My solution is to use macbook pro as a terminal and editor, and do most of developments on remotely accessed linux machines. I really tried to transition to Linux but UX is so inferior, and there's very little hope that it improves.
There are more knobs to fiddle with, naturally, but the desktop Linux experience has vastly improved over the last few years, and I'm happy enough with it that I don't see myself willingly going back to OS X or Windows as my primary anytime soon. My desktop feels like the synthesis of all the things I like from both Windows and OSX, with the added benefit of an actual package manager and first-class support for all my development toolchains. The amount of time my coworkers spend fighting oddities in their brew installs becomes really apparent when I'm not fighting those battles.
The hardware (particularly) touchpad is the single biggest advantage Macs have left. I use a mouse rather than touchpad, but if the touchpad is solved, I'd have nothing I'd say that OS X does better.
* Touchpad
* Sleep mode
* USB-C display
If I can't trust that my laptop will go to sleep when I shut the lid and put it in my bag, it's not useful as a portable device.
Then at some point they fixed the issue, which if I remember correctly came down to "stop trying to be fancy and just do the straight-forward thing, which is correct". And since then I've had no issues.
I'm unclear why I had an issue with the Thinkpad but never had issues with any of the 5 or so Dell Inspirons I've had over the years.
Sleep mode. It's failed on my a couple of times in the last year, but my Macbook Pro failed about as often. I'm not sure what the issue is here.
USB-C display. Using one right now. Got a USB-C hub plugged into my Xiaomi Air that is providing it with power, keyboard, mouse, HDD and display. What is the issue you're seeing with this?
My Dell is running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Xiaomi Air is running Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia.
meanwhile the sleeping t470s drains the battery by keeping the RAM alive and eventually runs out. the arch wiki has some content on this, but it did not make me hopeful to get it to work
systemctl hybrid-sleep
How's the battery life? I used to use Linux as my daily driver until about 2015, but grew tired of replacing batteries in laptops that weren't made to have their batteries replaced.
I had done some investigation on this before. After all, if System76 is open software and hardware, I should be able to get an add on right?
Not so fast. It seems part of what makes the Mac touchpad so good is a combination of software and hardware.
Microsoft is taking a stab at this. What they had been doing was treating touchpads as a mouse device ... but the hardware gives hints on gestures, so they have been improving their drivers to allow for better experience with the touchpad. (Rather than emulating a mouse device using a touchpad).
The hardware is a bigger block. Apple holds key patents on their touchpad, including the use of textured glass. The glass gives the experience a different feel, but I bet it also smooths out the signals being sent to the software driver. I don't know for sure -- but even say, my Samsung Chromebook, which has a decent touchpad, still doesn't feel the same as my Mac's touchpad.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/14/apple-wins-utilit...
"More importantly, the patent calls for, in one embodiment, a capacitive track pad with an etched glass surface. Because of its unique properties, and its non-conductive nature, glass allows for high levels of control during the manufacturing process."
"For example, traditional glass has a surface with a high friction coefficient, meaning it resists slippage, making it a less than suitable candidate for trackpad use. However, glass can be made to have a low friction coefficient by etching, sand-blasting, honing, or other methods. This makes the surface smooth and easy to navigate with a finger."
https://www.howtogeek.com/286905/what-is-a-precision-touchpa...
"Traditionally, Windows PC touchpads were implemented in a more one-off way. When you moved your finger across the touchpad, the touchpad driver has to look at the input and convert it to mouse input. The touchpad appears as a normal external mouse—either a USB or PS/2 mouse—to Windows itself. PC manufacturers have to tune the touchpad for their hardware, and the driver is responsible for handling the input. If the touchpad uses multi-finger gestures or has palm rejection support so you don’t accidentally move the cursor while you’re typing, this all has to be implemented by the touchpad driver."
"Microsoft decided to move towards a more standard approach starting with Windows 8.1. It created the “precision touchpad” specification along with touchpad company Synaptics. A PC with a “precision touchpad” doesn’t do all the hard work in its own hardware drivers. Instead, it sends the raw touchpad data to Windows itself. Windows is responsible for reading the input and processing the gestures. Windows understands your PC has a touchpad and approaches it intelligently. The touchpad doesn’t just pretend to be a normal mouse."
In my very obscure case, I got lucky in that suspend was working, then stopped working after a kernel update. Since it was a regression, kernel developers were more interested in tracking down the problem and I was able to find a work around: write PWRB to /proc/acpi/wakeup
The gory details are here, which I expect is so obscure it's not your problem, but shows as tedious as it is, filing bugs with a decently good bug report and willingness to do the work devs need you to do can be worth it. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185521
XPS13 which I have is one of the most widely used linux laptops, and it a symptomatic that it doesn't work well.
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/xps-13-9370-wakes-from-sleep... and
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029474/ubuntu-18-04-dell-xp...
In addition, I always use a pre-sleep script that disables bluetooth. And enables it afterwards.
Hope it helps!
Would those same logs help me debug my issue too?
I've had an XPS 13 9360 for two and a half years now, and an x230 for roughly four years before that. Before then it was a range of cheapo laptops, and while the touchpads and keyboards sucked, sleep mode was fine starting in the late aughts.
I can attest that it took a little while for sleep mode to function at all though. It was a non starter (not intended) in the mid 2000s, but the problems you describe has never been a problem I've had.
As you mentioned, Linux runs on hardware made by hundreds/thousands of different uncoordinated manufacturers. Mac OS runs on a very narrow range of hardware built by the same manufacturer that makes the software. Linux is a very different project to Mac OS.
So take the best examples of Linux machines and compare those with Macbooks. So if eg. Dell XPSes or modern ThinkPad X series have solved the sleep problem consistently then it's fair to compare those with Macbooks.
Of course this doesn't help those people who have trouble with sleep on Linux and hopefully it will get better... but comparing a broad elastic OS running on a vast mess of thousands of different devices with an OS designed specifically for a small range of tightly controlled hardware isn't reasonable. It would make more sense if there were no good examples of decent Linux machines, but this isn't the case.
In fact it shows that they don't at all get the point you've made that Linux runs on orders of magnitude more hardware variants than macOS does and thus it should be obvious that all hardware can't be equally well supported.
From https://github.com/JackHack96/dell-xps-9570-ubuntu-respin/is... from https://github.com/stockmind/dell-xps-9560-ubuntu-respin
What works out-of-the-box: Sleep/wake on Intel
What does't work properly: Sleep/wake on nVidia
I recall the issue is something to do with the chip that switches between the two video outputs?
For non-physical features, I don't really notice any difference, since a full-screen terminal SSH client and Chrome window are the only things I ever run.