
Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13 - neverminder
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/07/19/ditching-windows-2-weeks-with-ubuntu-linux-on-the-dell-xps-13/#6d821ce91836
======
Zhyl
There was an interesting thread on Reddit [1] the other day which did a
breakdown of the state of gaming in terms of native games and games that can
be run easily via Steam Play (aka 'Proton', Valve's in-built WINE+DXVK layer).
The results were quite interesting and, as one of the replies pointed out in
another breakdown, Linux now competes with (and in some ways beats) gaming on
macOS in terms of size of catalogue.

Granted there is a ways to go to beat Windows in this space, but the progress
over the last 6 years generally and the last 6 months specifically is
astounding.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/9qopag/5000_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/9qopag/5000_linux_games_on_steam_and_a_few_other_numbers/)

~~~
dazzawazza
As someone who has just released[1] a first access game across Windows, macOS
and Linux:

10 years ago developing on linux as a game developer was way worse than
windows and MacOS, now there is no real difference at all. I speak as a long
time UNIX user, Linux was terrible for C++ devleopment, debugging and asset
creation/viewing (compared to the others) making gamedev tougher than it
needed to be.

10 years ago linux's OpenGL drivers were behind even MacOS and way behind
Windows OpenGL which was behind DirectX by quite some way. Now Linux's drivers
are fairly good although it's still a nightmare upgrading radeon drivers and
NVidia's drivers seem to be fickle. This leads to a lot of bugs from users and
supporting various distro/hw/driver combinations.

Libraries like libSDL(2) were less mature 10 year ago, multi monitor, input
and sound support were patchy because the Linux landscape was fragmented and
buggy. Now libSDL2 is pretty much spot on. Mutli-monitor is doable (not as
good as macOS but as good as windows), input is pretty good and sound is OK
(but most people use FMOD which is superb).

Where Linux falls behind is deployment. No I am not going to ship my source
for you to compile. itch.io and Steam go a long way to make it easy to deploy
and crucially update the game. It's still a PITA to deploy a compiled app on
Linux with unclear glibc versions and amazingly it's worse than MS DLL hell of
MSVC redistributable shambles.

It's not impossible to overcome but it's a PITA for a small market. Not a good
position to be in. I support macOS and Linux as well as Windows because I
believe in plurality but I can see why many chose not to. Don't think that
using Unity or Unreal make anything easier either. In many ways they are worse
than a well written custom engine.

[1] [https://executionunit.itch.io/smith-and-
winston](https://executionunit.itch.io/smith-and-winston)

~~~
wtetzner
> It's still a PITA to deploy a compiled app on Linux with unclear glibc
> versions and amazingly it's worse than MS DLL hell of MSVC redistributable
> shambles.

One option is to statically link against musl libc [1].

The kernel ABI is about the only stable thing you can rely on (which is
something you _can't_ rely on for macOS or Windows).

[1] [https://www.musl-libc.org/](https://www.musl-libc.org/)

~~~
scns
Is it not possible to link glibc staticalliy? IIRC musl has readability and
code size in mind while glibc optimizes for performance at the cost of
readability and codesize.

~~~
nineteen999
The problem that I know of is that glibc supports loading DSO modules, eg. for
NSS, so it's not going to support pluggable NSS sources like LDAP etc when
statically linked. There are workarounds, however:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3430400/linux-static-
lin...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3430400/linux-static-linking-is-
dead)

Can't imagine many Linux gamers are going to need NSS support in their game
binaries. It's a bit of a stretch to say glibc doesn't support static linking,
perhaps "officially" it doesn't, its just not all the extended features are
going to work.

Static linking is generally going to be frowned upon these days however since
you're effectively linking security issues into the binary forever.

------
linsomniac
If you don't have specific Windows apps, I'd be tempted to try a Chromebook
these days.

Around 2 years ago I got a cheap Chromebook and it was terrible. I think it
was $250. Fit and finish and keyboard kind of sucked. I found one of those HP
Chromebook 13 g1 boxes, which Woot had refurb for half off at just under $500,
and it is much closer to the hardware experience I'm used to with Thinkpads,
for 1/6th the price.

Now, I almost always reach for the Chromebook instead of the Thinkpad _EXCEPT_
when I need to connect to both of my work VPNs, the Chromebook will only
connect to one at a time. I can ssh into my personal and work machines, run my
password manager, program via remove vi sessions (though I could stand to use
VSCode, I don't have that set up on my Thinkpad either).

The Chromebook has been a great experience for me.

~~~
StavrosK
Chromebooks sound amazing except I don't want to be locked into Google or give
them more of my data...

