

Ask HN: Linux on a notebook - scarmig

Hi all,<p>So, I'm looking at getting a new notebook and wanted some input. Right now I imagine three options:<p>1) Native Linux. This is what I've done for the past two laptops I've gotten, currently running Ubuntu on an x220. It scores high marks on the user experience side of things, but I'm unhappy with it otherwise. I still consistently get 20-30% lower battery life than when running under Windows, and various other annoyances (sometimes not going to sleep when closed, for instance). Even getting there, though involved a lot of really stupid bullshit. Making it into a usable experience was a total PITA, and I'd seriously pay someone a lot of money not to have to deal with it again, except I don't trust anyone else not to screw things up. For that reason I'm disinclined to take this option again, unless there's a simple way to get things working. In an easy, user-friendly way, not a "it's theoretically possible if you spend a couple days of your life messing with config files" type of way.<p>2) Linux on a VM. I have little experience with VMs, but this option appeals to me: I imagine it minimizes the amount of "stupid bullshit" I'd have to deal with, and even though it would involve some time investment on my part, I see it as time well spent. Do people who have tried this option like it? What virtualization software do you use? And most importantly how taxing is running the VM constantly on battery life?<p>3) Learn to live with OSX. If I understand correctly, it's possible to run X11 on OSX. Is this easy or obnoxious to do? Can you get XMonad up and running without the OSX dock/menubar/etc? I have no real ideological preference for Linux and really just need a good Unix to work with. Do people have any experiences with this?<p>I'm also open to other suggestions, if you have them.
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ohgodthecat3
Well you could look here: <http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/>

But your laptop is already certified there, the sleep thing has been around in
linux for a long time and the only thing is to make sure it goes to sleep
before you put it away or shut it down when you are done.

Battery life again isn't going to improve with another laptop windows should
be better for pretty much every supported laptop, you could look into buying a
bigger battery maybe?

You could try System76 but I don't know that they will be better than an x220

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japhyr
I used a System 76 machine (pangolin) for two years. It was great, except
battery life was never more than 1.5hrs. That's pretty bad for a 15" laptop.

If the machine will always be plugged in, I recommend System 76. But if
battery life is an issue, there are better laptops out there.

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RobGR
My next linux laptop will probably be a Dell XPS from the Sputnik project:
[http://bartongeorge.net/2012/05/07/introducing-project-
sputn...](http://bartongeorge.net/2012/05/07/introducing-project-sputnik-
developer-laptop/)

I think it's interesting because of the notion of having some sort of Chef or
other configuration management on Github, and then being able to fork that for
particular development purposes or preferences and switch between them. I
gather from some of the other interviews that the sputnik project is aiming
for something like that.

As far as hardware goes, I like Lenovo ThninkPads best, and the Dell E65xx
series that kind of copy them are also pretty good. I expect to screw around
googling driver settings and etc on any new hardware I buy, so I'm not to
worried about "just working". Someone else's definition of everything "just
working" probably isn't good enough for me anyway.

Running clones of specific production environments in a VM is a good idea,
using it as your main everyday interface is not, IMHO.

~~~
thejteam
Second the Lenovo Thinkpads. Right now I am running a T510 with out of the box
CentOS 6.2 (All default options chosen during installation, no tweaking
afterwards) and I get battery life in excess of 3.5 hours.

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oliwarner
Native is easy enough if you're willing to either shop around (our Samsung
Q330 i3 took minimal messing around with for 11.10 and "just worked"™ for
12.04) or pay somebody.

You say you're willing to pay so take a look at people like Zareason and
System76 -- people who design the hardware around what will work in Linux. You
pay them over the odds, they support you.

But don't get hung up on some features. Battery life is one of those where
everybody seems to get the same drop vs Windows. Yeah, I'd really like those
bugs found and fixed but it's not going to affect my purchasing decisions. If
I need long battery life, I just look at bigger batteries (or slower CPUs).
Graphics is another interesting topic.

I'd also go out of my way to avoid dual-GPUs (Optimus et al) for the moment.
They do work (bumblebee, ironhide, tbp, etc) but having to prepend things with
optirun can get annoying - plus they're another power drain.

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signalsignal
If you have no ideological preference then use OS X. It uses a real unix and
XQuartz is very up to date. You can use Homebrew, but I had some major issues
with in the past so YMMV. I personally use MacPorts as Fink is too out of date
as I have a 500gb hd and I prefer the 3rd party software to have separate
dependencies from the core Mac system software.

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khyryk
Try using powertop to help tweak power settings Linux may have overlooked by
default. It's in the repos, last time I checked.

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falling
3) Don’t try to bend OS X to be what it isn’t: you will be frustrated,
disappointed and will not succeed.

If you decide to learn to live with it, actually learn to live with it: you
_will_ have to adopt new usage patterns and tools. Don’t try to turn it into
Ubuntu, it’s not.

