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 shell scripts, but it took much longer than it should have.
It's very hard to define who a Power User is. But if you've spent a few years on Linux, you'd be able to do many things faster on Linux than on macOS. For instance, it's easier to automate tasks with shell scripts in Linux than to attempt the same with osascript.
I use macOS only when I'm forced to - because the absolute fundamentals are broken. Finder is unbelievably bad compared to Nautilus, package management is terrible, limited ability to tile windows, not even a simple way to set up an Application launch shortcut out of the box (yeah, can do with Automator).
If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example).
So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site. Ubuntu has a page. But it’s not on the first page of results. I only know about it because I’m familiar with it.
Supporters keeps arguing people should jump through hoops. I’m on Linux right now, but people have better things to do. Either provide a list so people know exactly what to buy, or all complaints are valid.
Apple sells you the whole package: take it or leave it. Windows supports everything and has their logo everywhere.
+1 I find it absurd that (some) linux supporters find it not only ok but even a must, to have to tinker around your machine in order to make everything work. I could understand it in the 90s but this is a very different era we're in. I get zero value from having to tinker with my x-org settings to make the external screen work (sometimes). I'm using a computer to create value elsewhere and having to even think about stuff that should just work eats up my time and energy.
I believe this is the main reason that OSx and even Windows are much more prevalent in company laptops that any linux distro. And I don't see this changing anytime soon. If even Ubuntu didn't make that cut I don't see which (distro) will.
Haven't tried a laptop that comes with preinstalled linux TBH. Maybe there's some light there. Dunno. But my last experience with a Thinkpad 550 and latest ubuntu was bad. As in no proper keyboard, terrible screen issues, networking issues...
> 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 out, many Linux users prefer to fully customize their setup, doing this is easier on Linux because you don’t have to hack around all of the default choices that Apple or Microsoft provide.
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?
I got a System76 Darter Pro for work, preinstalled with Ubuntu. It worked perfectly. It booted directly into a graphical display manager. All drivers worked out of the box. Not sure what else there is to say here. That sounds like what you're after.
For reasons, I ended up installing Arch on the same laptop. It was your typical Arch experience, but I was able to get everything working, including fiddly stuffy like keyboard backlights, and monitor backlighting. Keyboard hardware controls all function. And this was with existing Arch packages. I didn't have to go hacking anywhere.
If I had to levy criticism, I'd say the preinstalled Linux options are at the same price point as Apple, and no where near Microsoft. Yeah, it's going to be harder to find an off-the-shelf $300 laptop with Linux preinstalled. I can say the same about a Mac too.
System 76 is not cheap. Worse if you’re international. Dell has limited options available and none that are available with their discounts. So if you want a nice and powerful dev machine... back to researching and tinkering. Is the cheapest way and if something is messed up, you still have the Windows license.
I acknowledged as much. However, the OP's comparison is with a Mac so I don't think discussing the cheapest approach is in the scope of the discussion.
There are ready to go options! System76 sells Linux computers, there's a few other companies that do too. Dell has stuff like their XPS Developer Editions that are designed for and come with Ubuntu out of the box. You just can't hop over to Best Buy and get a random system.
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.
Yeah, buy a linux certified laptop and you're done. You want the ability to hop hardware without paying the price that you might have to configure the OS to suit your workflow/hardware. Even the king of multiplatform PCs windows 10 you will sometimes experience issues until you install the right drivers.
Ubuntu has been going down the drain for a long time.
The problem is that they successfully (and for good reason) became the de facto Desktop Linux for users who wanted a desktop and not mess with it much.
They’ve cornered that market to the point there are very few alternatives (at least very few that will come preinstalled and supported) but because they want to IPO I guess, they’ve stopped focusing on the desktop at all and instead are concentrating on server uses primarily, which leads to significant issues.
The irony is by becoming the “it just works“ monster ubuntu tries to be right now it brought issues that no other major linux faces.
For me (using linux for 15+ years as desktop) ubuntu tends to break after only a few months. Usually complex dependencies like steam, wine or video editing stuff break first. I rarely manage to get out of a update without some dependencies breaking...
Fedora, Manjaro, Debian, ... nothing like that. Just a major stable operating system
Edit:// to clearify. I do like and use ubuntu server because its simple and well supported. I just think its mediocre as desktop OS and would recommend anyone to check Manjaro or Fedora
I vastly prefer Fedora but could never get tensorflow to work with my GPU (Nvidia 1660x,) and unfortunately now I can’t get it to work with Ubuntu either. Or, more accurately, I can’t get it to work while using display drivers. I have to install one or the other.