~~~
panarky
Personally I choose Debian, but if the alternative is getting locked into
Microsoft and giving them more of my data, then I choose Google.

~~~
Razengan
Surely Google's privacy-invading footprint is far wider than Microsoft's,
including Analytics etc.

------
Wehrdo
Glad that Ubuntu works well for the author, but I've used Ubuntu on and off
for a good 5+ years, and could fill a book with small things that just don't
work quite right, and cumulatively makes it feel like I'm fighting the
computer instead of working with it.

As a brief taste:

* No trackpad swipe gestures (plus many more subtle trackpad issues)

* Pre-Wayland the only way to attach a second screen at a different DPI was with xrandr that caused random flickering

* Accidentally bricked it once because I restarted while updates were happening in the background (no indication they were, and no prompt to let me know before restarting)

I could go on for awhile...

~~~
jjoonathan
On my Dell Precision 6800:

* "Supported" ubuntu was so old that neither Chrome nor Firefox would update

* Latest ubuntu constantly toggled the backlight at 30fps (yes, really).

* They didn't provide a driver package, instead they provided a utility to bake drivers into install media. Naturally, it didn't work, the documentation described a significantly different version.

* All these problems were well-represented in forlorn solutionless forum / stack overflow threads.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Where did you get info on what the "supported" Ubuntu version is? I've
installed 18.04 on C2D machines and it looks like your machine has a Haswell
CPU. The latest version of any Linux distro you want will work.

Also, did you ever try these utilities to set the backlight PWM?
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/backlight#Backlight_PWM...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/backlight#Backlight_PWM_modulation_frequency_.28Intel_i915_only.29)

~~~
jandrese
I think he's referring to the version that Dell ships with the laptop. But
that laptop has been out of support from Dell for so long I don't know why
this is a problem, it's not like you were going to be able to call them up and
get support on it anyway.

In my experience Ubuntu on Dell laptops tends to just work. Even things you
might not expect like the volume keys on the keyboard.

------
kurtisc
The author praises the package manager as a positive, not a negative as I
usually see from people used to downloading *.exe installers. He's used other
distros, plus a Mac, in the past, but I wonder if phone app stores (plus
Windows' own software store) have made this become a more natural method of
installing software for the average user?

~~~
cix_pkez
I switched from Windows to Linux before I had a smartphone and appreciate the
package manager. I got a Macbook for work and lamented the lack of package
manager (homebrew is a weak substitute in several ways).

~~~
rbanffy
Macs have the App Store, which works well for GUI programs. On the CLI side I
have played with Brew (and Fink a long time ago), but I prefer MacPorts
because it feels more solid (at the expense of not having all of the bleeding
edge stuff.

~~~
cix_pkez
Ah, yes, but my package manager covers every piece of software I use. No
specialized update services. It seems like a small thing, but it's more
pleasant.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
And if it doesn't cover software you use, then it sucks to be you. Or if you
want to install an application to a different disk. Or if you want to have two
different versions of an application installed. Or if you want to use an
application that relies on dependencies your package manager has decided are
incompatible. The package management paradigm has its own set of limitations
and flaws.

~~~
cix_pkez
I've really not had any issues finding what I need for Arch Linux.

If you want to install to a different disk, you could still install the raw
binary, or mount a directory in your applications directory.

Those are just hard situations in general. I'm a big advocate of statically
linking anything possible, because I have disk space galore and dependencies
can be a pain as for your last point.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
They aren't hard problems at all. Even DOS handled them with ease. The problem
is that the culture of application development around systems with package
managers doesn't consider these use cases at all, forcing you to jump through
a bunch of hacky hoops to do deal with them. Case in point: symlinking or
mount-based tricks because developers hardcode paths.

~~~
cix_pkez
Having multiple versions of dependency libraries was a pain on DOS, Windows,
... It just is what it is. For the record, you can have multiple versions on
any OS, but it's important they have a version in their name and that the
dependent application is aware of that convention.

The specifics of path layout is just how Unix-like systems do things in
general. It's not all that different on MacOS.

If you really like the filesystem layout of Windows, just use Windows. If you
really like `exe` files, just use Windows. I don't see the problem.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Having multiple versions of dependency libraries was a pain on DOS

DOS didn't even have the concept of a dependency being separate from the
application, so i'm not sure what you're trying to say. MacOS classic also
didn't. Windows didn't either, really, until DLLs became a fad and ushered in
the era of DLL hell.

> If you really like the filesystem layout of Windows, just use Windows. If
> you really like `exe` files, just use Windows. I don't see the problem.

I don't particularly like the way Windows works these days because it is
becoming more like UNIX, and installers certainly aren't a great idea but I
still prefer them to package managers.

