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I am not sure if this will ever get better. E.g. Intel GPUs that were perfectly fine for quite a while, now have regular hangs with Linux 5.3 and 5.4 [1]. Since Linux 5.4 is an LTS version, various distributions have already switched to it. I had to downgrade to Linux 4.19 on one of my machines, because my GPU locked up ever 1-2 days.

Nonsense like this make Linux difficult to use on a laptop that you have to carry around and get real work done.

[1] https://linuxreviews.org/Linux_Kernel_5.5_Will_Not_Fix_The_F...

That’s strange, usually if you buy hardware with Linux in mind and use stable software packages then you have little to worry about.

Typically Intel GPUs were a safe bet across the board and you had to avoid some of the other ones.

I’m curious to read more into what went wrong, it seems to be across a few bug reports.

> Linux in mind and use stable software packages then you have little to worry about

Linux, and by that I mean all distros, have always had difficulties with basic things such as wifi or hibernation for the better part of the past twenty years.

It's baffling to me this is still an issue in 2020.

I don't understand why Linux still does not have reliable hibernation. Sleep requires working with BIOS and other hardware components, so I could understand that without proper drivers things might be shaky. But hibernate is hardware-agnostic feature so it should be rock-solid by now.

No, it's not really. There's ACPI, but a combination of wiggle room in the standard and vendors saying fuck you to any attempt at rigorous compliance testing means that there's no way to assure that any ACPI implementation will work with drivers the vendor didn't write. The whole state of the PC industry is "does Windows boot/run with this? It does? Ship it."

Sounds kinda like most web development: if it runs on Chrome, it's good enough. (Guilty myself)

Even in Windows they have to workaround some stupid bugs from the OEM or ODM side.

Maybe economics can help.

When anyone else can resell your code, your work becomes a public good.

Public goods are underprovided in equilibrium.

I was reading about who supports i915 and it looks like it was started by a company Tungsten Graphics which got sold to VMWare in 2008. I'm curious if over time the people at VMWare working on it left or put less effort into the codebase (they did a big shakeup of the company in 2016).

If that's the case hopefully it gets more attention eventually. Often with OSS it's some random developer working at some big company supporting these various drivers, not just people in their spare time.

This will always be problem with all software that changes, especially ones supporting hardware that also constantly evolves.

Perhaps System76 should provide Linus with a free laptop to see what the issues are from a Linux standpoint and get them fixed. I think he was using desktops mostly. Probably because of compile times.

Linux' hardware support for laptops is basically an inverted parabola. It starts off bad, then gets good, then goes bad again, as new bugs seep in that never get fixed (Wifi becoming unreliable, lockups during suspend/resume, audio issues, ...).

Fill in Windows and you get the same shit. I think it is often x86 and shitty drivers all around...

My thinkpads haven't really had issues. Had linux exclusively since 1999.

Interestingly, I am running a 10th Gen Intel Iris Pro GPU and had no problems on these kernels, (Arch)/

There were minor issues on 5.5 at the start of the cycle when some patches were overlooked, but that's all fixed now.

I honestly don't experience more problems than with my MacBook, (especially after major upgrades).

Maybe the issue is people just keep defaulting to Ubuntu and equating their experiences there with Linux as a whole. Maybe it just isn't the best distro around.

I'd honestly go with EndeavourOS, Manjaro or if you want to stay in the Ubuntu ecosystem, maybe Mint. I know everybody always says just switch distros, but honestly Ubuntu hasn't been the best distro around for anything for over a decade.

I would be really surprised if Ubuntu had issues that Manjaro or Arch don't have. Debian and Ubuntu is usually pretty ahead on testing different hardware combinations. Most likely this is some hardware-specific issue and you don't own the same hardware as GP.

No doubt Canonical tests more, but there's something about the way they configure the kernel and packages that gave me more problems over the years than most other distros. In fact, the first Ubuntu install ever, back in '06 failed for me completely, while Mandrake worked.

I do appreciate that this is subjective, I just wished Ubuntu isn't the only choice people evaluated when trying Linux.

Ubuntu has been fairly solid for me, over several laptops and almost a decade of releases.

Freezes due to graphics drivers (on Intel) is something from ~3-5 years ago, I'd say.

And let's be realistic, when people are just trying GNU/Linux (for the first time), they will go for the most popular and user-friendly distro available. Or, at least, they should.

I've been using ubuntu since the first release. I have issues with the switch unity gnome plus the odd kernel issue. Battery performance also at times has been an issue.