> but because they want to IPO I guess, they’ve stopped focusing on the desktop at all
No, that's simply because the desktop, after all these years, still brings in little or no money - whereas server builds are used in clouds (at one point they were the most popular "cloud distro") and do make significant money through revenue-sharing agreements.
Ubuntu desktop started going downhill the minute Shuttleworth decided he'd had enough with the "generous mecenate" thing and Ubuntu should make back its costs. Since then, it's been a series of steers towards anything that could make some cash.
So does Ubuntu. I've installed it on a few family's computers without any issues as long as the hardware wasn't brand spanking new. The defaults are fine and it makes a good secure machine for the (younger) kids to use the internet on for those families who limit their kids time on the internet.
No tinkering required, the only change required to make it useable was to set desktop scaling for HiDPI, accessible via Displays area if the settings app. No terminal commands required.
If anything, the amount of tinkering required has increased as hardware has gotten more complex. I'm probably looking through rose-tinted glasses to some extent, but in the mid 2000s it was usually quite easy to get graphics and sound working well in Linux on generic PC hardware. And of course, most people didn't need to worry about WiFi, Bluetooth, suspend/resume, touchpads, etc. etc. in those days.
I constantly had problems with these and more back then. (E.g. making my TV grabbing card work was a nightmare.) I don't experience this since I've been using a ThinkPad.
Our family Lenovo all-in-one windows machine with its preinstalled windows: Time synchronization doesn't work. Have to set the clock manually. When logging in and if another user is logged in the start bar freezes for up to 5 minutes before it lets me do anything. All sorts of things like this. Random problems like that.
My personal Windows machine upstairs loses sound output via my monitor every time the monitor goes to sleep and wakes up. Windows just forgets that the device exists. Sometimes plugging in a headphone and then unplugging it will "remind" Windows that there's an HDMI output device, other times not.
No issues with Linux on that machine at all. Everything just works, stock Debian install. No issues with sound, only issue being that the fan is a bit loud so I had to fiddle with bios settings to get it quieter.
Personally i think it is insane to install OSX or Windows for anyone who does not want to tinker these days. Why not just a major linux (maybe not ubuntu if you dont like tinkering, but fedora or so) so the box works without issues for more than a few months
Depends on what you tinker with. Getting basic things to work on your hardware is frustrating. Nobody wants to deal with that really. The answer for that is getting a laptop (or desktop) that is well supported. I know it can feel limiting, but with OSX you only get to choose from one vendor...
If we talk about tinkering for customizing your user experience then it's very empowering. You can get things to work exactly as you'd like and that is a productivity booster. (Even if it just removes frustration and friction.) Sometimes it means being able to undo the stupid decisions of the developers (e.g. GNOME) which may seem like the first category (i.e. you have to tinker just in order to get things work again as they used to), but if you are stuck on windows or osx you'd have a lot less chance to do so and you'd lot more likely just have to put up with it.
E.g. in the past 2+ decades I have to wrestle to get my desktop grid layout (3x3 desktops/workspaces) to work, because some idiot back around 2000 figured out that it's "not the right metaphor" or what not and they should not be geometrically related, yadda-yadda. Since then, every major upgrade of gnome breaks the external solution I use (which is different every time). Is it frustrating? Yes. At least I know not to upgrade until I know there is a workaround again. But I can keep using it nevertheless. (I used to have a utility that provided this feature on windows. The last version I've used it on was XP and even back then it wasn't available for download anymore. I'm not sure at all if I could still use it on win10 or even win7.)
Linux has some great new development, like Wayland[1], pipewire. They may be a bit buggy as of now, but the former does basically solve the tinkering with x config things, multi monitor hdpi, hotplugged monitor and the like will just work.
[1] Yeah wayland is a protocol, and it already has some quite stable implementations like gnome and sway.
I don't have to mess around with xorg config for more than 10 years.
I'm using Debian and the only thing I had to do is enable non-free to get some firmwares.
Everything works 100% hassle free.
My experiences with macos were quite frustrating, specially around package management (or the lack of it), poor quality of brew packages (too many dependencies breaking stuff), constant slowdown and crashes with mildly median workload, screen artifacts around the desktop time to time, having to disable stuff to be able to change things in /usr or /etc, too many stuff eating up ram by default, etc.
Honestly don't know how people can use that and be happy.
Even when bought with support, it might come with surprises.
I got the Asus 1215B with Linux, then Ubuntu decided to replace the perfectly working wlan driver with a FOSS one, except it took half an year to reach parity with the proprietary one.
