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

A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

binwang.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 229 posts

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#201

Post by jclardy »

ffsm8 wrote: post #40
makeitdouble wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your reference point, but IMHO there's no device right now that hits all the right point, so yes, Surface Pro is one of these flawwd machines. On the other side you'll have devices that feel really well built and graceful, but can actually do very little, or other ones fitting a very average vision of what a computer needs to do, and you'll be paying for additional devices to deal with the edge cases.

Imagine an iPad that automatically switches to MacOSX if plugged into an external monitor, keyboard/mouse. It'd be glorious, not that I'd ever happen - for multiple reasons. One of which being that ipadOS is essentially iOS, so no overlap with MacOS

This is my ideal setup. And I'd have it switch to macOS mode just with keyboard/mouse, so inside the magic keyboard it is just the most slick 11" macbook air ever built. Pop it out and you are dropped back into iOS.

I'd easily pay $3k for a top end version of such a device. I think this is Apple's main holdup - if the iPad can run macOS in this dual mode setup, the MacBook Air becomes pretty boring and a pretty bad deal. And they can no longer sell people two devices that accomplish the same task, only differentiated by one having a touchscreen.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#202

Post by dublin »

I'm very seriously thinking about one of these (or really, its successor) when I need to replace my computer again in the next year or two - it's already optimized for several Linux distros: https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite#

All I need now is a good replacement for OneNote that stores notes in an open format and supports pen input for sketching and handwritten note-taking...

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#203

Post by gosub100 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #173
gosub100 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope this doesn't become a contributing factor in a future plane crash from an onboard fire in the baggage compartment. I could see someone throwing their laptop in a suitcase with a bunch of clothes and having that heat building up into a thermal runaway. It's asinine to me that there isn't a hardware thermal sensor that just shuts off power if the heat is too high. In addition to the tragedy of an accident…

>I could see someone throwing their laptop in a suitcase with a bunch of clothes and having that heat building up into a thermal runaway. There's this thing called Shut Down. Use it sometimes.

Why just sometimes?

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#204

Post by ahartmetz »

nucleardog wrote: post #155
utf_8x wrote: post #24

Disables Swap and Zram, gets OOM killed, surprised pikachu face Joking aside, is there an actual legitimate reason to do this on a workstation? I understand why you would want to disable swap on something like a kubernetes cluster node but in my head, heaving at-least zram enabled is a good thing on a workstation so you *don't* get OOM killed... I call on thee, Linux wizards of HN, to help me understand the reasoning…

Don't know if it's "legitimate", but I've got 64GB of RAM. Allocating 16/32/64/128GB of NVME storage to swap is mostly just a waste of disk space for me. When I had swap enabled, it was constantly showing 0 used. (Not "pretty much none", literally "0.0".) Further, if I'm trying to use more than 64GB of RAM... I'm fine with things getting OOM killed. I don't know that I've ever had anything OOM-killed when something w…

Actually, zram is great! When an "excessive swap event" happens with zram, the system stays somewhat responsive, enough to let you kill the offender even from a graphical session. Without zram, I hope you were going for lunch break anyway...

zram does basically nothing while your working set fits into memory, no performance penalty.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#205

Post by edude03 »

weberer wrote: post #74
jbstack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the advantage of the Surface is that it's one of the only tablets out there which is (a) reasonably priced for what you get, (b) has a x64 processor, and (c) can have Linux installed on it without too much difficulty. So if you want a Linux tablet, the Surface may end up being one of your only viable options.

The Steam Deck is also a great option nowadays. Its a lot bulkier than a tablet, but I personally prefer it having a controller attached. Its biggest advantage is that it comes with Linux out of the box, so you don't have to go through the headache of installing an OS yourself and messing around with drivers.

Not trying to be snarky, but I'd like to understand who you think the steam deck would appeal to? The original article, and the comment you're replying to seem to want pen input to do work/draw art, and like the tablet form factor (presumably for the large display), neither of which the steam deck provides.

