81–90 of 179 posts
Converting a machine that works well out of the box into a machine that requires custom scripts and constant tinkering to handle simple tasks seems like a waste of time.
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You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". Newer generations of macbooks just won't work at all. There's no workaround for recent sound (unless it gets reverse engineered) or wifi (unless you rewrite Linux stack to work around broke…
> You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". It's true that Macbooks are an extreme case, but as far as I can tell, there is not a laptop which runs Linux out of the box where tinkering won't be necessary. Let's take another extreme…
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> it feels like that's still the case Very much not true these days. Linux on laptops is (in overwhelming majority) a great experience today. I suggest you just try out one of the live images for Ubuntu or Fedora. On a tangential note I'm surprised that it's still relatively common on HN to see comments like "Linux on desktop doesn't work" or "Java is slow". That was 20 years ago. The world has moved on.
Linux on the desktop "works" today just like it did twenty years ago -- painfully and with a lot of work to work around the operating system's inability to be a desktop OS. Same thing with Java. Sure, it's not as slow as it was 20 years ago, but it's still slow and painful in comparison to compiled languages. I've used Linux actively for 30 years or more, and I've never had a "great experience" once with it. It's a t…
Something tells me your opinion about Java is stronger than your experience. Java IS a compiled language. It just happens at runtime. https://www.oracle.com/technical-resources/articles/java/arc...
I see this as yet another example of people here repeating a severely outdated statements about the JVM ecosystem.
Off topic maybe, but my Razer Blade 15" has been and absolutely wonderful replacement for my MBP. The build quality feels just as nice, and none of the weird touchbar issues. (Running Ubuntu 19.10 presently, only issue: had to disable the USB-C port to allow it to sleep). The arrow keys are also in a slightly wonky location. It's been very disruptive to have Apple quality tank, and I'm glad they finally went back to…
Off topic maybe, but my Razer Blade 15" has been and absolutely wonderful replacement for my MBP. The build quality feels just as nice, and none of the weird touchbar issues. (Running Ubuntu 19.10 presently, only issue: had to disable the USB-C port to allow it to sleep). The arrow keys are also in a slightly wonky location. It's been very disruptive to have Apple quality tank, and I'm glad they finally went back to…
Razer Blade - which year? Heard 2020 is not nice with Linux as much as older models.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". It's true that Macbooks are an extreme case, but as far as I can tell, there is not a laptop which runs Linux out of the box where tinkering won't be necessary. Let's take another extreme…
My thinkpad runs Linux and everything works exactly as intended.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". Newer generations of macbooks just won't work at all. There's no workaround for recent sound (unless it gets reverse engineered) or wifi (unless you rewrite Linux stack to work around broke…
> You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop". It's true that Macbooks are an extreme case, but as far as I can tell, there is not a laptop which runs Linux out of the box where tinkering won't be necessary. Let's take another extreme…
It’s like I live in parallel universe of Linux hardware support to some of you.
Thank you for writing this! Whenever I see people using Linux as their main laptop OS, I'm struck by remembering the amount of tinkering needed circa 1999 which was the last time I did it. Having read this -- the custom scripts, the "suspend still doesn't work properly" -- it feels like that's still the case.
> it feels like that's still the case Very much not true these days. Linux on laptops is (in overwhelming majority) a great experience today. I suggest you just try out one of the live images for Ubuntu or Fedora. On a tangential note I'm surprised that it's still relatively common on HN to see comments like "Linux on desktop doesn't work" or "Java is slow". That was 20 years ago. The world has moved on.
Every time I try it, I end up fixing a bunch of minor and sometimes major problems that take an amount of effort significantly higher than it would to just get things working on MacOS or Windows.
I have seen notable progress every time I try it though. In fact, my latest attempt is mostly an exception to my experience of all of the other times I've tried it.
I have only been running Linux Mint for about 3 weeks, but so far I only have two issues. One of them is significant, and the other one isn't really that big of a deal.
The significant issue is that my Gigabit Ethernet seems much slower than it was on Window when I attempt to download large files. However, my Wireless AC seems to be fine so its not the end of the world.
The minor issue is that Steam refuses to launch most games on my primary monitor the first time I open them. Even after opening and configuring the games individually, some of them still refuse to run on the correct monitor unless I set the resolution to something lower than the Monitor's native resolution. This happens both for games that are native to Linux and games that are running with Proton.
I think this time around the downsides are outweighed by the benefits of running Linux as a primary OS, so I am planning on sticking with it for a long time, but either of these issues would be a valid deal breaker for any reasonable person.
Your post seems to imply that its a myth that Linux doesn't deliver a near perfect desktop experience. If you haven't had any problems that's great. I'm sure a ton of people have no issues or almost no issues. A great desktop OS should serve all common use cases with virtually no issues that require a non-layman's level of technical knowledge to fix. Based on my experience with MacOS, Windows, and Linux, none of them are perfect, but the latter has the most work to do to meet that standard.
I found out that I can update a lot of components of my early 2015 MBP, so I'm going to get a 512GB or 1TB hard drive and see if I can make a Linux partition.