Likewise, they decided to replace AMD driver with the open source one, goodbye OpenGL 4.1 now it doesn't do more than OpenGL 3.3, and hardware video decoding is still not a thing.
At the same time, the Windows DX 11 drivers shipped with the same hardware (it was Windows 7 back then), still work on Windows 10.
This kind of settled Linux on desktop for me, now it belongs to VMs, and on ChromeOS/WebOS/Android it is anyway just an implementation detail.
I get your frustrations, yet your problem is with proprietary software and proprietary drivers. I’m sure there’s a way for you to go back to using the old drivers if you’re set on using the latest capabilities of your hardware (without it being FOSS).
You don’t have to be the guinea pig, let others do it if it’s not your thing (many programmers do seem to enjoy it, and see it as a challenge).
There is no way, because the only way to make it work is to dig out a pre-historic kernel from the same year Asus released 1215B with Linux support.
Proprietary software for 1215B, e.g. Windows, is working just fine with Windows 10, even though it was originally released with Windows 7.
So we are talking about Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and several Windows 10 releases, all supporting the original Windows 7 drivers for Asus 1215B.
I have been a Linux guinea pig since Slackware 2.0 came on Linux Unleashed book, eventually one gets tired of the Linux Desktop meme.
Linux was anyway just the way I got cheap UNIX clone at home during my degree, professionally I have spent more years using commercial UNIXes.
Nowadays any POSIX clone will do the job, or as alternative we stuck the Linux kernel into a VM.
Have you tried to install AMD proprietary drivers?
Did you installed the firmware for your WiFi card?
By the way you complain about Linux seems that you really don't like it and that nobody can convince you te opposite, but I believe that if you manage to learn the basics around it it pay off in the long run :)
> There is no way, because the only way to make it work is to dig out a pre-historic kernel from the same year Asus released 1215B with Linux support.
My dear, my first UNIX experience was with Xenix back in 1993, I also used DG/UX, Tru64, HP-UX, Aix, Solaris, Slackware, Red-Hat, Yasdril, Mandranke, SuSE, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Debian, OS, Scientific Linux.
Back in 2002 - 2003, I wrote cluster simulation software while at CERN running on Linux, followed by other examples of deployment of Linux based software into production, like Nokia's NetAct cluster monitoring platform.
I judge my Linux experience starting in Summer 1995, the year I got my first Linux distribution, Slackware 2.0, that makes a couple of years in experience.
Try to not see everything as an attack against your identity, detach yourself from it and don't take yourself too seriously. Been there, done that.
Now I have a way more pleasant life experience and people takes me seriously without having me needing to assert who I am. Life is lighter now and I have more friends, people few more comfortable around me.
I'm giving this feedback because I think it will make your life better too.
Was nice to chat with you, now I'll go out for a bike ride while I still a bit of sun over here.
That sounds a little like telling someone that their problems are that their cows are not spherical. For graphics drivers specifically, having tochoose between FOSS and something that works is very frustrating.
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.
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. :/
> The FOSS amd and intel drivers work great and have for years.
Intel has a random lock up in the Mesa. It had this lock up for several years. It has not been fixed. I have a 4k laptop with it, it is incredibly frustrating that I cannot use kitty or alacritty on it because of that crash.
AMD driver crashes on modern cards every few weeks.
If you want to have a "What are you talking about, it just works?" experience, you buy an NVidia card with proprietary drivers, slap X11 on it and you are off to the races. It just works (currently driving 4x 4k monitors). Last crash was about 11 months ago. The crash manifested in a freeze for about 20 seconds, followed by it recovering by itself.
OSS graphics drivers are just not as good as people claim.
I would have agreed with you but sound input broke for me (Lenovo flex 14 with AMD R5 3500U) on fedora with kernel 5.8 and didn’t get fixed until 5.9. That was months of something being broken. How did this happen and more importantly did we learn anything to prevent this from happening in the future?
For now fedora is on an old desktop machine with an ancient i3-2100 processor and I just ssh into it.
Again, that's like googling "laptops supported by MacOS" and expecting to find a list of Hackintosh compatible hardware. Dell and Lenovo both sell laptops pre-installed with Linux, and there are also boutique shops like System76 and TUXEDO. And I DDGed "Linux Laptops" and got all these suggestions.
Of course, Linux doesn't quite have the mass market consumer experience you get with MacOS or Windows, but it's not exactly hard to find laptops pre-installed with Linux.
Are they supported, though? That was the question. Downvote me all you want, put words in my mouth if that is what you need to do, etc.