There's no problem, I'm Just expressing an opinion about package management,
same as you. If the Linux community doesn't agree, and they've made it quite
clear that they don't, then that's fine and I'll just continue not to use
their OS like most people.

------
bitwize
I freakin' love Linux as a personal workstation OS. I got into it in 1995,
back in the days when Linux was punk rawk and you had to dig around on tsx-11
and sunsite to find things to run on it. I still dual-booted Windows there for
a few years. Then I noticed something: Windows would, suddenly and without
warning, stop working. As in, blue screen on first boot. All the way up
through Windows 2000 -- 9x, NT, didn't matter. Windows would find a way to
fail and, often as not, take the whole disk partition with it.

So I decided, okay, Microsoft, if that's the way you're gonna be, fuck you.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Windows "Just Works" out of the box. Except when it
doesn't, in which case you're up shit creek. The extra tweaking I had to do to
get Linux fully going was well worth it because once Linux was configured, it
would stay that way -- forever if need be.

For that reason I still run the same distro today as I did back then --
Slackware. Where other distros try to win you over with newness and shininess,
Slackware is shibui. Shibui is the Japanese aesthetic of crafting simple
objects out of natural materials, in such a way that the natural texture of
the material shows through and gives the object an understated beauty.
Slackware is a simple distro put together in such a way that the "natural
texture" of Unix shows through, making it easy to configure to your liking
provided you're willing to learn the command line and some basic configuration
files. It's very much like a BSD in that regard.

I know I'm not a typical user, but I fit the profile of an ordinary Linux user
from another era. I'm glad to see more and more Windows users give Linux a
try, but I just hope there'll still be room for people like me in the vast and
changing Linux ecosystem.

~~~
mscasts
AFAIK, Slackware doesn't even have a package manager, does it?

The only experience I had with Slackware was just that, I installed it, found
out there is no package manager and installed Ubuntu.

I have a hard time understanding why someone would use Slackware when there is
distros that is literally better at every aspect.

~~~
Shorel
I used Slackware about a decade before the first release of Ubuntu.

So that's the answer. Because it was the only thing that existed back then.

------
kanishkdudeja
The only issue I face with Linux on my Dell XPS 13 is the sub-par touchpad
experience.

If I use Ubuntu with XOrg, I don't have features like touch rejection while
typing etc.

If I use Ubuntu with Wayland, my cursor is all over the place.

~~~
davidbanham
It's a bit of a pain that it doesn't work well out of the box, but the
situation can be fixed with a little tuning of your xorg configuration file.

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Usin...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics#Using_the_driver.27s_automatic_palm_detection)

~~~
majewsky
For reference, this is what I use on my notebook (Thinkpad E485):
[https://github.com/majewsky/system-
configuration/blob/30dbd7...](https://github.com/majewsky/system-
configuration/blob/30dbd7c9e2ef0c66dd7eea398755706a3e05be8b/holodeck-
traal.pkg.toml#L91-L106)

------
zhte415
On reflecting the writer's use-case, and my own use-cases for enjoying both
Linux (Ubuntu, but Gnome3 no Unity) and Windows:

I've used Linux for 15 years. It truly was a pain getting things like ADSL
modems (wired) connecting. But that was 15 years ago and not the point of this
post.

I use Linux at home -

Gnome gives me no task-bar, or a highly customisable one if I want that. I'm
focused in the application that I'm in. The UI supports the *NIX philosophy
that one app does one app's job well, and if more need to be binded together,
that's OK too. I feel peaceful in Linux. Terminal is running and that's an
alt-tab away. Mouse to the top-left gives me other apps, though only ones I
regularly find useful. Mint might not give the same.

Linux, or my Linux setup, allows me focus.

I use Windows at work -

Windows has a taskbar. Everything is in the Windows menu. The taskbar can be
hidden but mouse-over activates it, and the Windows menu can be customised,
but it still feels there as a distraction. Office is an outstanding piece of
software today; Outlook: I used to receive 400+ email per day, and know people
that get 2000+ everyday too - Outlook makes that almost manageable; Excel and
Powerpoint are astoundingly good at their scope; Word, I transitioned to
pmwiki (need for collaboration and flexibility); Sharepoint and AD
integration... obviously this is a corporate environment.

Windows feels distracting. Adding a Linux sub-system doesn't change this UX
(for me).

What works for me -

In a working environment I have Linux running on a VM and spend 60% of my time
in this. At home I have a Windows VM running 20% when I want the best of
Windows (which, for me, is Office). Not a gamer so no input there.

