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Comment by Osiris | Hacker News Reader

You think that's bad? I'm using Linux at work on a laptop specifically designed for Linux and it's been a nightmare to get even basic functions to work right. The computer immediately resumes after going to sleep, it took several days to get hibernation working, the nvidia driver keeps locking up the system, external monitors aren't automatically detected, after an apt upgrade, hibernation stops working because my EFI loader file gets overwritten and I can't figure out from where, I managed to completely break X after trying to get Optimus (GPU switching) to work, applications written in different GUI frameworks (QT, GTK) use different themes and even different mouse cursors, applets don't always show up, bluetooth crashes randomly, and the list goes on.

Windows has annoyances, but Linux is like building a car in a garage full of car parts. Yes, you can build a working car, but you better be a mechanic.

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Don’t use Linux with a laptop which has discrete graphics. I use Thinkpads with integrated graphics, and haven’t had a problem with drivers for a decade. I don’t use hibernation though, I just use standby.

Agreed. So many things breaking are to do with the binary dgpu drivers, that issue goes away with intel.

I've been running ubuntuMATE for years on my t450s. It is remarkably boring. The only things that don't work for me is the fingerprint reader and docking/undocking can be funny if done hot.

Docking just works on my Neon on Dell E74-something setup.

But.. if you want to game and/or do stuff like games programming, video rendering etc you kind of want discrete graphics.

If you want to do any of those things, Linux is already so niche that you probably know what you're getting yourself into.

But for most people, the discrete graphics option is easier and more stable, but counter-intuitive - usually more power is better. So worth mentioning.

This is a System76 laptop which only puts Linux on their laptops, so it's specifically designed for it. The two mDP connectors are only connected to the Nvidia chip, so maybe the Intel IGP isn't powerful enough to drive 3 4k monitors at a time (4k internal, 2x 4k external).

If you bought a laptop which came with Linux, why did you fight battles with GPU and hybernation? It is supposed to be supported, so let the vendor solve the issues. Or return the computer, if they can't. That's exactly where the vendors' value proposition comes from, have them earn their money.

Or use one that are supported by the open-source amdgpu drivers. Those have been pretty good.

that's the reason why I went with Win+WSL in the first place, I feared all the driver crap.

So... our choice now is between a great OS on laptops with next to no I/O and totally unacceptable keyboard, OR great hardware running on an OS that's put together with duct-tape and strings?

Yes unfortunately that's about it.

At this point, for me the best option is charge more and put up with windows being a dick periodically.

We really thought the future was great right around 2007 didn't we? You had nicely put together Macbooks that could run all the software you wanted, including from Windows and Linux land, they had pretty good support and overall decent hardware. Then they released the iPhone, SJ died, and everyone else in their management just started hunting either quarterly numbers or pretty&stupid design that works well for TV ads. It's a wonder that their software departments have actually turned around and started producing decent releases again. Here's to hope their Mac department will recover as well.

Stick some distros on a USB stick and give them a go. Your 480s should be fine with it if you're on Intel graphics. I'd recommend Ubuntu in whatever flavor appeals...

I'm not sure I ever liked the Mac hardware. I thought I did. TBH the old white plastic MacBooks running 10.4 was my last good experience. After that I bought a top end 2011 15" rMBP with 16Gb of RAM and 1TiB SSD.

What do I use now?

A second hand i5 T440, because it's more productive.

I started with a Powerbook 12inch. Totally fell in love with that thing. By far the best trackpad at the time, plus a very decent keyboard. It even had CD burner and expandable RAM in an incredibly tight package. From then on their hardware became worse with every iteration in some way or another - either it was graphics driver issues, thermals, faulty boards, or now completely crap I/O and keyboard. But IMO till 2016 they still had overall the better package than windows PCs, mostly thanks to a far superior OS.

Try to install Fedora Linux on it. It should work okayish on such hardware, if you switch it to Mate desktop (Gnome 2 fork): https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/ .

Look, it sucks to find out there are thousands of devices, but none with the specific attributes you want. (I'm currently looking for a phone.)

However, the (sad?) truth is for most people, MacBooks works just fine, but they aren't vocal about that. Personally, I thought I'd hate the new ones, but was given one for work, and it's fine - to the point where I bought one for home, too

I think I could live with the 2018 iteration of the keyboard, although I‘d want to wait another 6M at least to see about reliability. But the dongles man, they‘d just give me headaches. Using a Thinkpad just reminds me of how great it is to have all the ports built-in.

I actually love usb-c. Thought I'd hate it, but I vastly underestimated how much I plug stuff in. It helps that usb-c docks are pretty awesome if you don't buy the cheap ones. My only issue is Yubikeys when I'm not docked, which is only for meetings though.

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