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ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

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Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#201

Post by erikbye »

School-Cotton wrote: post #151
revicon wrote: post #7

I also have a t480, mines running Ubuntu but unfortunately I’m giving it up for a new MacBook Air. The touchpads on the thinkpads are beyond horrible after using macs for many years, it’s finally too annoying for me to keep going :(

If we don't count the keyboard issues, no laptop on the market is as nice to use as an MBP. If I had one with a physical escape key, I could probably make the statement without even that reservation. But if you prefer Ubuntu to macOS for whatever reason, I've found the Dell XPS line to be good enough to be tolerable.

I vastly prefer my SB2 to every MBP I have used. Great typing experience, less problems with throttling, more versatile.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#202

Post by zhte415 »

ajford wrote: post #95
agentultra wrote: post #31

I use one of those too and made the switch rather recently from a MBPr. I used Linux Mint on it. It's speedy, video calling works fine, can compile lots of code quickly, and it's refurbished and saved from the dumpster. I hope to never buy a new computer again instead relying on refurbishing old ones as we go along. I keep all of my configurations and projects synced up so that booting up a new computer into my dev e…

This is exactly what I've done for the last 5 years or so. I'm currently running a T460 I picked up almost two years ago for under $500 and is now running Xubuntu 18.04. My wife's running an X1 Yoga gen 2 that I picked up for around $400. I've come to the same conclusion that it's generally not worth the premium cost to buy a new laptop when good hardware is so readily available in my neck of the woods.

ThinkPads last forever. I'm still on a T420 and X220 (travel), upgraded SSD and new batteries, and have no desire to change.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#203

Post by seventh-chord »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #186
sien wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be really interesting to know the proportion of Linux users who are now running under a VM for their desktop Linux use. I have Linux on the three machines I use. But on each it's via a VM. I run Windows and MacOS on the machines. Where I work this is common as well. It's surely pretty prevalent. The other way a lot of people work on Linux where I work is on a VM on AWS.

I keep hearing this, and I don't understand it. Windows is just so... messy . At my last job I kept a Windows VM for Skype (S4B) and the odd non-portable app, but I wouldn't want that on bare metal. I don't have experience with Darwin; maybe the experience is better there.

Whenever I try to use linux on hardware, either audio doesn't work without stuttering, video doesn't work without tearing or some package manager dependency issue rears its ugly head. From my perspective, it seems inconceivable to run linux on (personal) hardware.

That being said, I am very unhappy with windows 10 at work, and would much rather have some older windows version. At some point windows probably will become shitty enough that linux might seem like a viable alternative.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#204

Post by jotm »

jotm wrote: post #30

Replacing the main desktop, huh? That processor sure has the potential. A few modifications to the cooling system and some undervolting can get it running at 30+ Watt TDP indefinitely.

As always I wonder what sad fucks downvoted this. Just ban this account and put me out of my misery.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#205

Post by oarsinsync »

bjornjajajaja wrote: post #117
loeg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time, resources, interest; lack of open datasheets and corporate sponsorship from the hardware vendors making the parts. These things don't just happen magically; people make them happen. Linux finally has enough market power that vendors willingly write drivers for it, but I remember a very similar situation with Linux in the 2000s when Microsoft was the only player around with that kind of market clout.

Also, who really NEEDS 802.11 ac?? If you’re that picky wtf not plug into Ethernet??

My internet point comes into my apartment at one end. I'd like to have decent speeds on my laptop that's at the other end. I rent the apartment, so any cabling I do needs to either be loose cabling across the floor (dangerous), or neatly done but also capable of being totally removed without doing any damage (expensive in time, if not money).

Comparatively, buying a 802.1AC capable router is cheap (in time, if not money) and portable when I invariably end up moving again.

I mean, I could also get Ethernet over Powerline, but that subject to even more jitter and variable throughput, costs a comparable amount, and then means my laptop loses it's mobility.

And then there's my wireless-only-by-default devices like my phone and tablet and other laptop...

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#206

Post by bayindirh »

loeg wrote: post #192
azinman2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s it missing?