With "only" 16gb of ram, a relatively meagre 8 core 6800 series APU, and small screen it wouldn't make sense for most software developer workloads, and because of the attached controller(s) it's not super portable so not great for content consumption.

Other than gamers, who likely don't even care that the steam deck runs linux (and in fact are hindered by it in some ways) is there a group you can imagine that would appreciate preinstalled linux so much that the steam deck makes sense over the surface pro or even a framework?

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#206

Post by Dalewyn »

gosub100 wrote: post #203
Dalewyn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I could see someone throwing their laptop in a suitcase with a bunch of clothes and having that heat building up into a thermal runaway. There's this thing called Shut Down. Use it sometimes.

Why just sometimes?

Gotta learn to crawl before you can walk.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#207

Post by 39896880 »

BanazirGalbasi wrote: post #184
KennyBlanken wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't waste your time. 1920x1080p @60hz in 2024...

This is such an elitist attitude, and I'd like to see less of it. The vast majority of users aren't going to be bothered by those screen specs. For many coming from low-end hardware, it's actually an upgrade. Most work won't be significantly impacted by increasing the refresh rate, and while better resolution can be helpful if you keep multiple windows on the screen, most programs still feel tailored to 1920x1080 scr…

This is all I ever hear from the linux crowd. “Demand less.” Gets really old.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#208

Post by denysvitali »

maxboone wrote: post #141
denysvitali wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Surface Pro X (with Linux) runs pretty well. When I was running Windows on that, it worked nicely too

How's the peripherals support on Surface Linux? I've been wanting to switch to Linux on my Pro X SQ2 for a while due to the WSL2 support on it being terrible (might be fixed now [1]) but always thought that most stuff such as LTE, webcam and surface connector wouldn't work [2]. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/11274#issuecomment-2... [2] https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x/issues/1#issu...

The peripheral support is slowing getting there. The major issues are the ones you've mentioned (including the inability to use external displays), but I'm seeing more and more upstream commits for the sc8180x by Maximilian - so I'm confident that these issues will be solved relatively soon.

Wi-Fi and BT works btw, which IMHO makes it already usable as a daily driver. Audio works via BT

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#209

Post by philistine »

chrsw wrote: post #80

I run Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 without any issues as far as I can tell. I've done almost no tweaking. I just do periodic software and firmware updates. I close the lid, throw it my bag, open it hours later, or the next day and I'm right back to where I was. The experience as close to Mac-like as I've ever experienced outside of Apple. But I still do wish someone would make a Linux laptop that's as tightly integrated w…

Here's my massive pet peeve around PCs that I don't even believe that the Dell XPS 13 has resolved:

All those computers charge over USB-C with the full force of the port. This is fine. But the second the battery is completely drained, the port cannot revive that computer. You must use the laptop's crappy barrel plug.

Only Apple allows you to use only USB-C as a charger.

Re: A Review of Linux on Surface Pro 4

#210

Post by akovaski »

philistine wrote: post #209
chrsw wrote: post #80

I run Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 without any issues as far as I can tell. I've done almost no tweaking. I just do periodic software and firmware updates. I close the lid, throw it my bag, open it hours later, or the next day and I'm right back to where I was. The experience as close to Mac-like as I've ever experienced outside of Apple. But I still do wish someone would make a Linux laptop that's as tightly integrated w…

Here's my massive pet peeve around PCs that I don't even believe that the Dell XPS 13 has resolved: All those computers charge over USB-C with the full force of the port. This is fine. But the second the battery is completely drained, the port cannot revive that computer. You must use the laptop's crappy barrel plug. Only Apple allows you to use only USB-C as a charger.

huh? The current XPS 13 and many other laptops do not have a barrel plug. My Dell laptop without a barrel plug didn't become bricked when it ran out of battery.
Post reply on HN