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Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

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Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#421

Post by denysvitali »

dangus wrote: post #328
denysvitali wrote: post #302

The Surface line is, HW-wise, very good IMHO. Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. Proprietary Microsoft drivers don't make it easy, but we're getting there... https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x I'll buy another one if there's some commitment from Microsoft to be more open source friendly, but since this will never happen, they can keep their HW.

I really hope for competition’s sake that Microsoft makes some reforms and cleans up Windows. Because us nerds like to say “the software is awful,” but really, the bones of Windows are not awful at all. It generally works well, it just takes a lot of work to get all of the BS out of your way. If you’re looking for open source friendly, just buy a Framework 13 Pro and be done with it. By the way, the other news from C…

No, Windows is awful. Closed source , buggy and filled with performance bottlenecks. Let's not even talk about the whole requirement for a Microsoft account, TPM or the fact that it's basically a spyware with ads. Why the hell would I want a Candy Crush Soda ad in my OS?!!!

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#423

Post by denysvitali »

ActorNightly wrote: post #336
denysvitali wrote: post #302

The Surface line is, HW-wise, very good IMHO. Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. Proprietary Microsoft drivers don't make it easy, but we're getting there... https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x I'll buy another one if there's some commitment from Microsoft to be more open source friendly, but since this will never happen, they can keep their HW.

>Too bad the software is awful. I swear, people just live in their echochambers these days. Win 11 pro + WSL2 is literally the best, do it all OS you can get these days. Most peoples experience is with Windows home, which ironically is about as intrusive as Mac OS. When you get Windows Pro, you can disable all the annoying AI/Advertising shit that comes with Windows, and at that point, you get a system that is cleane…

[dead]

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#424

Post by wolvesechoes »

denysvitali wrote: post #302

The Surface line is, HW-wise, very good IMHO. Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. Proprietary Microsoft drivers don't make it easy, but we're getting there... https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x I'll buy another one if there's some commitment from Microsoft to be more open source friendly, but since this will never happen, they can keep their HW.

> Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong.

And how Linux fix the software problem?

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#425

Post by wolvesechoes »

drnick1 wrote: post #360
tw04 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it’s not what you’re asking for, but WSL on windows is a lot more friendly than anything Apple has done in the last decade to assist in Linux support.

But what is the point of WSL if you can get run the real thing, without performance penalty, bloatware and spyware? WinBoat makes more sense if there is the odd program that does not have a substitute.

> without performance penalty, bloatware and spyware?

And then you install multiple Electron apps.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#426

Post by denysvitali »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #424
denysvitali wrote: post #302

The Surface line is, HW-wise, very good IMHO. Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. Proprietary Microsoft drivers don't make it easy, but we're getting there... https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x I'll buy another one if there's some commitment from Microsoft to be more open source friendly, but since this will never happen, they can keep their HW.

> Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. And how Linux fix the software problem?

Running Linux on Surface works. It's not perfect, but it solves the problem. Windows is gone from my Surface Pro X since roughly 2 months after buying it.

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#428

Post by [deleted] »

whatever1 wrote: post #386
thewebguyd wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly horrifying. I believe it. From all my years as a sysadmin, docks were by far the second largest source of headaches (after printers). Super high failure rate, all kinds of quirks, shoddy power delivery. And these weren't some cheap amazon basics dongles, I'm talking the $250+ docks from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

Docks ok. But why printers are such a hot mess? For the past 20 years they could have been just webservers that we send REST requests to. But no, we had to install random drivers on our machines, get blue screens and have to plug and unplug the printers until they get reset properly.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#429

Post by pmontra »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #326
tw04 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it’s not what you’re asking for, but WSL on windows is a lot more friendly than anything Apple has done in the last decade to assist in Linux support.

Apple doesn't have to do anything because it's already unix

It's usually enough but not always. Sometimes it happened that my customers using MacOS or WSL were not able to pass some tests or reproduce some bugs. That was due to some differences between the userland of the Linux servers, which are our build and deployment targets, and what they have on their Macs. I work on a Debian laptop (it used to be Ubuntu) and I can always run on it whatever sw runs on the servers. The languages are Python and Ruby, some bash.

The developers on WSL (the Python project, Django) tend to have a simplified environment. For example they don't run Celery (I never investigated why) and run all the background jobs synchronously or they don't run those jobs at all.

The ones on Macs (the Ruby project, Rails) have the full environment but I remember that they skipped some integration tests because they always failed on their Macs (Capybara and Chromedriver, I don't remember the details.) I was the one running the full test suite. By the way: all the CI services I used in the last 10 years are particularly bad at running those kind of tests. Maybe it's the amount of memory or the timing of the operations and those CI VMs (or containers?) don't play well with the assumptions of the test frameworks. Any language, any framework.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#430

Post by vbezhenar »

daemin wrote: post #396
jwrallie wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how easy it is to run Linux on this as opposed to the new MacBooks may make this attractive for Linux users. Anyway, the whole trend to change from x86 to Arm on laptops is bad news for compatibility. It might be that the era where you can download an iso and expect Linux to run on a random laptop is over, and Linux users will have to stick to only a couple of devices with well known support. Did Valve r…

One concern I've heard about the move to ARM cores is that it is done in order to lock down the devices more so they're more like a phone rather than a computer.

Recent Surface ARM laptops do not seem to be locked in any way.
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