A. But are they supported and is that a meaningful question?
B. I am not bashing anything Linux because I don't hate it in the slightest.
C. Did you read the parent I responded to? That comment makes two claims and tries to establish an analogous relation and that does not work the way the author wanted. That was also my reply.
So you missed the point of that post, you missed the point of mine and you strawmanned me :)
Several of the laptops mentioned are vendors who sell them officially with Linux support (system 76, dell developer edition, purism...) , so you either didn't bother or trying to create a false narrative
Actually the previous poster talked about sites for laptops supporting hackintoshes. I'd be very surprised if you find that information on any "official" website.
Not to give an argument along the lines of "You're holding it wrong," but...okay, yeah, I'm going to do that.
You hold a gun in one way. If you mess that up in any fashion, you probably won't hit what you're trying to, and, worse, might shoot yourself.
Saying things like "There is no official site" is holding Linux wrong. Linux isn't an operating system. Linux is just a kernel.
So phrase your search the right way:
"laptops that support GNU/Linux installation"
You'll be surprised to find, immediately it lists a whole bunch of laptops sold with a Linux kernel on them! I don't normally use Google, but just for you, I checked on it: It even has an easy-answers page.
If you want the whole package, look up an operating system, not a kernel.
With my latest Linux machine I actually picked some easy to get laptops on a steep discount and then started googling to find other people’s experience. I’ve been using some Linux distribution or other for a long time.
But that’s not what a newbie or outsider sees. And until there is the kind of assurance from some Linux distribution or whatever, all criticisms of the difficulty of getting a Linux machine running are valid.
> And until there is the kind of assurance from some Linux distribution or whatever, all criticisms of the difficulty of getting a Linux machine running are valid.
Great, they're invalid! Off the top of my head, System76 and KDE both sell laptops running it. As both of them have distributions, and selling something is more or less as close to assurance as you can get, by your own logic here the criticisms are worthless.
I don't even care about "le Linux on the desktop meme", personally, I just find these criticisms incredibly lazy and transparently without merit.
Does anyone shop for laptops this way? or anything else for that matter - Google "laptops that support usb c" and expect an official page from usb c? or google "cars that have a turbocharger" and expect an official page from turbocharger? And, when you don't find it come to a conclusion that usb c is bad.
No offense but seems like even if you did find laptops with linux and pick the best one, you probably won't like it because you have already made up your mind.
I run a recent XPS Developer Edition (my second) and I've had so few issues over years. It's always seemed like a different world all users with constant issues.
Would absolutey recommend Elementary OS for Mac users switching to Linux. I moved to Arch a couple of weeks ago, but only because of combination of wanting to try Gnome 40 and wanting to run various cutting edge mobile Linux deps.
> Either provide a list so people know exactly what to buy, or all complaints are valid.
Sure, these are two devices I have recently used with Linux that work out of the box:
Dell XPS 13
ThinkPad T14s
Or more generally, you can extend that to any ThinkPad or Dell device without a dedicated graphics card and you will have a good Linux experience.
OP somehow has issues on XPS 13, probably due to meddling with too many things. My XPS 13 (9360) has everything working out of the box with Ubuntu 20.04
A very good idea if you want to confirm just before placing an order is to google "<laptop name> Arch Linux wiki" which will take you to the Arch wiki page for that device. There you can see if there are any known compatibility issues.
The Ubuntu certified devices page is pretty good as well.
> Apple sells you the whole package: take it or leave it.
For Linux Dell and Lenovo do that too (in most regions these days).
From what I understand from the blog post, the author is expecting Linux and the software to behave the same as macOS. That is just comparing apples and oranges. If you want a system that you are used to, you should probably stick to that. As in, if macOS works for you, I see no reason you should switch to Linux. I used a Mac for ~5 years before finally giving up because I just hated the window management (among other things). But hey, that does not need to apply to everyone.
- when using external display, video tearing would be visible either on internal or external display
- Xorg doesn't really support different scaling for different displays, and Wayland has other issues
- battery life is shorter than on Windows
- graphics performance is worse, at least in Firefox/Chrome (smooth animations on Windows would be choppy on Linux)
- touchpad is not great on Windows, but it's even worse on Linux (even after fiddling with settings, and trying many solutions, using it on Windows feels better)
Interesting. Apart from the per-display scaling (which is basically a Xorg limitation as you said) I had the opposite experience on my XPS 13. At the end I did not want a 4K display but Dell did not offer me the option. So I just used 1080p scaled most of the time.
