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Comment by snuxoll | Hacker News Reader

My W540 is absolute shit running Linux too, the thing randomly locks up and just running VMWare workstation causes the damned thing to heat up.

The ThinkPad was once venerable brand, but I've lost all respect for it - at this point I'm probably just going to buy a MacBook Pro and send the W540 back to the office because I'm tired of playing the Linux compatibility game on modern notebooks.

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"at this point I'm probably just going to buy a MacBook Pro and send the W540 back to the office because I'm tired of playing the Linux compatibility game on modern notebooks."

Former ThinkPad fan, current MacBook user: I am likely to buy a Dell for my next laptop. Dell expanded the range of machines that they will preload with (Ubuntu) Linux last year, and were the first big vendor to sign on to the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, so that supported computers can get easily get firmware upgrades.

Former mac user, now Dell XPS user - my first impressions were great, second not so much. XPS laptops have a horrendous coil whine and a lot of model lines have an issue where the computer won't go to sleep(instead stays on with the fan off, resulting in the machine reaching burning temperatures if you just close the lid and put it in your bag). I've had the motherboard replaced 3 times now - both issues are still present. There's thread upon thread upon thread about both on Dell forums - and it seems Dell doesn't have an engineering solution, despite being on the 7th(?) generation of that laptop.

"Former mac user, now Dell XPS user - my first impressions were great, second not so much."

Yeah, I definitely should have qualified that I probably would not get an XPS, because there seem to be consistent issues with that line. That's why I'm pleased to see that Dell have expanded the number of ranges that they offer Linux support on: hopefully there will be some good models at the time that I need to buy a new machine. Or I could buy an unsupported model: none of the ThinkPads that I used had Linux support from the vendor.

Except Dell's QA is an utter shit. Around here we have eight XPS 13, two XPS 15, and only one XPS 15 and one XPS 13 didn't had any problems. From stuck fan to failed SSD or the computer that just won't wake up.

Yea my XPS 15 running Linux is falling apart. The compatibility was all there, but the touchpad already broke; speakers are blown (no hardware limiter and it was over 100% when I unplugged some USB speakers) and the battery is even starting to swell. I just use it as a desktop now.

I use an HP Spectre as my Linux laptop now. Everything worked on a modern kernel out of the box and the quality seems way better.

FYI Dell issued a recall for XPS batteries. You should check their support pages and make sure to get it replaced (or have one shipped to you).

"I use an HP Spectre as my Linux laptop now. Everything worked on a modern kernel out of the box and the quality seems way better."

I know that Martin Wimpress, the Ubuntu MATE lead, sometimes uses a Spectre. They look to be quite a different thing to what we might expect from a HP laptop.

Probooks and Elitebooks have generally been quite good, we used them for many years at my current workplace, before switching to Thinkpads around the end of the T430/X230 generation.

I certainly didn't have any complaints about them. Absolutely stay away from consumer models, obviously.

I'm assuming you're going to switch to MacOS then, because running Linux on a modern MacBook Pro is a pain and a half. I did a write-up on it:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/linux-on-a-macbook-pro-14-3/

My Wi-Fi and battery status still don't work. I use a Wi-Fi dongle at work. :-P

Yes, I would run macOS - beyond my hardware issues and as much as I love open source desktops there's still too many software pains I have as well. Evolution has a terrible UI and does not play nicely with calendars on Exchange servers (I frequently find my attendance status has not been sent, plus it often won't show me the status of attendees to meetings I have sent out), Akonadi's EWS provider likes to randomly freeze up trying to sync my mailbox (which is large, but people have larger IMAP inboxes with GMail) so Kontact/KMail isn't a great solution either.

VMWare's stupid kernel modules are always breaking in one way or another as well, plus I never get guest 3D support because of the switchable graphics in my laptop and I just cannot be bothered to fight and fight to get it to work. I tried using gnome-boxes instead for a while, but audio inside the guest would constantly get garbled and have cuts, support for guest drivers beyond VirtIO disk/network was hit and miss.

I've got more, but I don't want to make it into a rant about the state of the Linux desktop - because for all the problems I have I still love it, but I need a computer and software that works smoothly out of the box because I have work to get done.

Uhh. This is depressing.

I picked up Slackware and FreeBSD a long time ago and had so much fun plus found a career.

I finally through in the towel with Linux as my main machine a long time ago and went back to Windows as 7 was pretty good.

With Win10, I've tried to deal with both VMs and WSL, but once I got a MBP there was no turning back. I simply don't have the time or patience to deal with the issues Linux now has.

Don't know what the solution is. Perhaps dump Systemd and the rest of RedHat's decision.

Or maybe Redhat, Suse, or whover could just get one disto working perfectly on two or three hardware models a la Apple.

But not happy with how things have turned our with Linux on the desktop.

https://system76.com/ and https://www.thinkpenguin.com/ both sell laptops specifically for the Linux market. Recent Dell XPS laptops are also supposed to be great.

In europe you can order similar machines tuxedocomputers.com

Disclaimer: Just a customer

As a contrary point of view - I have a W541 that is provided by my enterprise overlord including all the virus scanner and corporate crap that comes with it on Windows. I actually quite like Windows, but I prefer to use the right tool for the job - which is often Linux. I boot into Linux (daily) without one issue at all - it all worked out of the box and I have no complaints at all.

The closest thing to an issue is the poor battery life - but this has been my experience with all laptops and Linux.

I can't comment on the W540, and I wonder if it is that different compared to the W541.

Check out the Dell XPS 13 which you can buy with Linux preinstalled (and therefore support out of the box).

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