Choose the most comfortable tool for the job. YMMV.

~~~
cix_pkez
Exactly. I've used all 3 major OSs and when we get into these discussions, you
have to look at how each has its own pain points to be fair. Overall, Linux is
a clear win for me. But YMMV, indeed.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It's a big problem though that when pain points are brought up the response is
often to just point at one of the other OSs's pain points and dismiss the
criticism. Unfortunately we can do very little to make Windows or MacOS better
other than complain to the deaf ears of the companies that own them, but
theoretically Linux Desktop could be better if complaints weren't simply
dismissed in this fashion.

~~~
cix_pkez
Yeah, I agree.

I've really taken the time to look at the pros and cons of each, but even a
bundled list like that would likely not be useful to anyone else.

But at least I can fix the flaws I see on Linux (often).

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Sure, maybe, if you have the time and expertise to fix those flaws. But if the
community doesn't adopt your fixes then you're stuck maintaining them yourself
forever.

Over the years I've seen several solutions to my personal gripes with Linux
Desktop, and they are routinely ignored or rejected because the culture as a
whole just doesn't seem to actually care about those problems, or doesn't even
believe they are problems.

~~~
cix_pkez
I haven't had the same experience. Which distros have you tried? Perhaps
another would be a better fit technically or community-wise. I'd recommend
Manjaro for a rolling release (no major reinstall every year), a focus on
user-friendliness, a friendly community, as well as being based on Arch, which
means the platinum-standard Arch Wiki is available as documentation for you.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I've tried many. The problems I have with the Linux Desktop are not solved by
any of them, though Nitrux at least tries to deal with one, albeit poorly.
This is because the problems I have are pretty much endemic to the thought
process of people who use and develop for UNIX systems. Things like hardcoded
paths, the weird file hierarchy (please don't try and "explain" it, I know how
it works and the reasoning behind it, I just disagree with it), no separation
between system and application, overly complex and convoluted abstractions,
etc.

>a rolling release (no major reinstall every year)

In my experience, rolling release just break things more often.

------
julienfr112
I'm using Ubuntu since almost 10 years. I rediscovered windows 10 and i have
to admit it's pretty good : more responsive than Ubuntu, more pretty. On the
down side, you have to download drivers even for very common devices like for
the wifi card of Intel nucs. I miss also the simplicity of installing software
and library (sudo apt get...) Vs downloading an installer, the installer
download something, clicking ok ok ok ok ok ...

------
Theodores
Ubuntu works great for me and has done on every machine I have installed it on
over the last decade or so. I find that the support for drivers is much better
than with Windows except for when it comes to wi-fi. This means I have a
drawer full of external wi-fi dongles and miscellaneous folders full of
drivers that don't quite work.

Despite this I find Ubuntu to be a much more productive OS than the
alternatives available.

What I do not understand is why people are so willing to give Ubuntu a hard
time. On any discussion there are people from Windows or OSX that point out
their negative experiences of Linux whilst being blind to the deficiencies of
their own paid-for OS. It seems as if it is easy to write 'yeah I tried Linux
for a couple of weeks five years ago and I thought the start menu was naff
plus I couldn't get x to work' or to moan about the command line aspect.

It is much harder to write constructively so any discussion of Linux comes
down to many subjective judgements.

~~~
rbanffy
When was the last time `apt dist-upgrade` did delete all your files? Oh...
Never ;-)

It's hard to read all these opinions when my own experience with Windows is
that I won't touch it with a pole. And God help me if the wireless fails (my
wife's corporate issued Windows laptop could connect with the Starbucks across
the road, but not with the stock D-Link at home) because there are at least 3
vendor specific control panels in addition to the Windows one, all showing
conflicting information (and nothing on what actually failed).

Windows users are so shenanigan-tolerant when it comes to Windows it's a bit
surprising they don't like rock-solid distros like Ubuntu or Fedora.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> When was the last time `apt dist-upgrade` did delete all your files? Oh...
> Never ;-)

On the other hand, I have had it brick the package manager to the point that
only reinstalling the OS from scratch would fix it, or break perfectly
functional existing applications by replacing their libraries with
incompatible versions.

I think if you look around you'll find that Linux Desktop users are also
remarkably tolerant of shenanigans. Editing poorly documented text-based
config files by hand, having to compile some applications from source to get
an updated version because it isn't in the repo, having to containerize
applications because of the interdependency mess, setting kernel boot
parameters because of strange driver behavior, etc.