Battery life was stupid on Windows (~3-4 hours max, while Linux did 7-8 with moderate load). Somehow on Windows the fan would always be running even without any significant activity in Resource Monitor.
I remember playing 4K videos on Linux (Firefox though, and I only tested YouTube) without any trouble (with monitor disconnected though, due to what you described earlier).
Touchpad would work sweet on Linux but needed some tweaking on Windows (otherwise it'd 2-finger scroll too fast sometimes).
> So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site.
https://linux-on-laptops.com/ has been around for a long time and it looks like it's still being updated. Though the official Linux-Laptop-HOWTO does need a lot of work to make it current.
Out of curiosity, what would qualify as an "official site" for laptops supported by Linux? Would it be run by Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, or some other maintainer? I think expecting anything official or authoritative from the Linux side is missing the boat.
What you're looking for is hardware vendors who support a Linux desktop environment on their laptops, which are not too difficult to find.
The poster wasn't using Linux to refer to the Linux kernel here - they used it to mean "a Linux distribution". Distributions have their own hardware compatibility documentation systems. Eg Ubuntu has this: https://certification.ubuntu.com/ and Red Hat has https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware .
Hence my question. Per site guidelines I assumed the most generous interpretation of the poster's comment, which to me means they found those sites and do not consider them official. In that light, I was curious what they would consider official.
I prefer to take a hardware vendor's opinion as to whether that hardware is supported by Linux. They have some skin in the game, and have the resources to test the hardware, whereas many Linux distros will rely on user reports.
I imagine Ubuntu and Redhat have more resources to validate hardware and so those sites are likely more reliable, but once you get to niche distros YMMV on their compatibility matrices.
I own Thinkpad X1 extreme, that I bought with my own money, and chose as working laptop Thinkpad Carbon. Both are not working well with linux.
1. Carbon, due to it's intel chip, can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter.
2. I need to authorize dock (Lenovo's thunderbolt dock) after every reboot.
3. The screen tearing sucks.
4. I need to have pulse audio volume control window opened all the time, otherwise the laptop loses my external sound card after first call via browser, and I need to turn it off/on.
On my own laptop, where I installed Ubuntu, I can boot only into 5.8.0.43 kernel (the one which I initially installed). All others, that I've got via apt-get update stuck with blinking cursor at last step of boot, and it's well known problem.
The longer I'm trying to love linux for work os, the more I realize that only tool that I truly want from linux is i3. For the rest I'm happily using WSL2 on my home, and don't have choice with work.
So on next hardware refresh date I think I'll choose Mac. The supplied by job laptop config is also more performant than carbon. So, hope, I'll be able to use my monitors in native res, and not put 2K into 1920x1020 mode
>4. I need to have pulse audio volume control window opened all the time, otherwise the laptop loses my external sound card after first call via browser, and I need to turn it off/on.
Sounds is really bad
To get sound on my headphones, I need to restart pulseaudio and ALSA, and unplug and replug the headphones
I was having huge flaky thunderbolt problems on my Linux T490 - even updating the laptop firmware didn't fix it despite Lenovo changelogs indicating a bunch of thunderbolt dock bugs fixed.
Then I swapped the Lenovo thunderbolt dock with another one at work and everything just worked fine. I run 3 monitors (2 external 2560x1440) at once, but no 4k.
Maybe it was dock firmware versions - the Lenovo dock updater software was Windows only, so I had never tried it.
> 1. Carbon, due to it's intel chip, can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter.
Is this a Linux only issue? I saw people reporting on Reddit that they are using 4k @ 60hz external monitors. Was thinking of getting an X1C but not if it can't do 4k
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a thunderbolt linux issue. The dell "docking station" usb-c hubs don't really work well with anything else than dell windows machines. Same with some lenovo bluetooth mice.
I do remember however that contrary to macos my 2012 macbook air could drive higher resolution external monitors when running linux. So I'd put this into the Thunderbolt is a hackjob on linux box.
Some non-apple laptops sometimes reduce badwidth of thunderbold 3 (e.g. in mine t490s the bandwidth is halved, just because - this is hardware, not linux).
However, TearFree does murder performance and lead to some horrible screen lag at times, and as an extra bonus AccelMethod sna is still crashy years after being introduced :(
edit: there's also the modesetting driver + a reasonable compositor, but this can come with it's own set of bugs and issues in my experience.
I've been interested in recording music using free software on Linux. The exchange above is similar to the cycle I've been in... encountering problems, finding magical incantations that fix things in some ways but often involve some sort of tradeoff, and making gradual progress toward being as productive as I am using Apple's Logic.
