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Broken

tyler.io

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Re: Broken

#361

Post by hrktb »

lol768 wrote: post #307
gonehome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

>[Edit]: The replies suggest this is mostly still the case, people say it works flawlessly - except for [insert issue here] I count 7 or 8 broadly unconditional "it works fine" child comments. 1 "it mostly works", 1 "I had to write my own ACPI driver", 1 "it works fine except HDMI sound switching isn't automatic sometimes", 1 "drivers were hard to set-up, WiFi is iffy", 1 "it's not perfect so try it first". IMO that'…

At my last job we had people very happy with linux, with the following caveats:

- they didn’t care about moving it around half a day and keeping decent battery life, for most of them it was effectively a desktop.

- they didn’t care about any CJK support. None of them would be bitching about chinese fonts on japanese pages or worse IME.

- they didn’t need any peripherals outside of screens, keyboards and mices. We had to use a usb dongle to project into videoconf room at a client, I have no hope it would have worked on linux. Printer/scanners would be a nightmare too (and it’s already not good on other platforms I concede)

Linux workstations are plenty usable, thus a lot of positive feedback. But we should acknowledge it’s not for every use case, and it can need tweaking in parts that are different for each user. MacOS with all its current flaws has still a lot of things better done than most (any?) linuxes.

Re: Broken

#362

Post by tracker1 »

ekianjo wrote: post #354
tracker1 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the 38 step install process works. ;-) I tried, it locked up trying to load the GUI, specifically 5.3 kernel installer for navi support. Wound up reverting to Ubuntu LTS, will re-evaluate in 6 months when things for my hardware stabilizes.

Done the install manually several times and it is crystal clear what you have to do once you understand how Linux works from boot to the OS. Of course not recommended for beginners and those who have no interest in how the internals work. Sorry to hear it did not work for Navi, was the wiki any helpful to understand what goes wrong?

Not really... pretty much started loading, then hard locked... couldn't navigate (ctrl-alt-f#) to a usable terminal, etc. At that point, I'd been through several failed attempts and just jumped to Ubuntu LTS, since it's supported by AMD, and dealt with the wifi and onboard audio not working.

Started with Pop!_OS with 5.x kernel (5.2 fir wifi drivers, though not using it). Onboard audio also weird, the UI would show for audio out, but alsamixer was needed to raise "headset" to control the port. When I upgraded to 5.3 and dropped in the lib files for navi10, it booted with the card swapped but stuck at 1080p (on a big 4k screen) after messing with it, I couldn't boot to a gui, but was still able to use the terminal. I decided to give Manjaro architect a try (since you can choose your kernel) that gave the same issue that Arch itself seemed to... hard locking during boot.

I would like to know more, but at some point, I just want to get work done...

Re: Broken

#363

Post by gerdesj »

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #241
gonehome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

In my experience most hardware works flawlessly, although admittedly some hardware is better-supported. I've owned two (soon three) Dell XPS 13 laptops since 2013 and have always had a really smooth experience running Ubuntu. The worst of my Linux woes were the usual suspend/hibernate issues running Ubuntu on company-provided Thinkpads. I've also had to use various Macs for work in the past and have had terrible issu…

"The worst of my Linux woes were the usual suspend/hibernate issues running Ubuntu on company-provided Thinkpads."

I don't doubt that is your experience but I don't know why. Lenovo are pretty Linux friendly and suspend/restore has been a fixed thing in general for years. Maybe you need to update your BIOS.

I can provide you with a very long list of fucked up systems that will, say, not run Windows 10 1903, depending on already installed software and other silly stuff.

I'm typing this on a Dell laptop that runs Arch Linux.

Macs don't even feature on my radar.

Re: Broken

#364

Post by geitir »

I think windows has always hands down beat osx in everything but aesthetics in terms of functionality and control. Maybe you could say except for proprietary features / apps but I don't think that really counts because that's comparing ecosystems. Even for development on Linux, running a vagrant instance and writing code in Windows is just a better experience up front. I think Microsoft understands this when their Linux subsystem stuff and upcoming revamped terminal. Developing for Mac is only better if you're trying to develop for the apple ecosystem. For non code use I think it goes either way, with Mac being the choice for graphics stuff since it's generally bought as a complete package with guaranteed color accurate screens etc. Linux is really powerful and a better OS than windows for running code, but precisely for running it and nothing else imo.