Modern OSs just kinda all suck and it's more or less subjective which ones
suck more than the others.

~~~
rbanffy
I don't remember when was the last time I had to edit a config file on a
workstation or compile a program from source or set a kernel boot parameter
(other than because I wanted my console to default to green on black). I'm
pretty sure the last time was before 2010, possibly before 2005.

We containerize apps for a multitude of reasons, one of which is for ease of
integration. Security is also an interesting reason for that. And, once you
get the API stable, it's conceivable to replace it with VMs or off-board
processors.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> I don't remember when was the last time I had to edit a config file on a
> workstation or compile a program from source or set a kernel boot parameter
> (other than because I wanted my console to default to green on black). I'm
> pretty sure the last time was before 2010, possibly before 2005.

Therefore it doesn't happen, right? I had to hand edit config files just the
other day, because the distro I was working with exposed no other mechanism to
work with cron. Change the distro and you just change which parts make you
dive into the config files.

> Security is also an interesting reason for that.

True, but the prevalence of Docker and its lackluster security reputation
suggests that it is not the primary reason. Where else are containers used?
Oh, right, Snap and Flatpak, because it's considered a reasonable way to make
a single application build work across distros.

------
ConcreteRooster
Anyone use Linux on the desktop with a document scanner? A big component of my
at-home PC use is scanning documents (I'm a self-admitted digital hoarder). I
have a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500, which is "supported" by Linux/SANE. I have
tried to use this scanner under Linux, and while it does work, the problem is
that the Windows-only Fujitsu software (ScanSnap Manager) does a lot of useful
things to the scan data: straightens the document if it was fed in at an
angle; converts to PDF; adjusts contrast, white levels, etc so the digital
result magically looks like the physical document; and more I'm probably
forgetting.

I have Ubuntu on a little NUC PC attached to my TV. The other day, I heard the
fan running loudly on this system. Ubuntu's update system, across several
processes, was collectively pegging both CPUs at 100%, causing the fan to ramp
up. Why does an update system (which was waiting on my input) require so much
CPU?

The huge number of distributions is both a blessing and a curse. Ubuntu has
clearly put a lot of effort into the ease-of-use aspect. But what I found
(years ago, to be fair) was that if you had any non-trivial problem, the
forums weren't terribly helpful. On the other hand, a distro like Arch has
fantastic documentation, and really knowledgeable forum users, but you _need_
that because you're doing everything by hand. I haven't found the sweet spot
that gives an Ubuntu-like experience out of the box, but has a very technical
Arch-like community.

The statements the author made early in the article really resonate with me. I
consider myself a Linux "pro", as I've been using it as an enthusiast for 20
years, and have been a professional admin for about a decade (server-side, not
desktop). So I have fixed or feel I can fix just about any Linux issue. But at
this point in my life, after work, I don't have the time or desire to fiddle
with things, I want them to "just work".

~~~
pmercatoris
"I haven't found the sweet spot that gives an Ubuntu-like experience out of
the box, but has a very technical Arch-like community."

For me, that sweet spot is Manjaro. I have been using it daily on a laptop
(T470) at work for nearly 2 years, with barely any problem at all. Moreover,
it gives you many very polished DE options (official and community editions).

------
rospaya
I'm writing this from my XPS 13 using the latest Ubuntu and once I've spent a
few hours configuring everything, it works almost perfectly. There's still a
few bugs, like Ubuntu not remembering the audio settings.

~~~
emptyfile
What? So XPS 13 which you can buy with Ubuntu preinstalled still has parts of
the hardware not working after "a few hours configuring everything"?

I can't understand how that's acceptable to anyone.

Literally every laptop I've installed Linux on had a litany of driver
problems.

~~~
yanonymous2
Compared to installing Windows, which often lacks drivers for the network
adapters, installing Linux is a breeze.

Good luck getting those Windows drivers without a working internet connection.
And good luck explaining your solution to the average, non-technical user.

~~~
donttrack
What? That doesn't make any sense at all. Someone goes through the trouble of
developing a network adapter and doesn't provide a Windows driver??? What DO
they provide drivers for then??

~~~
qu4z-2
The issue is (used to be) that they'd develop the Windows drivers, and publish
them... on their website. Whereas the Linucies would bundle pretty much all
the supported drivers on the install disk.

Precisely _because_ the vendors only write Windows drivers, if it's supported
on Linux it's probably in the kernel tree.

------
ericcholis
I recently switched to an XPS 15 9570 from my Macbook Air. I'm giving windows
a shot for my secondary dev machine (python, docker, php, etc...), while being
fully aware of the persistent Windows 10 issues. So far, the hardest part was
adjusting my keyboard workflow from Mac to Windows.

