Linux thought. It must have improved with Firefox/Chromium hardware acceleration.

Arch is still my preferred distro for a dev machine thought.

Back to Windows, I just updated to W11 today, I very much like the changes in the UI. Also the ability to run some Linux GUI apps without starting a X server, exporting the DISPLAY, etc directly from the a WLS2 vm is nice.

Even thought I think I'll keep my development environment in a VM (arch) mainly because of docker. I found docker for desktop on Windows really too slow. Security wise I also prefer that, I install too many tools that I don't trust. The drawback of using a VM is of course performance but that is not that an issue for the kind of dev/work I do (NodeJs/Typescript/Vue/Python/Cloudformation/Terraform). Also sometimes I have an idea or something I'd like to test quickly and I don't want to start the VM and I just give up.

I'll probably stick to that 1 or 2 years, when I'll think about replacing my laptop. If I had to today, I'll probably go for a Macbook air m1.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#179

Post by vereis »

bengalister wrote: post #178

After almost 2 years running Arch I switched back to Windows last summer on my home laptop (Dell XPS 13 9380). The pipewire update needed by pulseaudio effects broke the sound output to my bluetooth headset. Also at the same time a Gnome update made my desktop environment unstable. I did not want to spend time on freezing dependencies, reverting some of them etc. Got tired at the time of these occasional maintenance…

I just forego docker desktop and run docker on the command line in wsl2 instead.

Have you considered trying that?

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#180

Post by orangepurple »

JeremyNT wrote: post #173
eitland wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I'll try this! I'm trying to get #boilinbaglaptop trending but will happily also use the term "Cook your Laptop" :-) Edit: I've been looking through the BIOS three times now and still can't find it :-/

S3 is actually totally gone on Tiger Lake and newer, so with a new laptop you are hosed. This is a really gross move by MS and Intel. If you want to make s0ix (which is what you'll need to now research if you're in this boat) suck somewhat less, start here [0] then follow the troubleshooting steps [1] (since it surely won't work the first time). It used to be I'd roll my eyes at the people on HN complaining about Lin…

I've also seen a thread claiming that CPU C-states are screwed up after wake from S3. So it seems CPU sleep is buggy all around.
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