I stick to several year old thinkpads for hardware and LTS releases though. Mostly I just want the OS to get out of the way.

Normally it just works though.

I am not using Ubuntu or an Ubuntu derivative. Thank god I am using NixOS, which makes it very trivial to switch between kernel versions including external modules such as ZFS.

When it comes to Arch, there is a long thread about this issue in the forums:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=250765

As I said, they forgot to include Intel GPU patches at the start of the 5.5 kernel series[1], that's been resolved, I personally haven't seen it elsewhere, but of course incompatibilities happen.

1 - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....

There's likely more than one bug, but this is the one I've followed as the most egregious experience I've had in quite some time, if ever, on Linux.

GPU hang on transition to idle https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/intel/issues/673

I don't know whether this qualifies as a break with no regressions in user space rule. I didn't run into it on either 5.3 or 5.5. My understanding is the backport to fix on 5.4 would be too complicated. Therefore I wonder why not just revert the whole thing from 5.4? I don't know the answer to that. I gave up on it totally and moved to 5.5rc kernels, rather than deal with 5.4.

Given this fact of 5.4's behavior, I think it's a bad idea for a distribution to pick that kernel to use, if they can't do the backport themselves, and yet expect to support i915 hardware. Yep, it's an LTS kernel. Ordinarily it's reasonable to pick an LTS for a distribution, but not this time around. Maybe Ubuntu should have shipped a late 5.3.x and then updated to 5.4 once fixed? I don't know if it even has been fixed now in 5.4, although I haven't gotten any emails on that bug since March 10.

> wifi setup 1000x more complex than windows/osx

Which DE? Ultimately most DEs use NetworkManager but they have different GUI frontends. KDE Plasma's frontend has all options inside one menu. I never found it more difficult than Windows but that being said, I've left Windows behind about 9 years ago after years of dual booting, so my Windows experience might be outdated.

> Lots of extreme battery drain when trying to do certain activities

I guess that's due to no native video decoding. It's getting there, very slowly. It's being worked on as we speak: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1610199

“Has everything in one menu” already sounds significantly more complex than Windows and macOS. These days their users don’t meed to do much more than selecting a network (or manually enter hidden SSID) and type in a password. The only other option they need is a button to turn wifi on/off.

That's exactly how it works on my Linux laptop (which is GNOME on Arch). I also use a Macbook Pro regularly and I don't think there's a substantive difference in ease-of-use around WiFi configuration.

There is a substantive difference in WPA Enterprise configuration. When connecting with Gnome there are so many options I have to check a screenshot of the correct ones every time I configure it (which I've done 5ish times because of distro hopping+changing my password). On an iphone, all you need to do is write your username and password, then press the "trust certificate" button.

Android has this problem as well which I've always found odd. Connecting t0 802.1x networks in Windows is very straightforward, but for Android I've had to publish a guide with screenshots for people to follow.

I've been running Ubuntu on a Dell XPS at work since 2016. I had problems using a docking station from the start so I removed it from the equation and haven't had any significant other issues since. Battery life is good, no significant networking problems, etc. I've very much enjoyed the experience.

I just assumed that life would only be better on a System 76 machine. I was very surprised by this post.

I have similarly been running Ubuntu on an XPS15 mostly without any issues. Networking has been fine, standby, battery life, all that has been fine.

Takes a little bit of research and tweaking to get it into a good state, but once one has the right kernel opts and GPU power management stuff worked out, it's a breeze. Not everyone wants to do that, but that's the cost of running Linux.

From that point, I found it to be more reliable and pleasant than Windows 10 or Mac, all of which I use on a regular basis.

I think it really depends on what you're trying to do. I'm the only person at my company running linux and I still can't really do things like seamlessly plug/unplug from an external monitor because while some apps scale correctly from HiDPI to normal resolution, the UI doesn't really. There are thankfully linux version of things like Zoom and Slack, and they work, mostly, but for instance I can't use zoom without headphones because pulseaudio is too problematic, whereas it works fine on a mac.

I have the same problem on a 2017 XPS 13 running Windows 10. When I unplug from the Dell D6000 docking station it's a crapshoot whether or not the apps I had running on the external monitors will scale correctly when they get moved to the internal screen. I also run into problems if I plug into the docking station after booting, it frequently doesn't recognize the external monitors (also Dell branded). In order to get everything to work correctly every time I need to shutdown before connecting to or disconnecting from the docking station, and also make sure the monitors are turned on before booting while connected to the docking station.

I have similar problems with the XPS15 and Windows 10.