For the time being, I'm extremely happy with the hardware and satisfied with
Windows. I'll give dual boot a shot in my spare time.

~~~
Amygaz
Same here, except I bought a precision 5530, after 12 years on Mac (2 MBP,
then a MBA). It’s been a few months and I like it, I don’t regret it. I don’t
mind Windows 10 at all, it feels a bit more customizable than MacOS actually.
I do find the way it puts all the files that makes an app work all over the
place. But a lot of people are experts in this. My Linux need is limited so I
run the Ubuntu installed from the Microsoft App Store. Rest of my time is
splitted between Firefox, Conda and Office. I am not doing any serious CAD, so
I didn’t really need the Quadro or the 4K screen, but I have none of the
problems that some are complaining about the XPS and it just looks so great.
Onyx case also!

~~~
ericcholis
Windows Subsystem for Linux is one of the big reasons why I didn't mind
switching.

I tried out a few thinkpads as well, but ultimately went with the XPS

------
Razengan
To add my own anecdote to everyone else's:

I haven't touched Windows or used anything by Microsoft since 2010, save for
trying some games that my friends played. These days, if there's a Windows-
exclusive game I like, I try to run it in CrossOver/Wine or Parallels/VMWare,
or forget about it. Windows machines are synonymous with games consoles for me
now, and between my Nintendo Switch, 3DS, and Mac ports, I feel I'm well-
catered for with regards to games.

I also don't use Google for anything except their search and YouTube, and I
was already using the latter before Google gobbled it. iCloud serves my email
needs just fine. I also try to block as much of Google's cross-site tracking
services on my computers as I can, like Analytics.

If you're horrified or disgusted by the idea of someone sticking solely with
Apple for so long, consider that you and I only prove the point that it _IS_
certainly possible to avoid one or more of the 3 major computing companies
entirely. Once you're used to the alternatives to those, you may never even
miss them.

------
funkythings
The only thing that is stopping me to jump to a linux laptop is battery life.
MacOs is just optimised to a crazy extent. Nothing really comes close to the
same battery performance if you don't want to get your hands dirty with tlp.

~~~
rawfan
From what I heard, this is not true for the Dell XPS 13 and other new
Notebooks that supposedly run well with Linux. I get almost 5 hours out of my
decade-old Thinkpad T410 (original battery). My 2018 Macbook Pro 13" with
touchbar only gets me through 2/3rds of the workday (older models or 15" work
way longer). Apple put in smaller batteries and optimized their own (!) apps
to compensate. You're pretty much forced to use Safari if your don't want even
worse battery life.

~~~
jammygit
I find its all WiFi. On an xps 13 with ubuntu, I get 10-12 hours on low
brightness without wifi, but often 4-6 otherwise with wifi. Its really nice
for roadtrips.

~~~
chadlavi
Turning off wifi is probably just turning off your ability to do a lot of
heavy processing as you interact with the internet, right?

~~~
jandrese
This is my thought. Turn off wifi and you're no longer running the cpu and
memory monster that is a web browser.

But this is something Apple does right. My wife noticed that she can get
around 50% more battery life out of her Macbook using Safari instead of
Firefox. (7-8 hours instead of 4-5).

------
Leace
I've installed Arch on XPS 13 9350 and was also surprised by the amount of
things that worked out of the box: touchpad, HiDPI scaling, different scales
for different monitors, no issues with the Thunderbolt dock. Actually Windows
had more issues for me on this laptop.

Or course one can still screw something up but with a little effort it's easy
to learn how to get out of trouble. Additionally Linux is like Lego - one can
create their own setup, e.g. currently I'm using Yubikey's OpenPGP card to
unlock full-disk encrypted disk. Bitlocker cannot use smartcards (but can use
TPM).

------
chopin
The Linux Mint experience of the author is strange. I was able to install with
no problems on three very different machines (Dell Inspiron, HP Laptop (forgot
the model, it's my daughter's) and an assembled game PC featuring 4 Monitors).
The only qualm I have with it: For fear of data loss I decided against full
disk encryption (the installation procedure asks for it) in expectation that
one can switch after installation (I think Windows is able to do this).
Unfortunately, that is not possible and imposing this later seems to include a
lot of low-level work.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
The article author was on a Linux podcast about a week ago and clarified that
he couldn't reproduce the Mint issue, as it seemed to properly detect it when
he retried later. But he had set strict guidelines for the article--basically,
that he had to do this from a lifelong Windows user's perspective. So if the
distro didn't work the first time, he moved on to the next one.

~~~
chopin
Yeah, I got that and I am absolutely fine with it. A bit strange though that
this happened. Maybe he scrambled something during trying the live image...

As I migrated not only me, but also (non-technical) other users I would have
wanted to stick to Mint even at the cost of jumping through hoops as the
migration is said to be easier for Windows users (as compared to eg. Ubuntu).
We never looked back.