Re: Broken

#365

Post by adadgar »

jv22222 wrote: post #330
snapples wrote: post #131

Things are so broken here at Apple. I joined about 4 years ago. I am awed by the fact that we manage to release any software at all, let alone functional software. The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates. - No communication between orgs. Tons of bureaucratic tape to cut through just to get a hand on someone working on a different product - Barely any communication between teams. Literally ev…

> The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates. Elon Musk says something interesting about this here: "Product errors reflect organizational errors." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ36Kt7UVg&feature=youtu.be... He's specifically talking about how the product subsystems are effectively mapped out by the product departments and that they should try to interface with each other with minimal const…

Not dismissing what Elon said but it is commonly know as Conway's law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Re: Broken

#366

Post by bootlooped »

GordonS wrote: post #251
rayiner wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are worse than ever before. Mac OS stability has taken a bit, but it’s not like Windows machines have gotten better. Windows 10 is still a total clusterfuck when it comes to switching between a high dpi internal monitor and an external monitor. The other day my X1 Carbon started randomly powering down (but not hard looking, controlled shutdown, even installing updates). It rebooted four different times in one…

> Windows 10 is still a total clusterfuck when it comes to switching between a high dpi internal monitor and an external monitor I really think this must depend on the hardware; Windows 10 switches between monitors fine for me, on multiple laptops. Indeed, I only actually have a problem with this on MacOS, where my MBP even crashes on occasion when switching to external displays.

I have a Windows 10 laptop with 150% scaling on the built in display, and 125% scaling on the monitor I plug into; both high DPI. Whenever I plug in or unplug I get treated to 5-10 seconds of seizure-like moving and resizing of windows, and some blinking of the displays. It usually doesn't get things right, for example windows that were on half the screen will be neither on half nor whole, or they'll be slightly off where they should be but mostly right.

Re: Broken

#367

Post by komali2 »

coldtea wrote: post #328
gonehome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

> Does the hardware actually work? Considering that HN is full of programmers and technical users, and literally every time Linux is mentioned people go "I had a problem getting Z working, but I did that and...", "X and Y did not work", "U is not supported", I'd say hit and miss. Case in point, just from this thread, and from people who say they are otherwise satisfied: "The worst of my Linux woes were the usual susp…

Counterpoint is we just issued a shitload of the latest gen x1 carbons (whatever the first gen to get USB c is) and it's all flawless out of the box for Ubuntu. I guess they ship now with a firmware update to fix s3 sleep issues.

Re: Broken

#368

Post by megaremote »

chapati23 wrote: post #302

Apple fanboy and software developer here. Also disappointed with the Catalina release. Had do an NV RAM reset, boot into safe mode, talk to Apple support to solve iCloud issues, and also click away dozens of privacy notifications. But I still really don’t consider windows or Linux as legitimate alternatives because of the ecosystem log in. Yes, macOS has its downsides. But what keeps me from even thinking about Linux…

I don't understand why people update straight away. Leave it a few weeks/months. Especially as a developer.

Re: Broken

#369

Post by [deleted] »

snapples wrote: post #131

Things are so broken here at Apple. I joined about 4 years ago. I am awed by the fact that we manage to release any software at all, let alone functional software. The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates. - No communication between orgs. Tons of bureaucratic tape to cut through just to get a hand on someone working on a different product - Barely any communication between teams. Literally ev…

[deleted]

Re: Broken

#370

Post by dTal »

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

> Getting and keeping a Linux Desktop in good working order is harder than it should be at this age of Linux.

Maybe because all the developers ran away to Macs, instead of sticking around dogfooding and fixing bugs? Free software is a collaborative social enterprise - it's not really anyone's job to make free stuff for you to use. If, as a developer, you've taken the easy path of proprietary software for years, and now after finally getting fed up of being abused by a company that doesn't have your best interests at heart you return to the world of Free Software only to complain that it's still unpolished - then I'm afraid you are rather entitled, and deserve a serenading by the world's tiniest open source violin.

And make no mistake, the kinds of "rough edges" you refer to are not hard computer science problems. They're broadly just the kinds of everyday maintenance things that inevitably crop up in a huge software project on an ongoing basis and are easily fixed by many eyes and a little graft. The more eyes, and the more graft, the more polished the system.

For what it's worth, Desktop Linux for all its faults is still light years ahead of the competition. Far from perfect, as you say, but it really is the least bad choice. As they say - the best time to rally around Free Software is 10 years ago, and the second best time is now.

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