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Comment by acomjean | Hacker News Reader

Its 2017 and we developers still don't have an OS/Laptop combo that delights us. Its a series of compromises, particularly with linux.

I'm wondering why there isn't a linux on laptop combo thats just great. Lack of resources? Demand? Is linux so fragmented that it can't martial the dev effort on laptops?

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Driver support. App support. Which form a vicious cycle together with demand.

EDIT That's not to say that there aren't options that aren't great for given use-cases. E.g. as a developer I'm very happy with my linux-on-laptop. But if someone sends me an Office doc I am in a position to tell them to send me plain text or pdf or I won't be reading it. Not everyone is.

Libre office generally just works. I have real Word in Wine that works fine too.

But yeah apps can be tricky. I am happy with my laptop as well (Linux).

if Libreoffice works fine, why have "real" Word at all?

For viewing. For most things. Once in a while libre will mangle a file or subtly change formatting. For viewing 100%. For editing 90%. For the other rare times Real Word.

The biggest issue is drivers. Specifically video. Sure the landscape is improving, but if you have a cheap integrated nvidia or amd card, you get awful driver support; especially in linux.

That being said, anyone running intel graphics for the last ~5-10 years has enjoyed much better driver support.

I use Arch Linux / i3 on an early 2013 retina Macbook Pro, and it's just perfect. Took a little bit of time to set up, but everything works (including things like suspend, function keys, kb backlight etc) and with really good battery life. The resolution is just nice to use without having to worry too much about scaling issues.

I had a 32GB Dell i7 XPS15 with 4K display previously and this slightly old MBP runs Linux much better. As a bonus I can dual boot into MacOS too when I want to use Photoshop or whatever, but I very rarely do.

Sierra was the end of the line for me. Dell XPS 13 DE. i3 for WM. It has taken a few weeks of tweaking but it is a one time investment in many areas (backups, configs, wrangling iptables, etc.). If you stick with Unity it is nearly flawless. Build isn't like a Macs but it is good. I am... Ok. Some apps leave something to be desired but my core work is fine.

What would you say is missing or handled worse than in comparable scenarios on mobile hardware in Mac/Win? Not everything-- just something that stood out to you or that you felt that you should have been able to do but couldn't easily.

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