~~~
wes-t
Another anecode here, but I've had the exact same thing happen to me - Mint
failed due to a similar issue during install, while Ubuntu installed without
issue. I ended up using ubuntu for a while

------
apexalpha
>once I've spent a few hours configuring everything

This is what stops noobs from using it.

~~~
izolate
Whoever first brings to market a laptop with Linux that "just works" 100% from
the moment you press the on button, is poised to make a lot of money.

That day will probably never arrive, but it's fun to think about.

~~~
aquabeagle
The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition ships with Ubuntu and should "just work"
100%

[https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-
notebo...](https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-
notebooks/xps-13-developer-
edition/spd/xps-13-9370-laptop/cax13w10p2c606ubuntu)

~~~
CaptSpify
*should

My experience is that it does not.

------
contingencies
My laptop (~99% work only) setup is ZFS root + Gentoo on XPS15:
[https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560)
... but switched from Mac (vs. Windows) after yet another stupid hardware
error and Apple quoting more than the price of the thing to fix it. Haven't
used Windows personally in over a decade. Manage to game a bit, but in general
don't have time anymore. However, just specced a couple of Ryzen workstations
at work, and they will run Windows. More expensive than I expected. I don't
built machines that often anymore. Since when did you need 700W of power and a
dedicated graphics card because CPU doesn't support built-in graphics chip?
This is truly a new world. :)

~~~
Synaesthesia
Try hackintosh. And people tend to recommend way overspecced power supplies.

~~~
contingencies
No time for hackintosh. It's not that people recommend, 450W wouldn't get an
image. Had to chuck it out and upgrade. That's hardware today!

------
simion314
For power users I would suggest Kubuntu LTS, try the live image, if your
hardware works then install it and for a few years you should be good. KDE is
more configurable then GNOME and it does not suffer by the GNOMEs architecture
and memory issues(aggravated if you customize it with extensions)

------
rawoke083600
linux and "new" (i'd say new < 3-5 months) is always tricky in terms of
support from the major distributions without having to fuzz too much. But i
won't have ANYTHING else than linux on my laptop.

------
daledavies
I really have tried to use Ubuntu Destop as my daily driver after using the
server varient for many years in work. It's not great for any "design" related
task where I would normally jump into Adobe CC, no problem I'll just reboot to
Windows for that.

Until one day it just stops working... won't boot, logs you out immediately
after logging in, random UI components become corrupted etc.

At this point I always end up thinking... Well I've got reboot into Windows
now anyway so why bother sifting through Stack Overflow for hours trying to
fix Ubuntu.

~~~
CaptSpify
As a Linux user and advocate, it's really frustrating to see these types of
comments being down-voted. Linux still has a _ton_ of issues OOTB, and
disregarding negative experiences like this won't make them go away.

I wish that instead of preaching Linux when it clearly isn't ready, we'd spend
more time making it ready.

------
Paraesthetic
The problem here is steam has a long way to go in terms of a catalog for
games, and the games that do run are often buggy ports with little support
because developers see less users as less critical for patches.

That said, I can't move to linux purely because the software I need for audio
is far superior on Mac or PC

------
f4stjack
Although I have used Linux on and off for more than 16 years, its main OS
status in my household is nearing its anniversary so I think I am in a
position to share my experience.

The machines I've installed Manjaro are:

\- HP Stream 13 (Celeron 1.6 ghz, 2gb ram 25 gb hdd)

\- Clevo W230ST (i7 3.0 ghz, 16 gb ram, 240 gb SSD)

\- AMD Ryzen 1600x, Nvidia Geforce 1060, 8gb ram 100 gb SSD

First of all, I hadn't experienced a "Okay that's it I am moving to Linux
because of X". It was more of a gradual process. My one limiting factor was
gaming and after realizing I was able to play 103 over 137 games waiting in my
backlog in Steam I decided to give it a try on my Hp Stream - which I call my
Potato.

It needed some tweaking due to HP using rtl8723be and connecting one antennae
for some reason. I needed to compile a kernel module to select the right
antenna. But apart from that it was smooth sailing.

My turning point to using Linux, or rather KDE, was the muscle memory I gained
and the ease of use. For example when you press alt-space kde provides an
easily accessible searcher which I configured to run software only - but it
also searches for anything you write in your file system as well. Secondly,
yakuake is a wonderful tool which provides a terminal just by pressing F12 and
thirdly, last but not the least, KDE Connect is a huge game changer for me.
See, if you are on the same wifi network with your pc you can:

\- see the notifications from your phone and reply back

\- share the clipboard with your pc and phone

\- find your phone if you lost it in your home by ringing it from your pc

\- and it turns off your music player in your pc if you receive a call.

