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Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

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Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#531

Post by lUZQnvuFJt »

robsonhn wrote: post #513
throwaway316943 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't tried a laptop that comes with preinstalled linux TBH Seriously? Why do you think Linux should work perfectly on some random machine that you installed it on? MacOS sure as hell won’t. If you don’t like the experience of doing the work to find the right hardware, distro, and customizing the setup with your favourite software then just buy a prebuilt system with everything installed. Like others have pointed…

Ok, sure, many users prefer to fully customize their setup. But what about those who don't? Why isn't there a ready-to-go option like a Windows lapotop?

There are many, obviously not as many as ones that offer Windows. In my previous workplace I had the option to choose any laptop and I chose one that comes with ubuntu preinstalled from the Dell XPS family. The reason I was comfortable with buying this for work, it comes preinstalled and I wouldn't have to tinker but I could call support. Didn't ever have to in the past few year. There are a bunch of Lenovo thinkpads and thinkstations that come preinstalled with ubuntu. Not to forget multiple companies such as System76, Pursim etc.

There are options if you really want them. Whether you like to use one is up to one's personal preference. Though, it doesn't help that way too many people who haven't used a linux laptop in recent times have strong opinions about them, as evident in this thread.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#532

Post by bicolao »

tinus_hn wrote: post #314
hansel_der wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter. VGA ftw > screen tearing sucks it sure does. look into your os config for a compositor or drop the following into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-intel.conf : Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" Option "AccelMethod" "sna" Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection

Why does it have a ‘tearfree’ ‘false’ option?

From the man page

> Thus enabling TearFree requires more memory and is slower (reduced throughput) and introduces a small amount of output latency, but it should not impact input latency

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#533

Post by gspr »

hk1337 wrote: post #521
minimaul wrote: post #368

From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!): - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First…

> My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience. This is my biggest roadblock to Linux as well. I don’t sync to 1Password.com though and that’s all that is available, so it’s more than just a poor experience for me. I thought about trying to share a Keepass database but that’s had some issues. I tried sharing via Keybase and had a weird issue that when I edited something in Keepass,…

Pass is fantastic: https://www.passwordstore.org/

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#534

Post by acomjean »

christophilus wrote: post #498
acomjean wrote: post #490

I went from Mac to Linux at home. My experience as someone who uses Linux but isn’t great at it, is that it works well as a desktop os. I’m lazy I willing to pay for simplicity so I bought a preinstalled Linux laptop. And it’s been chugging along fine. Everything Works (excepting wake forms sleep when I close the lid sometimes, it’s like gambling...but I manually suspend and that works) I takes a little research to f…

Not sure what OS you’re running (my guess is Ubuntu). I’ve had no issues with wake from sleep when using Fedora, FYI. My biggest complaint is the Nautilus file browser’s address bar being mostly worthless, the Gnome terminal’s inability to move tabs into a new window, and the inability to use normal copy / paste in the terminal (Elementary OS gets this right, and I run their terminal on Fedora now... I may look into…

It’s pop!os which is Ubuntu with gnome.

My laptop has an nvidia gpu and it works great. Even steam works will which was unexpected and made the machine more enjoyable although myself a little less productive on it.

I always mean to try fedora.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#535

Post by pjmlp »

joana035 wrote: post #528
pjmlp wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, because the hardware support for OpenGL 4.1 got broken due to ideology.

Well, it is still open after all, given you are a very experienced guy you should consider rolling the sleeves and sending some patches to fix that, right? Giving back to the community for something you get for _free_ is nice.

My gratis work is done for things that really matter to fellow humans, like charity, poor people on the street and not so lucky people that need an helping hand to get back into society, refugees that almost faced death running away from oppressive regimes.

That is where I can gladly give my skills and money.

Fixing code on Internet for free ain't it.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#536

Post by matwood »

jeswin wrote: post #142

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). Just like it wouldn't be fair to complain about macOS on a Hackintosh - sound didn't work well and had to patch the DSDT. > but there are rough edges for the power user. > I am an extreme power user, ... > In the end, I was able to replicate most of my macOS power tools setup via input hooks and sh…

> For instance, it's easier to automate tasks with shell scripts in Linux than to attempt the same with osascript.

Are you talking about automating UI tasks in linux? Nearly all of my linux shell scripts work fine on macOS and vice versa unless they are using something OS specific.

While not perfect, with macOS I get a large majority of what makes Unix nice while also avoiding the UI annoyances. Using macOS also tends to give more software options over unix/linux alone, like PS, LR, the Affinity toolset, etc...

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#537

Post by rovr138 »

freebuju wrote: post #390
shp0ngle wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember when I bought a laptop officially preloaded with Ubuntu. And the minute I did software update there, everything broke. (Because it was using some binary graphic driver that broke with newer kernel.) I could not even use the computer after that, only the console. I needed to reinstall old ubuntu in order to get my data. Never again

Blame the vendor who shipped you proprietary graphics drivers.

So now it’s not finding and using an officially supported laptop running Linux, but using a officially supported that runs Linux and doesn’t break.

Well, if that’s the argument, I want to see this device that’s guaranteed to not break.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#538

Post by joana035 »

pjmlp wrote: post #527
joana035 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I didn't though that would offend you. I just think that those issues are relatively easy to fix and that you can still have the proprietary gpu modules to get OpenGL 4.1 back. For the wifi to work well with the open module you could have installed the firmwares. That's what I mean by basics, I didn't meant to put down your credentials :) Sorry again for my poor writing

None taken, and it is easier just to re-install Windows with the proprietary drivers than hacking a modern kernel to run fxglr. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

I don't think judging the Linux experience based on an EeePC is fair.

That hardware always felt like a throw away when it came out during the netbook boom from a decade ago.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#539

Post by sbuk »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #415
dbspin wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finder is certainly less visually appealing since it became monochrome, but a disaster? Its preview tools are excellent. It provides tabbed view, which is bizarrely still not available in Windows explorer. It's excellent at remembering the state of folders, and which information was previously available in columns. It works well across different sized screens. Not a huge fan of the look and feel of Big Sur in general…

For one thing, it is extremely slow . Every time open file meny appears, or need to search for something, prepare to wait 15-30 seconds. File management is a pain, renaming, viewing properties, etc are likely the worst of all file managers I've ever seen. Nautilus is so much better (but it changed for the worse since 2008, too). (I'd prefer a Far Manager version for linux / iOS to manage files, but I have accepted th…

How is renaming poor? You can batch rename and a simple click on the file name allows for renaming. Last time I used Nautilus, you still had to activate file renaming with a keypress or from a menu and that had to be done in a moat window. Viewing properties in Finder is easily done with cmd-i or viewable in column mode.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#540

Post by joana035 »

pjmlp wrote: post #535
joana035 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it is still open after all, given you are a very experienced guy you should consider rolling the sleeves and sending some patches to fix that, right? Giving back to the community for something you get for _free_ is nice.

My gratis work is done for things that really matter to fellow humans, like charity, poor people on the street and not so lucky people that need an helping hand to get back into society, refugees that almost faced death running away from oppressive regimes. That is where I can gladly give my skills and money. Fixing code on Internet for free ain't it.

Look buddy, your experience (having a bad time) with Linux seems to be quite frustrating, I couldn't find one positive comment about Linux from you in this post.

Maybe I'm very lucky with Linux, but I don't agree that it is as bad as you are saying.

I'm sorry for you, maybe you should stay with windows indeed. :/

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