[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.... [2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net.g...
I quit MacOS a little over 10 years ago now. I used to be a huge Mac fan, even subscribing to MacAddict magazine and frequenting the Mac Rumors website.
It was a cult and I have absolutely no regrets leaving. Especially now that Bitwig runs on Linux, what would I ever need a Mac for?
I'm using Arch Linux and it's the most stable operating system I've ever used. I've gone more than 4 years with the same installation. Thanks to the Arch wiki I now have working knowledge of things like systemd and how to compile kernel modules. These things really aren't nearly as scary as they sound. I didn't learn about them by reading the longwinded `man` pages... I learned about them from the Arch wiki!
lol
(from an arch user)
And because I'm always getting the latest stable versions of things, bugs often disappear magically, rather than lingering on until the next major upgrade.
And yeah I mean you gotta follow some key rules, like never install anything without the `u` flag, etc.
This is for what I consider critical stuff: network drivers, suspend/sleep, power management, display brightness etc.
My impression is that it is not any more or less of a mess than it was in the 2000s, or even in the late 90s.
All that being said, it’s still wonderful and gratifying once you have everything tuned to your liking.
It’s mid-2012 model. Core 2 cpu with Broadcom 43xx
If you are afraid of things getting broken, simply use NixOS. All upgrades can be easily rolled back, and you can freeze updates of some packages, or get packages through different channels with different stability compromises. I prefer to get everything through rolling release channels, as then bugs come one by one.
I've been running Linux on a MacBook Air 11 2012 for years, and everything worked out of the box from day 1. For the record, that's a pure Intel machine with the exception of a Broadcom wireless card. Said card works equally bad in Linux and Mac, I don't get why Apple keeps sticking to this brand.
I was hoping to upgrade to one of the new 2020 Airs, which are again providing terrific value, a great screen and keyboard. Sadly, the T2 chip makes things a bit difficult. It's getting support for Linux, but there are still many glitches. My Mac was broken by some stupid inspector in my rental property, and it's sadly not so easy to find a decent replacement with all COVID restrictions.
Another option is the Surface line, which is surprisingly well supported. The Surface Go, for example, works incredibly well as a tablet. All recent Surface machines work quite well in Linux.
Else, your best bet is a ThinkPad or an XPS. Unfortunately, Chromebooks are no longer so easy to reflash.
1 point sample here but I never manage to get reliable WiFi on a NUC6i7KYK. Hardware that should be included in the “well known” category.
Ubuntu runs a certification program. I wish there was an independent party certifying hardware for Linux. And they looked into all the details, such as battery discharge triggering ACPI events, 802.11 functions supported by wireless card and things like that.
Not blaming you :D
Moreover, I gave up on NixOS the second time around because an update completely hosed my system, including all my rollbacks. Something with XServer broke across all snapshots.
Ultimately we're talking about a .0 version here. That's not going to end up in a Linux distro without further testing.
My post was directed to people manually installing latest kernels. That's not what the average "I want a Linux Desktop" user should do. It's targetted for people who tend to play with their systems. It's what they expect.
That is simply not how it works anymore. Your distro vets the kernels. They patch them. They ensure that if that well known Intel wifi bug is still around that the patch is applied (note it already exists!) or better yet already in-tree. A late breaking bug of that nature is not a huge concern for your everyday Linux user.
Judging from the bug reports, there's still quite a few people building the latest kernels - mostly from poweruser distros like Arch and Gentoo.
If you use Ubuntu, Debian or CentOS, then yes, you're going to get an old and boring^W^W^W^W^W^Wstable kernel. But there's still enough of us around on cutting edge, I guess.
It shouldn't. If you use a major desktop distribution (ie, Ubuntu) it will be many months before you are actually using kernel 5.6.x.
Stick to LTS releases (which is what most distros use) and you'll be fine.
The iwlwifi issue was introduced very recently with a security fix, as described by phoronix. I was running kernel 5.6-rc6 for some testing recently and it didn't have this issue.
If this is yours (Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 7), there's a very recent fix that you can find there. It's a bit of a hassle, but should work across more than just Arch based distros
Trying to be constructive here, might it be because automated testing can't easily test things that touch the "real world"? Or is it due to some sheer number of possible wifi hardware implementations? Or both? (I really wish the vast majority of wifi antennas were hooked up directly to a generic SDR at this point)
The Linux kernel still has embarrassingly little automated testing, and what is done is largely done by third-parties.
Fedora 32 looks to be on-schedule for an April 21 release, pending release blocking bugs getting fixed up by then; and it will be shipping with Linux 5.6.