I felt like I was missing those features when I was using Windows in my other
PCs so I converted them to Manjaro as well. They didn't need tweaking compared
to HP; practically everything was working out of the box. The stuff I did was
with Clevo I needed to install Bumblebee (which is VERY easy with Manjaro and
for some weird reason I couldn't do it in Ubuntu derivatives and ended up with
a black screen) to use switchable graphics on it and with the AMD case I
installed Nvidia proprietary drivers for performance and gaming reasons.

Speaking of gaming steam's proton provides a good experience for most of the
games I've tried. Lutris is also good, I tried some System Shock 2 and Fallout
on my potato (because my gut feeling was if a machine with limited resources
run it adequately I wouldn't have any problem with the others and I was right)
and they ran quite good. I experienced some sluggishness with SS2 but well...
that was expected to be honest. HP's 3d performance isn't something to write
home about generally.

As for programming my biggest test was running Microsoft stack. I heard good
stuff about .net core so I started with it and saw that even my potato was
able to run ASP.Net MVC 5 successfully. For a more native experience I decided
to install a server 2016 plus Visual studio in a virtual machine. I used my
clevo to do that and was pleasantly surprised that it ran quite well with
providing 4 cpus + 4gb of ram to run the container. As a personal note I doubt
I'll use it much due to I have exited the IT industry practically and unable
to enter it again, not that I want to any more. (people expect a bachelor's
degree in Engineering or in Programming here and I am a Humanities graduate
with a bachelor in philosophy and a master's in sociology)

Other languages which can be installed on linux natively like python, ruby,
java didn't cause any problems so all was fine on that front.

A question might pop up about Manjaro. Why Manjaro? Well because I think it
has a lesser resource overhead compared to Ubuntu derivatives. The fans on my
clevo never stopped turning with Mint and Kubuntu but Manjaro KDE is a cooler
(no pun intended) experience for it. In addition to that I like AUR and the
concept of rolling release. Another distro which is famous for its up-to-
dateness is OpenSUSE but it borked post install for some weird reason so I
can't say I had a good experience with it.

So I hope I helped with my personal experience with "converting to Linux".
Thanks for reading!

------
datalist
Quite the opposite story of [https://medium.com/@neroux/linux-why-dont-you-
love-me-30cd05...](https://medium.com/@neroux/linux-why-dont-you-love-
me-30cd054f485b)

~~~
GiuseppaAcciaio
I remember when I installed Debian on my old Toshiba laptop in 2004 (all 16x
CDs of it, which a friend had to download for me coz I had no broadband), I
couldn't update it because the ethernet network adapter (no wifi) on my laptop
was not supported... nice to see that this curse still occasionally persists!
If I remember correctly I fixed it by installing a different distro (Ubuntu or
Kubuntu, which surprisingly despite being based on Debian had no issues
recognizing my network adapter)

~~~
majewsky
> nice to see that this curse still occasionally persists /s

FTFY

Seriously, though, that's a huge outlier. I haven't touched a machine in the
last 10 years where Ethernet and Wifi were not supported out-of-the-box.
(Including my new Thinkpad, which I was weary about since it came with an
Atheros Wifi module, but it too worked out-of-the-box without any tinkering).

These days, the biggest issues are with Nvidia GPUs from what I've heard.

~~~
Insanity
The drivers for gpus are a bit annoying but only if you want to game on
Ubuntu.

Nouveau drivers are horrible for performance and the nvidia ones are not
always great, if you can find a compatible one.

That being said - I can't compare with AMD as my last system of Linux with an
AMD gpu for gaming was back when it was an ATI gpu. :p

~~~
majewsky
I have two systems with AMD GPUs: a desktop with a 2015 R9 Nano and a 2018
Thinkpad with a Ryzen APU. The amdgpu driver works perfectly on both of them.
The Ryzen APU has one issue where you need to set `iommu=soft` in the kernel
parameters to get it to boot, but that seems to be more related to the CPU
than the GPU.

~~~
chupasaurus
I don't have that parameter set, everything works fine. Ryzen 2400G.

~~~
majewsky
Maybe it's got to do with the chipset? Not sure, I don't have any other Ryzens
to compare against. But `iommu=soft` is strictly required on my system,
otherwise the screen just stays black after the boot manager.

------
red-tea
I did this ten years ago and I've never looked back. When I see what Windows
10 is today I'm so glad I made the jump. Linux is easier to use than ever. It
wasn't always this easy. I run Gentoo at home and everything just works and
what's more is I understand why it works (well, mostly).