I had several critical issues with a 2018 Dell XPS 13 w/Ubuntu 18.10 preloaded; namely the wifi would frequently not return after hibernation (needed reboot) and sometimes the entire system wouldn't come back after hibernation.

I tried many fixes, including new kernels, to no avail. Finally I upgraded to 19.04 and everything has worked flawlessly for the past 6 months.

Atheros WiFi? I have the same problem with XPS 15, and it seems a Qualcomm firmware bug[1], not a Linux fault.

[1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196649

I am already running a Linux laptop (ThinkPad t460s) as my daily driver, so I've already conquered the Wifi setup issues, and I've never had problems switching monitors. I haven't tried Zoom but most video conferencing and e.g. YouTube seem to work fine with hardware video acceleration.

I wonder if this laptop would make a good upgrade from the T460s for me.

What browser are you using in Linux that lets you use hardware video acceleration? I was using the patched version of Chromium for awhile...

Firefox Nightly has it now on wayland.

About 6 weeks ago I switched from a Thinkpad to a System76 Darter Pro, and it's been pretty solid. I have none of the problems you describe.

It did require Debian testing, because the Intel GPU drivers for the latest Intel CPUs are not in Debian stable yet. But it's a solid machine, and like the new Lemur Pro, it comes with Coreboot preloaded which is excellent.

That whole kernel 5.4 thing with missing critical fixes for the Intel GPUs was a major screwup though, that's true. But they are all in 5.5 I believe, and have also been backported to the 5.4 kernel that's in Debian testing. Since those landed, my machine has been a pleasure to use.

I'm not disputing your experience, just pointing out that I use a laptop from Lenovo (albeit a Galaga Pro), and have not had any of this. The WiFi and Zoom issues I can definitely say have not impacted me; I cannot honestly say I've tried wired networking with it very much. The battery life has also been fine.

Again, not disputing your experience, just saying mine was different. It was a Galaga Pro vs. your Lemur Pro, but I would have thought the software issues would be more similar than that.

> .. software issues were always letting it down, and I was wasting lots of time trying to patch/fix linux configuration issues & bugs ..

Ten year old FUD!

Still true though.

When I bought my System76 laptop 18 months ago, I promised myself that I would stop my 30+ year Linux habit of playing with system configurations - a fun hobby but a time sink.

I have stuck with System76's branded Ubuntu named Pop!_OS and always install their updates. So far it has been fairly trouble free except for a little time spent when updating CUDA drivers for the GPU.

Heck it's impossible to have consistent keyboard shortcuts across programs, no matter the desktop environment. I tried everything, wrote config files, remapped layouts, set Firefox config values for modifier keys, etc. Impossible. I got close with KDE, but eventually gave up.

My Macbook Air recently died and in a hurry (lockdown is tomorrow) I've bought a refurbished Dell Latitude which is a little bit more powerful (last week). Surprised that Desktop Ubuntu 19.10 still does not compress RAM (but easy fixable) although Windows and Mac do that by default. It is super necessary with Chrome (Apps). Biggest downsite is that programs/sites like Slack, conferences or Youtube videos are not as smooth as on Mac although I have more horsepower now in sense of CPU. I have the big feeling that the CPU scheduler on the Mac&Windows does a way better job than Linux on desktop environments. E.g. hitting the 100% CPU area (only with Chrome somehow) I can hear the crackling sounds on conferencing calls.

Have you tried running Windows 10 on it? I wonder if Windows can handle it any better.

The irony in this is highly underappreciated.

Maybe they just did a poor job with that model? You have way way way more issues with your brand new designed for linux machine than I do with my 2015 thinkpad which has basically none of those issues.

Granted the only video conferencing I've done is google hangouts or facebook.

Needing to restart applications when switching monitors seems particularly strange.

Edit: Ubuntu non lts and gnome anything after 2 have been mediocre bug factories for a while. It's not too shocking to find they still are.

Had similar experience with Entroware laptop - when fan started running, it goes with full speed until I turned off the laptop completely. Tried various linux drivers but none has fixed that issue.

The other issue was with the WiFi - sometimes I had to restart it like literally 10 times to make WiFi module work :|

(once it was connected I had no issues until I've turned laptop off / restart it)

I had a similar experience a few years ago with an "n series" Dell, and the solution was to only use the install disk that came with the machine, and not try to do a full OS install.

I tossed ubuntu+mate on my galago pro 4, works like a champ (and the interface works like every other ubuntu+mate that I have)

Is the lemur notably different?

We run linux on dell XPS13 at work unfortunately its the same. We do run debian stable though.