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From OS X to Ubuntu

nicolas.perriault.net

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Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#221

Post by ankka »

mgbmtl wrote: post #132
peller wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the laptop comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, what are the odds I can replace it with CentOS or Arch? Very high. For the most part, drivers on Linux are determined by the kernel version[0]. Arch typically runs a pretty new kernel, so anything that Ubuntu supports, will most likely be fine. (That applies to pretty much all desktop-oriented distros.) CentOS is server-oriented, and typically runs a pretty old kernel,…

Not to mention, that before buying my Dell XPS 15 (at the time) in order to run Debian, I mostly relied on Arch's documentation to know if it was a good purchase or not, and what wifi chipset to choose :)

The Arch linux wiki is one of the best maintained and up-to-date on hardware issues. It helps that Arch itself tries to ship only vanilla software: as few modifications as possible to the kernel, too, unlike the bigger distros.

Excellent source of information.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#222

Post by pjmlp »

timtadh wrote: post #44
sk1pper wrote: post #31

IMO if money isn't an object, OS X is a better call when it comes to laptops. If money is tight, going for a Linux box is almost as good. Linux on desktops - as in, not a laptop - has worked pretty much flawlessly for me for >10 years. Not much else to say there. If desktop or server, this shouldn't be a discussion. As far as laptops go, I've just had better experiences with macbooks. Linux on a laptop is still 100%…

Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. If you want linux and you want to be sure everything is functional, AND you don't want to devote lots of time to a "project" buy a pre-install. Dell Developer Edition laptops (XPS 13, 15) make great laptops. I hear good things about system 76 and purism as well. Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux…

I bought an Asus 1215B netbook that came with GNU/Linux pre-installed (Ubuntu), sold via Amazon a couple of years ago.

Guess what, the Ubuntu devs decided they should replace the Broadcom closed source WiFi drivers by the half-working open source ones, so during six months I didn't had a working wireless connection.

Asus could not support us, and Ubuntu forums were full of hacking the old drivers into the updated ones, or have patience and wait for the new working ones.

I had to disable sleep and hibernation, because it would only wake up again by forcing a full reboot, taking the battery out.

Still have it with GNU/Linux, just to have a machine around with it running directly on hardware, instead of a VM.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#223

Post by pjmlp »

anuragsoni wrote: post #166
ePierre wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux on a windows laptop isn't just more work, it is bad for the ecosystem. I wish I could. Unfortunately, I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here. You know the most ironic part? My job here is to certify hardware (includ…

There was another post on hackernews today about some new Dell ubuntu-based workstations[1]. The webpage that the post refers to mentions worldwide availability, so maybe dell might be an option for you at some point? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360339 Also, it looks like that their ubuntu edition and the windows edition of XPS-13 come with the same wireless cards this year (It used to be broadcom on w…

That is not quite true.

For example, every time I see these type of news and go to the German web site, those laptops are usually listed as "product not available" or "product no longer available".

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#224

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kriro wrote: post #211
developer2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so frustrating. Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "ju…

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that the solution is "another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X" We don't need more closed, we need more open. What we need is massive rewards for open hardware via customer money. As long as wireless cards and graphics cards are closed by default and drivers are BLOBe…

That's not the Apple experience. The Apple experience means - well, used to mean - an entire ecosystem of hardware, software, content, distribution, marketing, branding, business partnerships, and development.

Linux doesn't work with absolute consistency because FOSS people still don't understand that source code is a tiny part of the bigger user experience.

The big challenge in the PC business isn't the OS, it's the politics of community building around a platform - "community" meaning users, hardware suppliers, developers, investors, and channel partners.

Linux has a relatively tiny community which only really interests developers, which means that the big hardware companies don't feel any great commercial pressure to support it.

This might change if Team Linux had an evangelical organisation that could negotiate and do politics at the appropriate levels. But politics is a much harder problem than writing code, so that probably won't happen any time soon.

Edit: at the moment some of the distros have evolved to do some of that work, with varying levels of success. But if you want to play in the consumer space (which is a superset of the developer laptop market), you need to do a lot more than release distro installers and hope Dell or someone else will pick them for its hardware.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#225

Post by eloisant »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #119
wyldfire wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been a product manager but IMO it probably goes something like this: "The framistan line is successful but I hear from our customers that we should have some options that add [x] and drop [y], while having support for more [z]." "We need to create a new line, a totally separate brand from framistan that has way more [x], [y] but no [z] at all. The competition has entered this space and there is clearly a m…

You're probably right. But it doesn't explain why Apple is so good at this and so few other companies aren't. They must realize the confusion they're creating among consumers. Is it because they're still rooted in 80s/90s PC culture? Nice brand names like MacBook doesn't preclude having precise model IDs, though. The MacBook range mostly has unique model names (and Apple publishes a full list [1]), for example. As a…

That's because Apple is not afraid to shut down a product that still makes money, and offer less choice to customers.

Typically when they released the iPod nano, they decided to stop the iPod mini even though some customer would have still chosen it.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#226

Post by pjmlp »

qplex wrote: post #183
developer2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so frustrating. Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "ju…

>Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box". Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience. You'll also usually find pretty straightforward instructions how to get things going quickly if they do not work out of the box, or the simple fact that the machine is not wel…

> Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

I would happily do this when was a university student about 20 years ago.

Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy.

Yes, there are some online stores for GNU/Linux, but as I discovered with the one I bought (Asus + Ubuntu), it might happen that some things don't quite work.

Also the models being sold aren't that enticing, XPS is the exception.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#227

Post by stymaar »

> Nowadays even Steam is available for Linux, with more and more titles available. That should get you covered for a little while. If it doesn't, PlayOnLinux allows running Windows games on Wine. Most of the time, it works just fine.

I'm my experience can be totally true if you have an Nvidia Graphic card (I run almost every games on my desktop) but it can also be false if you have something else (my laptop have an Integrated Intel graphic and I can run nothing).

The author have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which have a newer version of Intel graphic and it looks like he achieves to run games, so maybe there is some progress on that front also.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#228

Post by pjmlp »

kriro wrote: post #211
developer2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so frustrating. Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "ju…

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that the solution is "another closed-source unix/linux-based operating system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can directly compete with OS X" We don't need more closed, we need more open. What we need is massive rewards for open hardware via customer money. As long as wireless cards and graphics cards are closed by default and drivers are BLOBe…

No, GNU/Linux needs less fragmentation.

It needs a full OS stack, from the kernel to the UI toolkit, that is guaranteed to be the same, across all distributions.

Where are the Mac OS X frameworks on GNU/Linux?

Nowhere, because each distribution might be using a total different way to play sounds, music, doing SIMD, process images, accessing databases, UI toolkit ....

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#229

Post by dkuntz2 »

akulbe wrote: post #202
artursapek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a PSA from my own research recently: be careful with the XPS. https://www.google.com/search?q=xps+coil+whine As far as I know they haven't resolved it yet.

Does the coil whine only happen with Linux? or does it happen in Windows too? Was thinking about the latest XPS w/Kaby Lake CPU... but this would give me pause.

It sounds like it's an issue for Windows too

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#230

Post by pjmlp »

20after4 wrote: post #203
cube2222 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't get it, try it. It's not just bash. It's the whole Ubuntu userspace. Yes, you can use apt-get there.

but it's _on windows_ so what's the point? :P

A better OS stack, where devs are busy moving beyond C, has better asynchronous IO stack, kernel level thread pools, embraces a mixed architecture with separated kernel and personalities, driver crashes don't bring the OS down, embraced by the games and graphics communities, allows for multi-GPU usage ....
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