Updates since 2004? It's like they took an old snapshot of BSD userspace and some of the syscall interface, except somewhat broken (see the long saga of broken select/kqueue in OSX). Fundamentally Darwin is a completely different beast based on Mach. It's radically different from the core BSD kernel. Most of their userspace is built on Objective-C, which has 0 overlap with BSDs. It's cool that the Mac community used…

> ...but they've forked whatever they took; they never work to integrate their changes back upstream.

This is why I personally force GPLv3 licenses in my own projects, even if it's fairly small.

MIT is a beautiful license but, unfortunately this happens when idealism collides head-on with private corporations.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#207

Post by pjmlp »

GordonS wrote: post #141
pjmlp wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. docker/containerisation. Sure, Windows containers exist, but have you ever seen one in the wild? I have. What is done on .NET stays on Windows, for UNIX like OSes we get to use Java. Yes there is .NET Core, it is the future, not all MS shops are buying into it due to the current limitations, waiting to see how .NET 5 will actually look like.

I'm truly surprised you've seen Windows containers in the wild - across dozens of engagements with very firm Microsoft shops, I've never seen them, nor seen the need. Gods, even MSSQL runs on Linux these days! I'm also very surprised you'd claim that not all Microsoft shops are buying into dotnet core - I've seen the very opposite; every client I've worked with has known dotnet framework has been superceded by core,…

Plenty of Microsoft shops are deeply invested in technologies like WCF, EF6, ODP.NET, WPF/Forms component libraries, commercial CMS stacks (e.g. Sitecore), and aren't willing to allocate budgets to rewrite what is working perfectly fine.

The kind of enterprises where deployments on IIS, with AD infrastructure on premises, Windows on all company layers are still the name of the game, with some Linux servers for running SAP and a couple of other Java based services.

What is missing from .NET Core 3.1?

Besides what I have listed above, EF 6 on Core doesn't support the Visual Studio graphical tooling nor the EF 6 .NET Framework EF providers, WPF/Forms designers are still WIP and have issues with commercial component libraries, WCF well, no one is looking forward to rewrite their working code with gRPC.

And many are still a little burned with Silverlight and how the whole WinRT, UAP, UWP story went.

Back in the .NET Code 2.0 days, I had a project to rewrite a .NET Application into Java, because the customer in question saw a better business value in doing so than investing in .NET Core. Mainly because .NET Core didn't had support for some critical libraries being used in the .NET Application, while the libraries vendor did support a Java counterpart for them.

Yes, they will eventually move to .NET Core, when it makes business sense to allocate budget to do so.

That is just my experience, others will vary.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#208

Post by Fnoord »

loeg wrote: post #140
travbrack wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because running freebsd on a laptop is an edge case. Most people run it on servers. It’s not trying to be everything to everyone like Linux is.

FreeBSD dev here — I don't like this line of argument. It is always used to rationalize any defect in FreeBSD. Sometimes we just have defects! That's just the truth of things; we don't need to pretend we're defective on purpose . Many developers run FreeBSD on their daily driver laptops or workstations because it is (perhaps tautologically) one of the best platforms to develop FreeBSD on. Our wifi support isn't 100%…

Being honest about a defect/weakness like this while being a FreeBSD developer gives me (as non-FreeBSD user) faith in your platform.

I've recently tried NixOS and I'm impressed. Have you considered adopting Nix into FreeBSD?

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#209

Post by Fnoord »

bayindirh wrote: post #128
FillardMillmore wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Color me ignorant, but which distribution is that?

cough ubuntu cough IIRC, they recently discontinued the link and related data sharing though.

It was always possible to uninstall it. Just a nuisance that you have to, while clearly no users ever desired it. It was also terrible that all search requests went plaintext to Amazon.

Re: ThinkPad T480 is my new main laptop which runs FreeBSD

#210

Post by Fnoord »

loeg wrote: post #195
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses a (slightly modified) Linux kernel, yes, although its user land is decidedly not GNU or particularly Unix-like.

Doesn't each phone basically ship its own modified Android-Linux with hacked up drivers specific to the model?

Ever since Project Treble it got standardized.
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