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Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

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Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#81

Post by smoldesu »

Hellion wrote: post #74
ufmace wrote: post #42

I have a feeling that the overall reality is far more hit-or-miss than the author implies. If you happen to be lucky to have all hardware that Linux supports well, then everything does work nicely (which is infact a nice improvement over the early days). If you get unlucky on your hardware, well buckle up, it's gonna be a ride. You are of course more likely to have good hardware support on very old devices. Windows h…

The rallying cry of the Linux desktop enthusiast: “well, it works for me!”

I prefer it to the MacOS mating call of "you didn't buy the right cable!"

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#82

Post by throwaway09223 »

noirbot wrote: post #59
throwaway09223 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it also works perfectly on modern equipment like the Zenbook I bought last year.

Meanwhile, my Framework Laptop that the Fedora OS team is specifically developing for has had busted microphone drivers for months. It's all a little random on how well different internal components decide to play nice.

Is it because of their switch from a realtek chip to tempo? It's broken on Windows too ... https://community.frame.work/t/no-driver-for-tempo-audio-chi...

All platforms have issues, especially with uncommon hardware combinations. But if you buy any mainstream device odds of it working in linux are probably similar to the odds of it working in windows.

For older hardware the odds are much better that it will work out of the box in linux.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#83

Post by ssivark »

londons_explore wrote: post #69

I have the reverse... Unless you have a thinkpad or some other popular hardware, you'll find Linux barely works at all out of the box, and even with hours of fiddling around, you'll still have to live without some features. For example, power saving features, sleep and hibernate, screen brightness controls, fingerprint readers, keyboard hotkeys and backlights, etc. rarely work. Prepare for broken external hdmi ports…

But isn’t that basically “good enough” if you know you want Linux and can either afford the latest thinkpads or are okay with a slightly bulkier older Thinkpad?

Seems not worse than different from needing Apple hardware to use Apple software… (though in practice there is a significantly wider array of hardware that has very good support for the software)

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#84

Post by smoldesu »

whatever1 wrote: post #63

No it does not. Give it to me for 5’ and I will find at least 10 things that are broken. Energy management, monitor color profiles, external monitors, discrete gpu / integrated switching, Bluetooth, webcam settings all these are broken. Stop defending the state of Linux in personal computing. The best we can do is to put it in a VM and run it in a OS that has actual hardware support.

Can you name a kernel with more robust hardware support?

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#86

Post by Gordonjcp »

whatever1 wrote: post #63

No it does not. Give it to me for 5’ and I will find at least 10 things that are broken. Energy management, monitor color profiles, external monitors, discrete gpu / integrated switching, Bluetooth, webcam settings all these are broken. Stop defending the state of Linux in personal computing. The best we can do is to put it in a VM and run it in a OS that has actual hardware support.

They all work on mine. Maybe you've got a terrible laptop.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#87

Post by londons_explore »

admax88qqq wrote: post #66

Linux still can't handle out of memory issues gracefully. Sometimes I create memory leaks or use too many electron apps and when you hit a low memory situation Linux starts trashing and your system becomes unusable for minutes to hours unless you reboot your machine. Mac and windows both manage to handle this gracefully by force suspending background processes it seems. This makes Linux on the laptop hit or miss, mul…

This could be fixed with a little UI work in gnome. Eg. when running a RAM heavy program, if more than 80% of memory gets used, then whatever program is using most gets halted, it's window greyed out, and a popup saying "Your system memory is 80% full, and Google Chrome is using 65%. Would you like to kill Chrome or close some other applications to allow it to use more?"

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#88

Post by yakubin »

smoldesu wrote: post #75
admax88qqq wrote: post #66

Linux still can't handle out of memory issues gracefully. Sometimes I create memory leaks or use too many electron apps and when you hit a low memory situation Linux starts trashing and your system becomes unusable for minutes to hours unless you reboot your machine. Mac and windows both manage to handle this gracefully by force suspending background processes it seems. This makes Linux on the laptop hit or miss, mul…

Depends on your configuration/distro. OOM killers aren't really used on the desktop because swap makes more sense, but you can certainly add one if you're using a resource-constrained machine.

OOM killer is a pseudosolution to an artificially created problem.

https://lwn.net/Articles/104185/

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#89

Post by factorialboy »

I run Gnome based distros on Thinkpads and Dell XPSs and they are the breeze to setup and use.

Nvidia drivers are always a concern, apart from that in all ways superior to Windows OSs on these same laptops.

Personally i find myself more productive with my Linix workstation but the M1 Mac I use for official work is also quite good.

Re: Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring

#90

Post by raisin_churn »

justinzollars wrote: post #36

Except it eats battery. I would not recommend Linux on a laptop under any circumstances.

I get 15-20 hours of battery on my laptop running Debian, at say 30% brightness, with an open ssh connection or two over wifi. So, there are clearly circumstances where it is fine, though I'm quite sure there are cases where it isn't, too. Use the tools that work for you when they work for you.
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