But I've been doing this three steps forward, two steps back routine for like three years now. I have most things working but it has really taken the full force of my frustration with Apple to keep returning to it and making progress.
It's exactly why I have mac laptops for work and personal use, although I also have a full time linux desktop (and also a windows one for gaming. still no real alternative there!).
I'm an easily frustrated person and I end up with enough pain points on linux for both work and personal use that I've never managed to make the switch full time.
> 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
Curious. If you had to buy tomorrow, what would you do? Given that M1 Pro won't be out till end of 21(?) and despite that, current Pros don't seem to come with a reduced price.
I haven't done my research recently. Thinkpad works fine with Windows, so, most likely, it'd be last gen Mac/Thinkpad Extreme or something in that league.
I had hopes that Microsoft will evolve Surface Books to normal processors, but it seems like the line is dying.
I have a 13” M1 pro, it’s easily the best computer I’ve owned (and I have a Ryzen 3600/Vega 10 desktop with 128GB of RAM that runs KDE Plasma very well, but there’s still no competition)
I was trying to make the Mac to Linux switch just like the author, mostly due to excitement around sway (wayland). But it was awful, none of the basic things I wanted to do seemed doable...I would research solutions and they wouldn’t work. So I tried switching to i3 in the hopes of at least having a more established ecosystem to rely on.
But similar story. Half-baked (or sometimes, overcooked) support, configs that we’re supposed to swap eg CapsLock with Escape not working as described or losing their effect after sleep, impossible to get my multi monitor high DPI setup to work without coloration or resolution issues, futzing around with sound and not able to get it working as hoped just like the last time I tried to do this in 2008...you know, all the things you want before you start doing actual work, but none of them function properly OOTB or, often, even after reading extensive documentation and advice.
I wish I could use i3, but my BetterTouchTool configuration gives me something that is close enough.
I might still try FreeBSD, but I totally feel twice-burned by Linux at this point.
> I was trying to make the Mac to Linux switch just like the author
I've tried a couple of times, but finally decided what's the point. Linux is amazing on all the servers I run and manage. It's lightweight, supported well, and does a great job. I also rarely have to tinker with it. For servers, it really does just work.
On the PC side not so much. I used to run linux in various flavors on the desktop side for years. It provided more power than windows IMO. Then OS X came out with actual unix underpinnings, a functional media system (UI, audio, video), and fully supported creative apps like Ps, MS Office, and later LR.
Against my better judgement I tried a final time move to desktop linux a couple of years ago, but multi-monitor mixes of hi and low dpi were just unworkable. I actually posted a question (it may have been here on HN - can't remember), and one of the responses was 'no one needs HiDPI screens'. Got it.
He specifically targeted the "complain about linux drivers" part in his comment didn't he? He didn't dismantle the entire post, just comment on a specific part he disagreed with. I don't fully agree with it, especially since things such suspend, the fingerprint scanner and the LTE modem were still a mystery to be solved with the x1c6/7.
But if anything, your attitude that's effectively shutting down any criticism is the problem.
I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell".
> Screen tearing with the intel driver. Come on. This was solved on xorg and now with Wayland it's back.
Since you mentioned Dell XPS, I'm thinking they'd have sold it to you with Ubuntu 20.04. But why did you choose Wayland - which IIRC is not the default in 20.04? These are the trickiest pieces of the distro, and will take years to stabilize. Especially considering that Linux aims to work across the entire set of PCs in existence.
It is a 2018 Dell XPS. It had a previous version preinstalled, which used Wayland. I explicitly remember having to edit the settings to run with Xorg because otherwise screen sharing in Google Meet would not work.
I upgraded to 20.04 at some point. During the six months I tried both environments. I ended up with Xorg just because it works.
I'll be the devil's advocate even though I agree with you partially and I personally prefer Linux, both for practical and philosophical reasons. However, I use a Linux laptop privately and macOS for work, so I think by now I understand both systems a little bit.
For automating tasks on macOS you can look at something like hammerspoon which is really cool (though I mostly use it to modify some of the macOS keybindings which I find ridiculous) [1].
Finder is crap, I agree. But then again, I'm mostly in the terminal, so I don't care much. I would however complain that the default terminal on macOS is really not very good and I always install iTerm2... most Linux distros seem to have a better terminal pre-installed.
Package manager is better on Linux for system packages, applications, etc. (in fact, such a thing doesn't really exist on macOS, save for maybe homebrew cask, but that has problems). However, dev packages are tricky on Linux, too. Generally, for dev packages I might want to have a) a very specific (and often the latest) version of something, and b) often multiple versions installed separately. Additionally, on most Linux distros you can't install without root. On a Linux machine, I mostly have to install such tools in addition to my package managed libraries and apps, on macOS I can typically just "brew install rbenv" or so (though homebrew has its own share of problems).
In general I would say that macOS makes it slightly easier to do things sort-of reasonably well for default flows but can break down quickly once you want something more custom. With Linux, while it has become a lot (!) better in the last 15 years or so, I still occasionally need to debug some audio problem or so. The upside is that problems on Linux are generally solvable (although, in some instances it can be hard to figure out exactly how). If your macOS does something that is weird or buggy (e.g.: before the update to big sur I had the annoying issue that my system would go into DND mode after every restart, which is really not good if you don't want to miss notifications), then you're out of luck and there's nothing you can do.
> I would however complain that the default terminal on macOS is really not very good and I always install iTerm2...
Apple’s terminal is one of the very few that passes the VT torture test and has support for double width and height attributes. Sadly, it doesn’t do overlines and doesn’t italicise my terminal font.
I think it depends on a font supporting them correctly. I’m using a zsh prompt that uses them and it seems normal. Check https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font and let me know if it helps. I was thinking of adding the powerline symbols to the test renderings.
The problem is not with font glyphs, but with colors. Background and foreground colors that should be the same aren't, they are different shades, thus some themes (such as powelevel9k/powerlevek10k) appear broken, see https://imgur.com/a/HAcE4Yu
And the line height -- it could be font, it could be terminal, I didn't investigate (it is DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline).
Terminal allows fine tuning the spacing. I tried to optimise my font to look good on the default settings, but that doesn’t always work and never works for every program.
I tried a bunch of terminals and ended up switching from urxvt to termite https://github.com/thestinger/termite a few years back (mainly for it's better handling for refreshing certain curses style output).
Anyone who is a "extreme power user" is doomed to fail on any new platform. You should approach a new platform planning to learn and embrace what you find there, and become a new power user. Trying to port over the most "extreme power user" workflows you're used to on one system is inevitably going to fail. This was doomed from the start.
My anecdote. Few weeks ago I bought Dell Latitude 3410. It's an extremely cheap (and underpowered) 13" laptop. I upgraded RAM and installed M.2 SSD. It came with Ubuntu 18.04 pre-installed (which contained a dozen of dell-specific packages). I installed Fedora 33 and checked everything I could check. Every bit of hardware worked correctly out of the box, so I'm pretty happy so far. And despite being underpowered, it's very fast and snappy, definitely faster than my old Macbook in day-to-day usage.
I paid $600 for laptop and $150 for RAM and SSD upgrades. Comparable Macbook Air would cost $2000 for me.
It does have terrible TN screen, cheap touchpad and bad keyboard layout. That's good enough for me, as I prefer external everything in day-to-day use.
The ones that have bugged me today: It randomly forgets view preferences. There is something weird about SMB shares where they appear mounted but actually aren’t.
It doesn’t have scroll bars in its default state.
MacOS is my favourite by a mile, but there are some major warts, though the finder isn’t my major gripe.
Not having used Nautilus, there's a bunch of bad things about the Finder I can complain about.
The tabs. First of all, they're Safari-style tabs and Safari has awful tabs. And then there's a preference called "open folders in new tabs instead of windows". Open up a Finder window, open Terminal and run `open /path/to/directory`. What happens? Directory opens in a new Finder window.
There's no way to have Finder remember what size a window should be. There's a bunch of tricks that people post online of how you can have Finder remember a window size but they don't work. It might register it on a folder-level but then you run `open /path/to/directory` and it opens up a postage stamp sized window (even though it should open a tab).
It's honestly surprising how absolutely horrible it is after years and the new Big Sur only have it a fresh coat of paint without fixing any of these issues
But that's not cut and paste. That's copy and special paste. And I don't want to start training my brain to use a different set of keys to do the exact same thing that I can do elsewhere just because Apple thinks I should.
Yeah, I am wondering about that too. Finder can rename multiple files and has a goto folder option. Edit: I couldn't find a goto option in Nautilus. I don't know how I missed batch rename in Nautilus... Still, if Nautilus has any advanced features, they're well hidden.
I agree, I’ve always found the Finder extremely usable, especially once you’ve taken a couple minutes to browse the menus and learn the Keyboard Shortcuts.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that people don’t seem to bother to look at the menus anymore: one of the first things I’ve always done with a new application (ever since Windows 3.1 on a Pentium 90) is open the menus and skim the menu items to figure out the basic functionality available.
Selecting multiple files and pressing F2 or "Rename Files…" under the context menu is about as intuitive for renaming multiple files as I can possibly imagine.
Yeah, typing a folder's address could be a bit more discoverable in Nautilus. You can press Ctrl+L (like a web browser), or just start typing a folder address that begins with / or ~ but you're right there's no visible clickable button.
My experience is the other way round: it took me several minutes and much frustration to find a way to type a folder address in Finder.
Unless I’m completely misunderstanding you, showing Thumbnails has an obvious button on the toolbar. Go to parent is harder, but I think for the sequence you describe there’s a back button on the toolbar that will do what you want. Otherwise, you can use the breadcrumb bar at the bottom (can’t remember if this is a default setting or not) or open the Go menu and learn that Command-Up is the shortcut for “parent directory”. (A little later you discover this is symmetrical: Command-Up goes “up” out of the folder you’re looking at, Command-Down goes “down” into the selected item.)
To go to the parent, command click on the title in the title bar of the window.
I don’t know how you’d ever guess that, but I remember it back from the Mac OS 9 days.
The only thing I can think of is that Finder doesn't support SFTP out of the box.
It's a bit embarrassing that Apple doesn't support an entry-level feature like that, but otherwise Finder has been steadily improving for the past few years.
I think “Linux supported” is a vague promise that should not be relied on. I had a T495s which is supported officially on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. And it was quite frankly broken. Closing the lid didn’t work, it drank batteries faster than windows by a mile and plugging in external displays caused the X server to crash.
This is unfortunately every experience I’ve had with Linux on native hardware to some capacity in the last 24 years of using it other than dumb headless servers. So I use windows as the native OS and virtualise anything else.
> If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example)
I bought a Lenovo specifically since they mentioned all their laptops will support Linux in the future.
Note that historically Lenovo didn't really "support" Linux. Remember the Windows tax and how most Thinkpads came with Windows and most still do? Thinkpads supported Linux in spite of Lenovo / IBM.
Anyhoo, my new Lenovo had to wait a few months until the trackpad worked! Turns out Lenovo only meant that business laptops (or some other sub-category) will support Linux out of the box. Silly me.
> 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...
When I bought my Thinkpad (one year after its release and with lots of recommendations) it took more than a year before it worked reliably without any kernel panics and weird lockups. External monitor support when docked was broken for even longer. Now I fear the day this notebook stops working and I might have to go through similar trouble again.
* No ability to use single click + hover to highlight
* Relative sizing feels way off - everything in Finder always seems to be simultaneously way too spaced out while also being way too small.
* Never seems to remember view preferences properly, and often defaults to confusing arrangements.
* Doesn't like to stay connected to network drives, despite any number of tricks I've tried.
* The usual cut/paste/delete operations being needlessly complicated to perform
I do prefer macOS overall, partly because I'm tired of having to constantly tweak and fix Linux whenever I try to use it as a desktop system, and because of things like iTerm2 and BetterTouchTool.
But I really hate trying to do any kind of real file management with Finder, and most third-party apps I've tried just seem to replicate everything I dislike about Finder.
I can't speak for GP, but I'd pay for Path Finder even if all it did was give me cmd-x to cut, and enter key to mean open instead of rename. It does a ton more, but those two are the killer features for me (Tabs used to be one too, but Finder finally got those a while ago).
I definitely agree with you on the lack of cmd-x for cut. However, you can do cmd-c to copy, and then cmd-option-v to move files rather than copy them.
Enter to rename and cmd-o to open was hard to adapt to when I moved from Windows, but it's second nature now.
Using the distinction of paste as copy vs paste as move, instead of overloading the cut metaphor is a better choice semantically. When you cut text or images from a document with ctrl/cmd-x the content is deleted immediately. It’s weird and inconsistent that in windows the files get greyed out and if you don’t paste them they... eventually look normal again when you put something else in the clipboard? Modifying the paste with option on mac is also consistenT with option switching between move and copy while dragging files.
> 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 shell scripts, but it took much longer than it should have.
It's very hard to define who a Power User is. But if you've spent a few years on Linux, you'd be able to do many things faster on Linux than on macOS. For instance, it's easier to automate tasks with shell scripts in Linux than to attempt the same with osascript.
I use macOS only when I'm forced to - because the absolute fundamentals are broken. Finder is unbelievably bad compared to Nautilus, package management is terrible, limited ability to tile windows, not even a simple way to set up an Application launch shortcut out of the box (yeah, can do with Automator).